This book provides an analytical contribution to the contested issues marking Turkish membership to the European Union. On October 2005 Turkey started the accession process towards EU membership. Currently, many Europeans fear that large numbers of Turkish nationals will flood member countries if Turkey were to become a member, highlighting that many Turkish immigrants have failed to integrate into their host societies due to cultural difference. Yet, others argue that Turkey is a dynamic society with a growing educated population that could help address the dilemmas faced by most member countries, emphasizing that accession would assist the integration of current immigrants in Europe. Turkish Immigrants in the European Union addresses the following: What are the demographic trends in Turkey compared to the member countries? What is the potential scope and driving forces of immigration from Turkey to the EU? How will these trends affect Turkish immigrants in Europe? What is the integration problem of Turkish immigrants and how can it be resolved? This book was previously published as a special issue of Turkish Studies and will be of interest to students and scholars of European studies and European integration.

This book by two leading experts provides a comprehensive analysis of Turkey's relationship with the European Union, set in its regional and international context. It provides three analytical lenses through which the relationship might be understood – Turkey as an enlargement country, as an EU neighbour and as a global partner – and unpacks the implications of each. Turkey and the European Union focuses on the five pillars that help define the relationship: economics, migration, security, democracy and human rights, and culture and identity. It shows how the differing perspectives on Turkey's role can influence events and developments in these areas, and it traces the profound fluctuations in relations, from the Association Agreement of 1963, to the candidacy for full membership of 1999, to the limbo of today. Turkey continues to be a critically important country for the European Union. The relationship has consequences that are both ideational, embedded in history, politics, identity and culture, and material, relating to economics, energy and security. In examining this complex relationship, this book addresses a key issue for Europe's future, and does so in a fashion that is both sophisticated and accessible.

First published in 1999, this volume draws on the theories of integration, credible policy commitments and convergence, this book demonstrates that the problematic evolution of the EU-Turkey relations has been due to an anchor / credibility dilemma: neither Turkey’s European orientation was a credible commitment nor was the EU’s anchoring capacity resolute enough to make policy reversals in Turkey less likely. The way out of this dilemma is to re-write the existing contracts so that non-transparency and the scope for discretion are minimised.

Turkey and the European Union makes a scholarly contribution to the debate over Turkey's participation in the European integration process and the EU's future enlargement. It explores the recent history of EU-Turkish relations and looks at the prospects and challenges that Turkey's membership presents to both the EU and Turkey.

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.

Public and even scholarly debates usually focus on the integration problems of Muslim immigrants at the cost of overlooking the role of the growing number of migrant organizations in establishing a crucial link among immigrants themselves, as well as between them and their countries of origin and residence. This book aims to fill a gap in the vast literature on migration from Turkey by contributing the neglected aspect of civic and political participation of Turkish immigrants. It brings together a number of scholars who carried out extensive research on the associational culture of Turkish immigrants living in different countries in Europe and North America. In order to understand the diversity and dynamics within Turkish migrant communities living in these parts of the world yet maintaining transnational ties, this book offers a comparative and interdisciplinary approach to migrant organizations in general and civic participation and political mobilization of Turkish immigrants in particular. This book was published as a special issue in Turkish Studies.

Although Turkey has a long-held aspiration for European Union membership and has been a candidate for more than a decade, relations between the EU and Turkey have not received the attention it deserves from non-Turkish researchers thus far, and consequently the international literature on EU-Turkey relations is rather limited. In light of recent global economic and political challenges for the EU and Turkey, a need has emerged for an interdisciplinary approach to study EU-Turkey relations within the wider international political and economic context. Turkey’s Accession to the European Union: Political and Economic Challenges, edited by Belgin Akçay and Bahri Yilmaz, provides a timely overview of some of the most important issues and debates in the changing context of Europe, the change in domestic politics and foreign policy in Turkey, and the likely implications of these changes and developments for EU-Turkey relations. Within this framework, this collection includes articles emphasizing Turkey’s reform process with a view to EU accession, despite EU’s reservations about “absorbing” Turkey and the eventual decoupling of the Turkish reform process from European integration, as well as searching for alternative forms of cooperation or transitional arrangements which may be possible for Turkey at the time of accession.

Turkey’s accession to the European Union is undoubtedly one of the Union’s most contested potential enlargements. The narrative that dominates the debate surrounding this issue primarily relates to problems such as a lack of respect for fundamental human rights in Turkey, the Kurdish question and the continuing stalemate concerning northern Cyprus. This book looks at these issues, but also proposes that a review of Turkey’s experience with the EU in its numerous incarnations suggests that these concerns may mask a deeper disquiet. Whilst there are several questions that Turkey must address, particularly in the area of human rights guarantees, the concerns which raise debates regarding Turkish membership are not issues that are unique to Turkey. Turkey’s EU experience also raises fundamental questions about religion and the EU project that have greater implication than simply Turkish accession. Through the lens of the Turkish example, this book addresses these broader questions, such as the nature of European ‘identity’, Europe’s Christian past, the limits of pluralism and the fundamental question of religion in the European public sphere. This book will be of great interest to those engaged in research on European law and politics at undergraduate or postgraduate level. It is also aimed at academics with an interest in human rights and the European Union and with a regional interest in Turkey.

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