Economic Advantages and Disadvantages of Turkish EU Accession

Headnote

ARTICLE INFO

Received October 14, 2015

Received in revised from -

Accepted December 25, 2015

Available online Dec. 03, 2015

JEL classification:

F15, F47

DOI:

10.14254/1800-5845.2015/11-2/1

Keywords:

International trade,

Integration,

EU enlargement,

Economic implications,

EU accession,

Turkey,

European Union

ABSTRACT

The subject of our paper is the hypothetic advantages and disadvantages of Turkey's accession to the EU and, therefore, the level of development of the Turkish economy, especially those macroeconomic and microeconomic criteria which are considered as the EU membership criteria for candidate countries.

The main goal is to determine the extent to which Turkey reached the level of economic development of the EU requirements, determine the characteristics and patterns of economic integration processes related to this state's accession to the existing union of countries whose level of development is higher than its own one, as well as to evaluate the prospective opportunities of Turkey's full-scale economic integration with the EU. The methodological basis of the research conducted within the thesis is linked with a systematic approach using the historical method, the method of comparative analysis, as well as methods of analysis of economic statistics.

(ProQuest: ... denotes formulae omitted.)

1. INTRODUCTION

The relations between the European Union (EU) and the Republic of Turkey, namely in the field of Turkey's gradual procession from an associate to full-fledged member of the European Union, dates back to the 1960's. In 1999, Turkey received the status of candidate for membership, however with greater doubts on the side of the EU member states than in the case of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (see Guerin and Stivachtis, 2011; Jiroudková et al., 2015). As of today, most CEE countries are already EU members, whereas the accession negotiations with Turkey started only in 2005. The negotiation process was complicated by the emergence of various problems and has been repeatedly interrupted.

This complicated nature of relationships puts on the agenda the question of their actual content, grounding the assumption that the process of Turkey's accession to the EU is regulated not only by objective membership criteria, but is also influenced by the EU's subjective approach to Turkey.

In order to examine the existence of the alleged element of subjectivity from different perspectives, in this thesis, I would like...