Divergent Pathways: Turkey and the European Union - Re-Thinking the Dynamics of Turkish-European Union Relations (Hardcover)

Should Turkey become a part of the European Union? This heated debate has been going on for many years now, always under the assumption that it is the membership candidate alone who needs to adjust to the EU's influence. The book's main argument is precisely that the Turkish accession needs to be analyzed not only by looking at the EU's impact on Turkish transformation but also from an angle that captures the Turkish role in recasting Europe. In order to assess the EU-Turkish relations, the book first analyzes the very process of the European integration. Based on these findings, Turkey's relations with the EU are addressed from the specific angle of the changing dynamics in Europe. Second, the book investigates the socio-political transformation in Turkey through the prism of its relations with the EU. The EU has become an actor on its own right in Turkish politics impacting its domestic policies as well as foreign policy formulations. The author investigates the political transformation in Turkey through the political conditionality of the EU. Through this investigation, a more precise understanding of the EU's impact on constituting democracy in candidates and in its periphery will be generated. Consequently, the author aims to assess the limits of political integration and its conditionality on countries in the EU's periphery such as Turkey; that is because the positive implications of European integration are almost taken for granted in the theoretical literature without much emphasis on the limits of integration. From the Contents: * A historical Evolution of Turkey's relations with the European Union * Turkey and the Negotiation of European Identity * Turkey and the Future of Europe