Turkey's accession to the EU: Enlargement Fatigue or a Special Case?
Term Paper for "Introduction to European and International Affairs"
Winter Semester 2013/14
Lecturer: Prof. Dr. Atila Eralp & Prof. Dr. Wolfgang Wessels
Tugcem Cengiz
Master of Arts in European and International Affairs
Student-No. 1381011106
Table of Contents
1. Introduction 1
2. Relationship between Turkey and the European Union 2
3. The Term: Enlargement Fatigue 5
4. Why does Turkey want to become a Member of the European Union? 7
5. Arguments and Counterarguments 11
5.1 Arguments For the Accession of Turkey 11
5.2 Arguments Against the Accession of Turkey 13
6. Conclusion 15
7. Bibliography 16
1. Introduction
Since nearly 50 years, Turkey tries to become a Member of the European Community, which emerged in 1958 as the European Economic Community (EEC) and is now known as the European Union (EU). During this timeframe, the EU developed from 6 Member States (Belgium, Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg and Netherlands) to 28 Member States in 2013.
Most of these Member States had a relatively short application process compared to Turkey and this fact makes the relationship between Turkey and the EU so special and unique (Kramer and Reinkowski 2008: 154).
This Essay deals with the relations of Turkey towards the EU and especially with the accession negotiations which started in 2005 and have not been concluded yet. It is really interesting to see that the negotiations are going extremely slowly and that the last few years did not really give any progress. Therefore, this essay will analyze if the negotiations are only a result of "enlargement fatigue" of the EU, which had the eastward expansion between 2004 and 2007 or if there are any given reasons for rejecting the membership of Turkey to the EU. Accordingly, my Research Question will...