European Turkey and European Morocco: Two Identity Construction cases in the path to the EEC membership

Year 2019, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 43 - 70, 30.12.2019

Volkan İpek , Selin Türkeş-kılıç

https://doi.org/10.26513/tocd.607538

Abstract

This article analyzes Kingdom of Morocco’s
and Turkey’s full membership application processes to the European Economic
Community (EEC) in 1987 from an identity perspective. Construction of both
Morocco’s and Turkey’s European-ness are being analyzed following the postcolonial
and modernization theories aspects of poststructuralist approach by taking official
discourses of the political leaders in the two states at the time of
application into account. In the conventional narratives of the establishment
of their modern states, Morocco perceived Europe as the other in terms of its
being former colonizer whereas Turkey perceived Europe as the other in terms of
its being  threat to its national unity
before the establishment of the Republic in 1923. In spite of this, two states
tried to add European-ness onto their national identity with their application
to the EEC in 1987 by being obliged to demonstrate not why European but how
European they were. This obligation was shaped around the postcolonial theory
for Morocco’s case, whereas it was around the modernization one for Turkey.  The article, then, takes the official
discourses on European-ness by the Moroccan and Turkish leaders which were
taken as dynamic processes. Later, it analyzes them in the light of
postcolonial nationalism for Morocco and modernization theory for Turkey. In
this respect, the article demonstrates how Europe and European-ness that was
once regarded as the “other” by Turkey and Morocco were tried to add in Moroccan
and Turkish national identities in the path to become a full member to the EEC. 

Keywords

Morocco, Turkey, European Economic Community, identity, Europeanness

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