Privileged, Problematic or Problem-Solving Partnership: The Image of The European Union in Contemporary Turkey

This paper aims to analyze the role of EU-Turkey relations in Turkish public debate since 2002, when the Justice and Development Party took power. The Republic of Turkey filed an application to accede to the European Economic Community (the predecessor of the European Union) in 1987; however, the accession negotiations proceeded extremely slowly until the entire process came to an impasse in 2018. Although currently Turkey and the European Union share many common problems (e.g. migration crisis, threat of terrorism, energy security), their cooperation is very limited and thus often ineffective. The author argues that recent developments in Turkey have been shaped by President Erdoğan’s anti-Western rhetoric and are dominated by domestic factors (i.e. inward oriented). In order to present Turkey’s attitudes towards the EU, the source analysis focused on identifying basic assumptions and objectives of Turkish foreign policy  The analysis revealed that here are three possible scenarios for future partnership between Turkey and the EU: optimistic, pessimistic, and realistic.