Europeanization in Turkey: In Search of a New Paradigm of Modernization

Abstract

This study suggests that for the countries of Southern and Eastern Europe, that is, 'the semi-periphery of Europe' (Turkey, Greece, Portugal and the Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs)), Europeanization/modernization runs at the deeper sphere of the societal and in direct relation to the change in the nature of domestic politics. In those countries, Europeanization corresponds to a quest for a new paradigm of political modernity. This paper also reveals some inexorable methodological and epistemological parallels between the modernization theory of the 1950s and the current Europeanization literature. The aim is to reveal how the essentialist, top-down, universalist and evolutionist approach to development and social change adapted by the modernization school has been reproduced by the current scholarship on Europeanization.