Turkey's Accession to the European Union

Since 1950 European Union (EU) was created it has promoted peace, prosperity and values among the member nations and its neighbouring countries. EU’s influential tools, has helped transform many European states into functioning democracies and prosperous countries. EU’s membership has grown from 6 to 28 countries (Enlargement, 2014), satisfying a historic vow to integrate the continent bringing in most states of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) by peaceful ideals.EU has anticipated the enlargement as an extraordinary opportunity to endorse political strength and economic success in Europe. EU’s extension policy is open to any European state that fulfils the EU’s political and financial criteria for membership; still the political process of inclusion of new state requires a unanimous agreement from all the existing 28 member states. Europe is considered to be more flourishing and safer place due to the promotion of democracy, anti-corruption policy and the single market policy.

EU as a whole is the world’s largest economy. Turkey being a part of the largest economy gets unrestricted admission to the largest single market in the world.

In its relative dark history Turkey, has come a long way. Overcoming its continuing struggle with its Muslim dominance, to becoming a powerful democratic Muslim state. Seeking full membership into the European Union (EU) to be a first Muslim EU state, and a member of NATO. With the country being part of not only Europe, it also shares geopolitical aspects with Asia and the Middle East, Mediterranean and Balkans. While trying to bring modern values to an elected Islamist government.

The European Union has stated that 5 out of 72 benchmarks still were required to satisfy the criteria for the visa liberalization roadmap. The main of which relates to Turkey’s anti-terror laws, which have been used to restrain and imprison journalists and other critics of the Turkish President, rather than dealing with legitimate terrorism cases. Furthermore, the Turkish government's unwillingness to progress in the accession negotiations has been further displayed by the proposed constitutional reform. The EU has stated that the enactment of the aforementioned constitutional amendments, would come into direct contradiction with the Copenhagen political criteria for EU membership. As a consequence, the European Union will be required to suspend the accession negotiations with

This article reviews Albania’s association with the EU from the 1990’s to 2000. Argument is that Albania is one of the most under-developed countries in Europe and will face

Decision about possible membership of Turkey in European Union should not be made solely on political level. It must be clearly expressed by desire of European people. The final decision should be preceded by extensive public debate of the European countries, which could reveal the willingness or reluctance of people to live in one integrated union with

From the filing of its EU membership application in 1987, Turkey has long attempted to become a member of the European Union. As of 2014, Turkey is still a candidate country for membership and its position doesn’t appear to be changing anytime soon. This paper will outline the various challenges Turkey faced in the past and its relation to current challenges facing her ascension to membership in the European Union. This will take the form of establishing Turkey’s position relative to other European nations from the end of the Second World War and how Turkey is progressing towards Europeanization. This paper will also discuss Turkey’s security outlook, its completion of the Copenhagen Criteria, the current issues surrounding Cyprus and intra-European rejection of Turkey as a possible EU candidate.

In the course of time, the Russian Federation and the European Union signed different agreements and held various summits concerning diverse topics. The “Partnership and Cooperation Agreement” was signed in 1994 to legally bind these two key players. This treaty establishes a framework of cooperation between the EU and the Russian Federation. However, the cooperation between them has not been smooth and without problems and is therefore causing a decline of progress. Trying to improve their relation, further negotiations were held at the Khanty-Mansiysk summit in 2008. The main issues that were discussed there included the establishment of a common economic space and a common space of freedom, security and justice.

Amongst the member states of the European Union, the longstanding debate on Turkey’s accession raises a number of significant questions with regards to the identity, power and future of the Union. Turkey is a key location both economically and tactically, making it a political hotspot for the whole of Europe and Asia, so why then has so little progress been made within its application for membership status?

European Union’s attention was again directed towards Albania during the Kosovo war. This was because the European Union was promoting stability in the Balkan region. There were many pacts that Albania has participated at the EU Meetings. Some of the pacts were; Stability pact for southeast which was launched in 1999; the second pact was Stability and Association process for the Western Balkan in 2000. However, these pacts were accepted, but many political issues were not settled during these pacts between Albania and EU. Many other countries and international organizations were supporting this, beside the European Union. Some of the countries were; United States, Canada, Japan. On the other hand, some of the organizations supporting this pact were organizations like NATO, International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. “All countries of the Southeastern European area are partners of the Stability Pact” (Thiel, 2004) and one of the members is Albania. Although the European integration it is difficult, with the assistance of European Union, Albania can progress towards the European Integration and the country can be more trustworthy for foreign investors to come and invest in Albania. But this has not been the case of Albania. Many reforms in Albania are either not implemented or poorly implemented. This means that some reforms

The Union’s functions are spreading from purely economic and monetary up to the social and security matters; it has become an integral part of government for almost each European country.

The European Union is an organization unlike any other which includes an economic and political union between many different countries in Europe. It operates as a single institution with one foreign policy although it is composed of 28 individual countries with their own foreign policies. This paper, therefore, seeks to understand the institutional organization of the European Union in regards to foreign policy as well as provide an analysis of the actions the EU takes in its diplomacy.

The world is becoming much more connected, especially in the last few decades. The idea of being free individuals has become more important, as well as free market economies. Some ideologies have collapsed because of their antiquated offers about the political situations, yet some of them are ruling the world in the last hundred years. But if there is something certain about the whole world, it is that globalization is affecting and changing it. Turkey is located at the center of the Europe, Asia and Africa, therefore the political and economical circumstances of it are important both for the Western part and the Eastern part of the world, then, the role of the globalization is very important to Turkey.

In the past Turkey has had a lot of dealings with the European Union in order to join the Union and officially be a part of Europe. Relations between the state and an intergovernmental have been fairly long and drawn out as Turkey had tried to join the European Union.  As they have jumped through hoops to become a member of Europe certain human rights and democratic rule issues came up that stalled the progress on integration into the Union. Although many attempts to reach out to the other side has been made there has some but little progress that has been made to integrate Turkey into the European Union. Further complications arose when a coup attempt occurred mid July led by a group believed to be Islamist Insurgents. On top of this attempted coup coup, the government in the eyes of the Union are abusing their power by using the coup to oust any political rivals. Integration into the European way of life may be stalled even longer with the recent occurrences and lack of ethics.

Half a century ago Turkey admitted to the European Union membership and until now Turkey didn’t have a full membership. The EU fears Turkey and Turkey is eager to join the Christen club. Therefore, the EU – Turkey relations went through several turns that either stalemated or encouraged the process of admitting Turkey to the EU membership. The EU-Turkey relation is important for both parties, because it involves mutual security, economic and strategic benefits. However, the recent progress in the EU- Turkey relations seems slow and lack collective goals that strengthen the Turkish EU cohesion. For example, there was 14 Chapter opened in the EU accession negations but they did only finish negotiating about one Chapter. Both Turkey and the EU individual countries contributed to such outcome. In order to understand this recent negative development in the EU-Turkey relation, we need to address the facts that either helped or undermined both parties cohesion.