Terrorist Attacks in Europe and Turkey: Securitization of Turkey in the 8 th European Parliament Plenary Debates

Abstract

This article focuses on the statements given by the members of the European Parliament (MEPs) about Turkey during the Plenary Sessions about terrorism during the Eight European Parliament. This study argues that during the period between 2014 and 2019, Turkey’s otherness has been reinforced and discursively constructed especially by the right- wing populist political party groups. By doing so, we’ve utilized the Securitization Theory of Copenhagen School as our framework in which security is defined as a product of speech act. The statements from the MEPs were categorized as positive or negative statements. Then, these data were analyzed in detail to see if there are significant differences between the discourses of different political groups in the European Parliament on Turkey.