The European Union and First Years AKP: Popular Nationalism in Turkey

Abstract

Nationalism is one of the important ideologies; it is too difficult to express what nationalism is in one sentence, because it is a multidimensional, debatable ideology. In Turkey, nationalism is also an important issue because of its multi-ethnic and multi-cultural structure. Moreover elites have an important roles on constructing a type of nationalism, especially popular nationalism. Critiques and opposition of the political and intellectual elites against the governmental policies indicated the escalated atmosphere in nationalist discourse in Turkey until 2010. Therefore, this work empowered the theories of popular nationalism, which contribute the relationship between the elites and nationalism to the body of theoretical knowledge. However, some other issues may escalate the popular nationalism in Turkey. Turkish public thinks on that way; 29 percentages of the sample group think that the cause of escalating nationalism in Turkey is PKK terrorism, and secondly 17 percentages of the sample group suggested that EU demands led the increase. On the other hand some may claim that even those issues are interrelated.