Turkey-EU Relations: A Geopolitic Examination, Winter 2003

The EU which is defined by its own officials, as ‘a superpower under construction’ will have to deal with a series of challenges after the enlargement process is over. It will have economic, political-institutional, cultural-social and geopolitical challenges. The author of this paper argues that given these problems that lie ahead of the EU and the Customs Union Agreement that has virtually caused Turkey to be reduced to a colony, Turkey stands no chance of joining the EU in the next 20 years no matter what it does. The paper further explores the ideological-psychological, ethnic, political-institutional, geopolitical, historical and economic dimensions of the policies that can be pursued by the EU towards Turkey within this time span. In the light of these arguments the author suggests that Turkey should stop seeing full membership to the EU or membership in the Customs Union as the only ways of establishing relations with the EU and that actually the only way of maintaining harmonious relations with the EU is through a platform that does not include the EU-CU framework.

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