Account for the different political and public attitudes towards Turkey's application for EU membership.

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Nicolas Peristianis                Tutor: J. Gibbons

Account for the different political and public attitudes towards Turkey’s application for EU membership.

What, in your view, is likely to be the outcome of negotiations?

Turkey and EU

Turkey first applied to join the EU was in 1987. Turkey was then made  a European Union Associate Member in 1964. It was officially recognised as a candidate for membership in 1999 at the Helsinki sumit for the European Council. Turkey recently started negotiations in 2005 , this started a chain of events which lead to many differing public opinions, such as:

  • European Public: Turkey’s application to join the EU has produced a range of different opinions amongst the existing 25 EU states. On one hand there are the strong supporters of Turkish membership such as Britain, Italy, Portugal and Spain. On the other hand there are countries strongly opposed to ‘full’ membership like Austria, Germany and France. The situation in Germany is that there is a coalition between Christian and Social Democrats. The Christian Democrat chancellor favours a "privileged Turkey-EU partnership", whereas the Social Democrats leader, who is also the Foreign minister, disagrees and supports Turkeys bid to join the EU. France will not accept Turkey into the EU until Turkish government admits to having committed genocide against the Armenian race. For different reasons countries like Greece and Cyprus advocate support for full Turkish membership, but not until certain preconditions are met, such as Turkey’s opening of its ports and airports to Cypriot shipping and airlines.

The people of the EU countries are generally cautious of full Turkish membership as shown in the graph in Appendix 1. Only Hungary (51%) closely followed by the UK (46%), Portugal (43%) and Spain (42%) show substantial support for Turkish EU membership. The EU average supporting view is only 36%.

  • Turkish public: A factor that seems to have been pushed aside until now is whether the Turks as a majority want to join the EU. There are many different opinions from just Turkey alone about EU membership. Initially, and as long as two years ago the overwhelming majority of the Turkish people were in favour of EU membership. However the support has dropped in the last year following publication of the European Commission report (November 2006). The report criticises Turkey’s slow progress in democratic reforms and its failure to open its ports and airports to Cyprus traffic, contrary to the Ankara Protocol.
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The Turkish public saw this as prejudice and discrimination, with the Prime Minister, (Tayyip Erdogan-Leader of the Justice and Development party) stating that "The EU decision is an injustice against Turkey”. Many influential people in Turkey, such as Guler Sabanci, the richest woman in Turkey and a leading industrialist, claim that criticisms made by the European Commission are the same as the current agenda in the Turkish government and all they need is time to reform.

Challenges facing Turkey

Many European countries do not agree with Turkey joining the EU in the near future. The ...

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