Transforming Turkey-EU Relations: Ground for Hope

Both the EU and Turkey have followed a flawed, populist and identity-based policy towards each other since accession negotiations began as a result of which relations have reached a stalemate. Nonetheless, there has recently been a strengthening of views and voices both within Turkey and the EU that express their concerns with this stalemate. They highlight the contributions that Turkey and the EU could make to one another as well as to global peace and stability on a wide scale, ranging from economics to politics, culture and foreign policy. At the same time, the Eurozone crisis has spawned new questions over the institutional future of the EU with alternative models of membership circulating. We should thus discuss and work on what type of full membership for Turkey would be both possible and desirable in the years ahead. Turkey should be actively engaged in such debates and the EU should ensure that any future cooperation model with Turkey besides full membership would treat the country as an equal partner enjoying more than a mere "privileged partnership".

Paper produced within the framework of the project Turkey, Europe and the World. Publ. in IAI Research Paper 9.