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The Pros And Cons Of Turkey And The European Union

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Turkey and the European Union: A Match Made or Not The formation of the European Union (EU) has created an economic powerhouse for the rest of the world to recognize and to negotiate with economically. The old colonial powerhouses joined forces to become an economic bloc that gained momentum throughout the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, attracting outside nations to the organization. While, some countries have had little difficultly gaining admission to the EU, one county in particular has felt resistance. Turkey has been singled out in the accession process. Officially, Turkey is met with opposition due to the lack of reforms the EU requires of joining nations to meet certain economic, political, and human rights standards. Opposing nations also point to the obvious fact in questioning whether Turkey is truly a European nation. While there is certainly no debating the truth that Turkey has yet to meet the criteria…show more content…
Through secularist policies, the country attempted to introduce further reforms to meet the guidelines of EU admission. Turkey believe in 1997 that their time had finally come. At the Luxembourg Summit, the EU announced they wanted to push East. However, Turkey was not included on the list of prospective post-communist, Warsaw Pact countries, because the EU claimed once again that Turkey did not meet the Copenhagen Criteria for accession, even though many of the proposed countries were shaky on their human rights positions as well (European Council in Copenhagen 2017). Taking the news in stride, only two year later in 1999 at the Helsinki Summit, Turkey gained an official candidate status. Sensing the closeness of achieving a goal that has spanned 50 years, the country introduced massive political reform packages and eight constitutional amendments (Bogdani 2010, 23). Finally, in 2004, the European Council decided to begin accession negotiations with
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