Right-Wing Populist Discourse in the European Parliament on Turkish Foreign Policy.

• Author: Ulusoy, Hasan

Introduction

The rising right-wing populist movements in the European continent continue to become more and more controversial. To cite a few, gathering the right-wing populist parties in Italy, Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni carried the right-wing populist idea to power after many years. Likewise, a right-wing populist party has become the main opposition in Sweden, which is known as the stronghold of social democracy. In France, it became a tradition for Marine Le Pen, who inherited the flag from her father, to run in the presidential elections. The fact that previous American President Donald J. Trump's supporters stormed the Congress building after the elections and that a far-right group in Germany recently attempted a coup has revealed how serious the issue of right-wing populism can actually be in terms of the existence of democratic institutions. Although studies on both right-wing populist actors and their foreign policy discourses have increased recently, it can be argued that the number of these studies is still quite insufficient. This deficiency becomes much more concrete when it comes to such discourses against Turkiye.

Among the European studies, it is observed that studies related to Turkiye have been done sufficiently. It should be noted at this point that a large number have been put forward, especially regarding Turkiye's EU membership. Studies on the perceived image of Turkiye in the EU in the 2000s were written on the subject of "Europeanization." In this context, issues such as the Europeanization of foreign policy, (1) democracy, and the rule of law (2) or the transformation of civil-military relations (3) have come to the fore.

However, studies dealing with discourses and debates on Turkiye in the European Parliament (EP) are limited. Parliaments are one of the most important platforms on which political identity is constructed through discourse. In addition, since the parliament is the place where right-wing populist representatives feel most confident, these discourses are also quite assertive and controversial, if not deliberate. In the parliament, elected representatives "try to get other representatives to consent or dissuade" on political issues, and to do this, they apply "debating techniques, maneuvers, methods of persuasion, and reasoning strategies." (4) Since the analysis of these involves the examination of a large amount of data, researchers are not keen to approach this field often.

Duzgit, in her study titled "Constructions of European Identity: Debates and Discourses on Turkey and the EU" published in 2012, revealed how the European identity is discursively reproduced through Turkiye, which is the "other" of Europe, from a constructivist perspective. (5) Indeed, the role of the perception of Turks in history in the formation of "European identity" is an established fact that has been the subject of several academic studies. (6)

In this context, using constructivist tools, Ulusoy argues this issue in the following lines:

It was the rest of Europe that shaped their 'European' identity in contrast to the Ottomans, which they perceived as the empire of Turks. They also mostly considered the Turks as not being European, but rather being in Europe. In other words, it was the 'Muslim Turks', in their minds considered as 'the other', against which the rest of Europe of predominantly Christian faith, constructed their 'European' identity as being 'the self'. This was due to the socio-physiological lenses, through which they saw and perceived the Ottoman Turks and later modern Turkey. It is hard to deny the existence of these lenses today, too, even if such a socio-physiological mindset is never spelt out. (7) Besides this, Duzgit's article titled "European Parliament 'Doing' Europe: Unraveling the Right-wing Culturalist Discourse on Turkey's Accession to the EU" analyzed the "cultural identity" debates on Turkiye in the EP. (8) Duzgit's studies are very significant in terms of revealing the representation of Turkiye in the EP and focusing on right-wing populist parties. In addition to Duzgit, Ermihan's study is also instructive in terms of analyzing the speeches in the EP. (9) This study explains the EU's identity-based approaches to Turkiye in the period between 2013 and 2016, with Wodak's critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach. The study examines 18 parliamentary sessions and has an important place in analyzing the discourses of parliamentarians in the EP regarding Turkiye.

In addition to Ermihan, there are many studies examining the perceptions and discourses about Turkiye in the EP after 2002. (10) The common feature of all these studies is that the positive atmosphere between Turkiye and the EU after 2002 had a positive effect on Turkiye's image and perception in the EP. Kilic's study, one of the most recent, examined the debates in the EP about Turkiye's "privileged partnership." (11) In addition, the studies of Baldwin and Widgren, (12) Braghiroli, (13) and Canan-Sokullu (14) show that the debates in the EP regarding Turkiye's EU membership have had a conflicting effect on voting behavior and dynamics regarding Turkiye.

