Publication

This paper examines the history of Turkey's bid to join the EU under the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Although the AKP first embarked on an EU-inspired reform project, it has subsequently taken an increasingly anti-European stance, especially since the anti-government protests of 2013. So the AKP reversed itself, right? No, says the paper – from the beginning, it instrumentalized EU-mandated reforms as a way to control Turkey's internal modernization and to delegitimize the country’s old secularist elites.