Domestic Change in Turkey: An Analysis of the Extent and Direction of Turkish Social Policy Adaptation to the Pressures of European Integration in the 2000s.

The density of the relations between Turkey and the European Union (EU) has considerably intensified after 1999, when the pattern of relationship has shifted towards a full membership perspective. This change in the nature of the Turkey-EU relations has made the impact of EU on Turkey inevitable, no matter Turkey would eventually become an EU member state or not. Including both incentives and challenges for Turkey, this process has stimulated some dynamics, by affecting domestic policies in Turkey with all their relevant institutions and actors in a way to adjust themselves, willingly or unwillingly, to the conditions of EU pre-accession processes.It is against this background that this research aims to analyse Turkish social policy adaptations and the extent and direction of domestic policy change in Turkey under pressures created in the EU pre-accession processes especially in the 2000s in two selected social policy issues; and intends to explain the outcome of domestic policy change in the light of two particular mediating variables. Informed by the policy studies literature and Europeanisation theoretical framework, the main research questions are formulated as “what has been the impact of European integration processes on Turkey’s domestic policies?” and “what have been the factors affecting the outcome of domestic policy change in Turkey and why?”The research is composed of two empirical case studies, namely the equality between women and men at work policies and the employment policy. Each case study is designed in a way to test the explanatory power of one Europeanisation mechanism, namely the positive integration and framing integration mechanisms, in explaining the outcome of domestic policy change in Turkey due to the pressures created by the EU accession processes. In explaining the variation in terms of the outcomes, the role of two mediating variables is explored. The first variable is domestic politics, which is considered as a combination of a number of elements, namely the positioning and ideology of the government, interests of the domestic societal actors and the distance between the EU requirements and the domestic societal norms. Each of those elements is expected to be influential directly or indirectly in shaping the outcome of domestic policy change, while it is also affected by the process itself and by the other elements of domestic politics. The second mediating variable is existence of the external/endogenous factors other than the EU, which may reinforce the EU requirements for policy change at the domestic level, and differentially empower the domestic policy and societal actors that mediate the domestic policy change.The first case study deals with the domestic policy change in the field of equality between women and men at work policies. In this case, the “positive integration” mechanism of the Europeanisation literature is used, since the primary instrument of the European integration in this policy field is “hard law”, embodied in particular nine EU Directives. In line with the “goodness of fit” conceptualisation, this case study adopts a “top-down” research design. The findings of the case study show that the outcome of domestic policy change in this policy field is characterised by “selective harmonisation,” referring to a variation in terms of the outcome. Thus, it is suggested that the adaptational pressures per se are not enough to explain this variation, and what explains the variation has been the role of the suggested mediating variables.The second empirical case study analyses the domestic employment policy change in Turkey, through the “framing integration” mechanism, since the dominant European mode of governance in this policy field is “soft law.” In line with the presuppositions of the framing integration mechanism, the case study adopts a “bottom-up” research design, in a way to see whether or not European policy alters the expectations of beliefs of domestic actors, or provides them additional legitimacy for domestic policy change. The findings of the case study show that the outcome of domestic employment policy change in Turkey is characterised by “comprehensive substantive framing”, referring to the change of a wide range of aspects, as well as the substance, of employment policy in Turkey, in a way to be shaped by particular policy frames. Again in this case study, the mediating variables play an important role in explaining the outcome of domestic employment policy change.As a part of overall conclusions, a variation in terms of the impact of the EU on two sub-fields of social policy is also observed through the analysis of those two cases. The first observation regarding the variation is that it is difficult to differentiate the pure impact of the EU on the outcomes of the domestic policy change, first, due to the interdependency and mutually supporting character of the international obligations; and second, due to the often underestimated role of the domestic politics. The second observation relates to the role of the EU policy instruments, suggesting that the type and the coerciveness of the instrument per se is not a sufficient factor that explains the outcome of domestic change. The third observation proposes that domestic politics as a combination of the positioning and ideology of the government in particular relation to the European requirements and policy principles; the interests of the domestic societal actors; and, the distance between the EU requirements and the domestic societal norms have a potential to mediate, and hence explain, the outcome of domestic policy change. The last observation suggests that the realised policy changes do not always correspond with the actual policy problems of that policy field, first due to the “imported” nature of problem definitions and their limited problem-solving capacity at the domestic context, and second, due to the lack of implementation in Turkey.status: publishe