Orientalism in the EU context : a critical analysis of EU narratives on Europe and Turkey

• Main Author: Pandir, Müzeyyen
• Published: Lancaster University 2013
• Subjects: 300.9561
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.658088

While there is a plurality of opinions on Turkey's European Union membership, there seems to be a single dominant issue in the whole debate: no other issue in the enlargement process of the European Union has ever caused so much concern and debate about Europeanness. The inclusion of Turkey, the ultimate constitutive Other of Europe since the era of the Ottoman Empire, not only evokes economic and political concerns, but also provokes fears and anxieties about European identity and culture. This thesis explores production and reproduction of these concerns and anxieties in both historical and contemporary terms in ED documents. The thesis is theoretically based in the critique of Orientalism as it is initially articulated by Edward Said. Conceiving Orientalism as a contextual and complex discourse, the thesis looks for different manifestations of Orientalism in ED discourses related to different policy fields (enlargement, culture, security) and debates in the European Parliament. Specifically, the thesis focuses on ED natTatives on and around the ED, Europe and Turkey, produced in the official ED documents between the years 2000 and 2009. The basic claim of the thesis is that the constructions of the ED, Europe and Turkey embed and (re)produce legacies of Orientalist and culturalist notions in new forms and contexts (e.g. in the form of neo-Orientalism and what will be called "frontier Orientalism"). The thesis also atticulates the significance of culture, religion, geography, and security in the production of inclusionary and exclusionary discourses in the context of the ED. Most impoltantly, in this respect, the thesis focuses on the processes in which ED politics are culturalised and depoliticised, enabling the old colonialist, culturalist and divisive legacies of Europe to resurface as part of the European integration project.