Finally, attention should be paid to the works of Cakmak and Isbasaran, and Guler. Cakmak and Isbasaran examined how the terrorist attacks in Turkiye and Europe were discussed and handled by the parliamentarians during the 8th parliament term covering the years 2014-2019. (15) In the study, the discourses in the sessions regarding terrorism were examined and the attitudes of political groups were determined. Guler, who has done one of the comprehensive studies on the discourses of right-wing populist groups in the EP, has also revealed how right-wing populist groups construct discursive opposition to immigration in the EP. Guler examined right-wing populist discourses from the perspective of the CDA and revealed how immigration was constructed as an "economic threat," "security threat," and "cultural threat." (16)

Among all these studies, this article has emerged to examine the discourses and attitudes of right-wing populist groups in the EP toward foreign policy issues. Since the presence of broad foreign policy issues and developments necessitates the limitation of research, Turkish foreign policy will be the main discursive theme for discourse analysis. This choice is because, in the preliminary research, it was seen that the political discourses of right-wing populist groups about Turkiye were constructed with quite different references. While these groups put forward a "negative" representation of many issues regarding Turkiye, they tried to reshape and construct the EU's approach to Turkiye. In this context, an analysis will be made on which representations and discourses the right-wing populist groups' images of "Turkiye" are formed, and what features and characteristics are attributed to Turkiye with the discourses referenced in the EP sessions.

The attitudes of the right-wing populist groups in the EP toward Turkiye will be examined with the method of CDA. In this context, the discourse analysis approaches of Ruth Wodak, who came to the forefront with her studies on right-wing populist discourse, as well as researchers such as Norman Fairclough and Teun van Dijk will be utilized. Ruth Wodak's discourse historical approach (DHA) is significant due to the fact that it places a special emphasis on the discursive construction of "us and them," in other words, the selfother dichotomy, which is widely used by right-wing populist parties, and identity construction, which is seen as the fundamental element of "identity and difference" discourses and will form the basic analytical framework of this study.

In the study, the comparative focus will be on the 7th and 8th parliamentary periods covering the years 2009-2014 and 2014-2019. Particularly due to the effect of the 2008 economic crisis, right-wing populist parties started to see high vote rates and increased their representation and visibility at both national and supranational levels in the EU. In addition, problems began to increase in the relations between Turkiye and the EU during these periods, and this situation made Turkiye the subject of fierce debates in the EP.

Right-Wing Populism as a Concept

Today, there are many definitions and conceptualizations of right-wing populist parties. Cas Mudde, who came to the forefront with his studies on rightwing populist parties, states that there are 26 different definitions (17) in the literature and 58 different features that come to the fore in these definitions. (18) This situation brings with it the necessity of defining the concept clearly and drawing its framework in the studies to be carried out. These parties come from a right-wing tradition, and for many, despite stemming from a fascist past, they transformed themselves in many issues. Although their understanding of "populism" is not anti-democratic, they position themselves as anti-liberalists because they are against minority rights, pluralism, and the rule of law. (19)

There is still no agreed definition of whether right-wing populism is an ideology, a philosophy, a particular media phenomenon, or a political style. Many studies have been carried out on all of these concepts. Rydgren says that the concept of right-wing populism is obsolete and instead uses the definition of "ethnic nationalist party with populist elements." Wodak also conducted an analytical discussion on the concept and tried to define these movements. (20) Muller states that populists are anti-elite and draws attention to their opposition to pluralism. (21) In this way, Muller states that the parties reflect the spirit of the people, not the general will, and emphasizes that they position themselves as "representatives of the true identity, not of larger number." (22)

At this point, it is important to thicken the line between the concept of "rightwing populism" and the concept of "far right." The concept...