This article provides a reassessment of the literature on the transformative impact of the EU on Turkey through the lens of the ‘Europeanisation research programme’. It relies on systematic examination of a sample of the literature based on substantive findings, research design and methods. It suggests that this sample displays limitations characteristic of the Europeanisation research programme and proposes to remedy these limitations by applying the research design and methods used therein for generating empirically based comparative research on Turkey.

It has become commonplace to contrast civic patriotism, which we applaud, with tribal nationalism that we deplore. The article argues that the distinction is too neat. Following the historical emergence of Macedonian national feeling, it explores the interplay of ‘nature’ and artifice in the coming about of the legitimating ideology of a recently established nation-state in the contingency of its emergence. It examines, furthermore, the predicament of a new state inserted among better-consolidated neighbors with strong national ideologies of their own and the role of the state in building the nation, which it seeks in turn to represent.