The impact of democratic conditionality on policy-making in Turkey: Minority rights and the politics of broadcast regulation
From the recognition of its candidacy status at the European Council Helsinki Summit in December 1999 to the start of accession talks in October 2005, Turkey has gone through a remarkable process of “Europeanisation” of its public policies to fulfil the candidate criteria. In this period, broadcasting has been one of the first areas that was subject to the European Union EU impact. By asserting its influence through the enforcement of democratic conditionality, specifically the Copenhagen criterion on “respect for and protection of minorities,” the EU required Turkey to lift all the restrictions on the enjoyment of cultural rights in Turkey and allow broadcasts in languages other than Turkish, particularly in Kurdish. This article first develops a critique of EU democratic conditionality and then investigates the policy process behind this change in the language policy for broadcasting in Turkey. Turkey’s response to democratic conditionality was directly influenced by prevailing ideas about “the credibility of the EU” as well as calculations of the “costs of compliance.”