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This paper addresses the issue of early preferences of national political parties in the EU regarding Turkey's accession. Two main hypotheses are proposed. First, national moderate parties contribute mainly to the de facto transformation of the accession in an 'open' process by developing volatile attitudes. Second, in the case of moderate parties, volatile attitudes and concrete political discourses on Turkey's accession are mainly determined by explanatory factors other than ideology (structural and strategic factors). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the present time, there are no clear outcomes in Turkey's European Union (EU) accession process. By the end of the two years following the rise of the pro-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) to the government in 2002, Turkey's accession process entered into a stalemate. Potent political opposition to the Turkish candidacy in Europe has escalated, despite a staunch Turkish political commitment since 1999 to meet the Copenhagen Criteria for admission. In this article, we argue that Turkey's EU accession process has contributed to opening political spaces for Islamism and ethno-nationalism in the country, ironically producing societal and political forces undermining Turkish membership. We inquire first into the practical reasons obstructing Turkey's membership to the Union and second into the societal and political implications of the continuation of the bleak possibility of EU membership for Turkey. As far as the latter is considered, our focus is limited to an analysis of the politicization and institutionalization of the ethnic and Islamist conservative politics in Turkey within the process of "liberal democracy." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]