European Union Policy and Governance

The European Union has played the most important role in stimulating political change in post-World War II Europe. Turkey had to become more democratic in order to attain candidacy for EU membership in the second half of the 1990s, and when it became a candidate, it had to adopt sweeping political reforms in order to…

• ŞADİYE MELTEM MÜFTÜLER BAÇ

Focusing on Turkish foreign policy in the post‐Cold War era, this paper argues that the period can be divided into three distinct phases: an initial wave of foreign policy activism in the immediate post‐Cold War context; a new or second wave of foreign policy activism during the Justice and Development Party (Adalet v…

This article provides a novel conceptual framework to understand the impact of the European Union on Turkish politics and policies in the aftermath of the opening of accession negotiations in 2005. It argues that the post-2005 developments in Turkey not only attest to lesser and more limited Europeanisation, but also…

The article analyses the EU's impact on the rule of law in the Western Balkans and Turkey. It enquires into the reasons behind the patchy record of rule-of-law reforms in Turkey, Croatia and Albania by examining judicial reforms in response to the EU accession requirements. It argues that a credible EU accession persp…

Turkey has been experiencing a controversial path of Europeanization by the 1999 Helsinki Summit granting EU candidate country status to the country: a changing trend from progressing Europeanization to selective Europeanization and recently de-Europeanization. Such a puzzling process, especially considering the recen…

• GÖZDE YILMAZ

This article takes issue with the question of whether Turkey has been turning away from Europe in recent years, by adopting a critical constructivist lens to understand how, rather than why, Turkey’s presumed distance from the European Union (EU) is taking place. In doing that, it seeks to analyse the ways in which th…

This article investigates the evolving relationship between the European Union (EU) and Turkey following the 2015 refugee crisis. It argues that post-crisis relations have become predominantly functional, measured by strategic EU-Turkey partnership based on interdependence as well as the EU’s relative retreat from pol…

• BEKEN SAATÇİOĞLU

This volume examines the construction of Turkey's possible European Union accession in French political discourse. In today's France, heated debates regarding Turkey's EU membership are turning into an essential part of European identity formation. Once again, the 'Turkish Other' functions as a mirror for defining not…

Identity change is a core element of political conflict and transformation. Most relevant are changes towards and away from dyadically opposed identities. Defining an ‘enemy’, narrowing, or broadening the inner and outer circles of belonging to include or exclude the Other, are integral to conflict processes at intern…

• BAHAR RUMELİLİ SANCAK

Identified as effective and rapid mechanisms against irregular migration by the European Union, Readmission Agreements (ras) have become one of the major topics in current migration literature. Despite the extensity of the current literature on requesting states, the literature focusing on the requested states remains…

• DAMLA BAYRAKTAR AKSEL

The European Union must make some tough decisions in finding an answer to the ever-present question of 'What to do with Turkey?'. The matter was more or less settled by the Luxembourg summit of the European Council held on 12 December 1997, at which the European Council decided to open accession negotiations with all…

• ŞADİYE MELTEM MÜFTÜLER BAÇ

This paper takes the view that the 'level of analysis' problem, first posed by Singer (1961), has not been discussed to the extent that it deserves in the literature of International Relations. The concepts of the 'level of analysis' and the 'unit of analysis' have widely been used interchangeably. The author attempts…