Framing Turkey: Identities, public opinion and Turkey’s potential accession into the EU

This dissertation adds to our understanding of the role of identity factors in opinion formation in the case of Turkey’s potential accession. But although the Turkish case may be an ideal case to look at identity factors, it also sheds light on the relation between identities and more general attitudes towards the EU. The EU is always about cooperation, sharing and integrating with other Europeans, who may be defined as ‘the other’ by their different nationality, language and/or culture. This raises the question where EU citizens draw the line between ‘us’ and ‘them’, and how this may affect the legitimacy of the European project.