The Beginning of Turkey-European Union Relations: Turkey's Application for Membership in the European Economic Community (EEC)

Abstract

Accession to the European Union (EU) has been one of the most crucial topics of the Turkish foreign policy. This topic, albeit sometimes not having a priority, always remained as a current issue and played a determinant role in Turkey's objective of Westernization. Within this process, parallel to the success that the accession would bring, it became more ascendant in current politics. It acted as the sword of Damocles as a determinant either for the election victories or as a trouble-maker on the head of the parties. The foundation of the Turkey-EU relations was first laid by the Democrat Party in July 31st, 1959 and these relations began to get deepen by the time the Motherland Party (ANAP) came into power in the 1980's. This study aims to determine the reasons that led Turkey to apply for the EU membership, the place of the relations with the Europen Economic Community (EEC) on Turkish foreign policy and the repercussions of this application in the public opinion. Therefore it is going to be given a general overview on the early years of those relations. In the citations taken from the newspapers of the period the expression common market is used for defining Turkey's counterpart while the author himself rather prefers to use the EEC, the predecessor of the EU.