Research Papers

The literature on the Europeanization of national political systems has flourished mainly with respect to the EU member states. Only recently, has the impact of the EU on national parliaments been questioned and the state of research on parliaments in candidate countries, which are subject to the influence of European integration in more subtle ways, is still in its infancy. Considering the unique nature of Turkey's accession process described by ups and downs, the Turkish Parliament constitutes a hard case for testing Europeanization. This paper examines the Europeanization of the Turkish Parliament between 1999, the declaration of Turkey's EU candidacy at the Helsinki Summit, and 2011 with a focus on three cases: the role and scrutiny of the European Affairs Committee over EU affairs, the share of EUquot;related national laws and work patters in constitution-making by combining discourse analysis with various quantitative techniques. The variation between the cases aims to preclude equating parliamentary Europeanization with scrutiny over EU affairs. On this basis, it concludes that the Turkish Parliament responded to Europeanization by increasing its technical expertise, engaging in enhanced cooperation with its European counterparts and facilitating the participation of civil society in legislative process. This single-country study also provides a litmus test for bureaucratization/politicization dichotomy of Goetz and Meyer-Sahling.