Author(s)

Yongzhen Lai ¹

Affiliation(s)

¹ Munich International Summer University, d-80539, Munich, Germany

Corresponding Author

Yongzhen Lai

ABSTRACT

Turkey has witnessed the change in domestic ethnic policy in terms of Kurdish issue from negation of a separate Kurdish identity to granting Kurdish ethnic rights during the 1990s. The author argued that policy change in Turkey stemmed from Turkish efforts in pursuing the membership of the European Union (EU) and thus had to meet the Copenhagen Criteria of domestic ethnic rights for an EU membership state. Moreover, EU was also active in using the Copenhagen Criteria to shape Turkish ethnic policy through controlling the process of membership negotiation. Using the theoretical framework of norm diffusion, the article illustrated how Turkey changed its Kurdish ethnic policy through the “top-down process” of EU intervention and the “bottom-up process” of Turkish domestic politics.

KEYWORDS

Norm diffusion, Kurdish, Eu-turkey relations, Copenhagen criteria

CITE THIS PAPER

Yongzhen Lai. EU’s Norm Diffusion Entrepreneurship: Case Study on EU-Turkey Interactions on Ethnic Rights Policy. Journal of Sociology and Ethnology (2021) 3: 33-40. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.23977/jsoce.2021.030207.

REFERENCES

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