Divergent Pathways Turkey and the European Union ─ Re-thinking the Dynamics of Turkish-European Union Relations

Should Turkey become a part of the European Union? This heated debate has been going on for many years now, always under the assumption that it is the membership candidate alone who needs to adjust to the EU's influence. This book's main argument is that the Turkish accession needs to be analyzed, not only by looking at the EU's impact on Turkish transformation, but also from an angle that captures the Turkish role in recasting Europe. In order to assess EU-Turkish relations, the book first analyzes the very process of the European integration. Based on these findings, Turkey's relations with the EU are addressed from the specific angle of the changing dynamics in Europe. Second, it investigates the socio-political transformation in Turkey through the prism of its relations with the EU. The EU has become an actor in its own right in Turkish politics, impacting its domestic policies, as well as foreign policy formulations. The book investigates the political transformation in Turkey through the political conditionality of the EU. Through this investigation, a more precise understanding of the EU's impact on constituting democracy in candidates and in its periphery is generated. Consequently, the book assesses the limits of political integration and its conditionality on countries in the EU's periphery, such as Turkey; this is because the positive implications of European integration are almost taken for granted in the theoretical literature without much emphasis on the limits of integration.

Meltem Muftuler-Bac is professor of international relations and Jean Monnet chair at Sabanci University, Istanbul, Turkey.