Legitimizing Europe in contested settings: Europe as a normative power in Turkey?

This article aims to explore whether - and if so, how - the EU is perceived as a normative power (NPE) in Turkey in the context of deteriorating Turkey-EU relations. By adopting the Habermasian understanding that legitimacy is a prerequisite for NPE and through employing a focus group methodology novel to NPE research, the article finds that a certain segment of the Turkish public views the EU as a normative power, suggesting that claims for the existence of NPE need to be qualified both by the level of analysis and by the local context which comprises socio-cultural factors as well as government/opposition dynamics. The article also shows that contestation of the EU's actorness takes place over moral and ethical-political arguments rather than utility-based debates, demonstrating that polarization is noticeably present as far as the EU's normativity is concerned, and not on the perceived costs and benefits of EU accession