Turkey's Carnivalesque Challenge to the EU's Monologue: A Response to Nykänen

Abstract

The paper explores Turkey–EU relations from a Bakhtinian perspective. Nykänen (2011), also using a Bakhtinian perspective, has argued that the EU's stance in the accession process, particularly that of Turkey, has been monologic, which stymies the process by not allowing Turkey to ‘answer back’. This paper argues, in contrast, that, albeit in the context of a lack of dialogue, Turkey has indeed attempted to answer back to the EU through informal means, using a form of discourse that resembles Bakhtin's concept of the carnivalesque, characterised by a reversal of roles and hierarchies, parodies, laughter and the grotesque, which challenges the status quo by creating a ‘world upside-down’. In recent Turkish discourse, then, particularly that of leading members of the governing AKP, the traditional hierarchy of the ‘superior’ EU and the ‘inferior’ candidate country is broken own and reversed.