HOW TO INTERPRET TURKEY’S ACCESSION PROCESS WITH THE EUROPEAN UNION?

Abstract

This essay comprises of two major aims. One is to de-construct Turkey’s ongoing accession process with the European Union, by paying considerable attention to the placement of geopolitical and security-related considerations in two different readings of this process. The goal here is to give a brief sketch of the two discourses as conceptualised by the Turkish elite. The second, however, is to test the credibility of these discourses as to their capability in explaining the possibility of Turkey’s membership in the European Union, by trying to uncover the main rationale behind the EU’s approach to enlargement in general and Turkey in particular. To raise a new approach to Turkey’s accession process from a security perspective, parameters of which are defined by the EU’s security concerns will be aspired in this context.