| My thesis examines the role of the Turkish-European Economic Community (EEC) integration process in Turkish self-understandings. It analyzes how Turks spoke about their integration into the predecessor of the European Union (EU) between 1959 and 1983, arguing that the horizon upon which three generations of Turks understood themselves as a state, a people, and a culture, was to a large degree delineated around and through their dialogue with the EEC. I show how the framework of this dialogue, Turkish perceptions of the EEC, and, through these, the ways Turkey has come to understand itself, have undergone dramatic shifts since Turkey's initial application in 1959. To account for these shifts, I use two historically defined categories to differentiate two distinct postures or world-views that Turks brought to Turko-European relations between 1959 and 1983. These two categories I refer to as the Civilizational and Nationalist logics. Each of the logics, I claim, is based on a distinct ontology of the self/other relation that structured the terrain through which various Turks signified their relationship with the EEC. My dissertation is a cultural history of this process. Divided into three periods, it traces the inter-relationships between these two logics through an ever-widening Turkish debate about its future with(in) Europe. |
