Policy learning: an understudied mechanism of EU influence on Turkish domestic politics

Abstract

This article argues that EU-induced learning processes in Turkish domestic politics deserve greater attention within the Turkey-related Europeanization literature, which, in view of Turkey's increasing distance from the European Union, tends to attribute a continued partial alignment with EU policies to either domestic, or to non-EU-related external factors. Two arguments are put forward. First, in domestically driven reform processes, the EU may still be able to influence policy choices due to domestic actors' bounded rationality and conflicting goals. Second, while persuasion and learning at the top political level is rather unlikely, given the currently tense relations, there are much more favorable context conditions for EU-induced learning in the interaction of the Turkish bureaucracy with the EU.