The Relations of Turkey with the European Union - Research Proposal Example

Introduction/Background The relations of Turkey with the European Union (EU) have existed since the year Turkey sent a formal application to become an associate member of the European Economic Community of that time. For 12 years, since 1987, Turkey’s applications for EU accession were being rejected, with the country itself complaining about discrimination against an exclusive Christian Club for being a Muslim country. The Europeans, however, countered that Turkey’s deficient institutions and practices in democratic and economic spheres disqualified it from the membership (Rouleau, 2000). A piece from BBC from BBC News (2004) also reported that a number of countries were concerned about Turkey’s huge and rapidly increasing population and low average income that could make its accession to the EU challenging. The union had many requirements for the membership candidacy acceptance. In December 1999 however, the EU dropped its preconditions, the reasons of which were several. Associated through its Ottoman past to the Balkans, at the edge of Central Asia, and adjoining the Middle East oil fields, Turkey was deemed a very significant participant on the international stage with huge potential to play a stabilizing role in a turbulent region; it could not be ignored. The post 9-11 era poses critical implications in the world politics today. Any plotted course of such decision making is prone to have a long lasting impact, not only on the concerned countries, but also on every affected party. In this case, the Turkey-EU relations, as well as their future nature of this relationship, not only affect them, but also EU’s relations with its neighboring Muslim countries. It took 3 decades until Turkey became a legitimate candidate country for an absolute membership in the EU. This research proposal tends to closely examine if Turkey should join the EU, and comprehensively discusses the potential resulting implications arising from whether or not Turkey joins it. A comprehensive review of literature has been conducted to study different theories and perspectives from different directly concerned parties, stakeholders, and various analysts who have evaluated Turkey’s standing from different angles. Further on, the proposal outlines our research objectives for this paper, discusses the research methodology to be employed, as well as highlight the ethical issues and limitations we’re prone to come across. Research Questions: The primary objective of this section is to construct a succinct discussion, and with all the pros and cons of the resulting impact, be able to reach an answer to the following research questions: Should Turkey join the EU? What advantage would Turkey gain from attaining accession to the EU? What advantage would EU gain from Turkish accession? What are the negative implications if Turkey joins EU? Literature Review/Background According to Van Herpen (2004) Turkey has been a significant geopolitical participant on the European stage for more than six centuries. Initially it was deemed as a threat, in response to which Luther inscribed his pamphlet ‘On War against the Turk’. But with due evolution, for the past 5 decades, Turkey has been a close ally to Europe in the NATO. Even though Turkey is an Islamic country, however, the Islam followed over there is not only identified as moderate and accepting, but is also barred from the public sphere. A decade ago, Rouleau (2000, p. 100) was of the view that Turkey stands at a crossroads; the ‘accession partnership document’ that it presented to the EU is a roadmap for the extensive political and economic reforms Turkey needs to endorse if it intends on joining the EU. However, according to the so-called Copenhagen regulations, certain guidelines were to be followed by all EU membership candidates including Turkey, which basically revolved around establishing ‘Western-style democratic institutions guaranteeing rule of law, individual rights, and minority rights’. Turkey, however, even after 10 months of the issuance of these norms, had made no action to reform its institutions. According to Vassiliou (2006) Europe had been going through fears of stagnancy and there is a big need to continue the pace of change. The two crucial challenges for Europe to confront are first, to keep up the EU expansion process; and second, to adjust to globalization by employing all the required reforms. It is also true, on the other hand, that Europe has been going through expansion fatigue, where the Copenhagen norms require the enlargement on the basis of the accession countries’ ability to comply with the strict union requirements, as well as the capacity of existing members to digest further enlargement. The French UMP and German CDU/CSU (as cited in Van Herpen, 2004) are of the stance that Turkey should not be offered EU membership due to the various reasons that they presented; first off Turkey is not a European country, but an Islamic country that does not fit into the Christian sphere; it is too big and too poor; and its membership will not only cause an immense influx of new migrants, but also pause further integration. The validity of these arguments, however, is still in question. No doubt Turkey is relatively poor, but its EU membership is deemed to uplift its economic development, as it has done for other poor acceding countries like Ireland, Spain, and Portugal. Similarly, as the argument goes, a poor country exports its population; however, with economic progress, these migratory flows lessen and people tend to stay and earn in their own country – the same applies to Turks. Turkey’s Prime Minister Erdogan (2011) has recently addressed to Europe in Newsweek that they should recognize the fast swirling ties of Turkey and EU. He has made a sound protest over the fact that EU has easily welcomed rather smaller countries with weak economic conditions so as to uplift their economic development and merge their democracies; however, the same welcoming gesture has not been extended toward Turkey, meaning EU has left Turkey at the mercy of political chaos, even though Turkey is a regional player, exists on a recognizable international front with a resistant and substantial economy. Bleiweis (2010) reports the British PM Cameron expressing his viewpoint on Turkish accession to the EU by stating that he will remain the Turks’ ‘strongest possible advocate for EU membership.’ The Belgian government is also reported to have supported Cameron’s positive stance for making Turkey’s accession a reality. Moreover, in contrast to Germany’s support to France’s stance on not allowing Turkey accession, in January 2010 Germany’s foreign minister Westerwelle stood by Turkey urging them to carry on, while some in the German government did not quite agree with him on this. Even though Westerwelle considers Turkey to be a ‘strategically important partner’, however he supposes that Turkey is ‘not ready’ yet for a full membership, and neither is EU prepared much for Turkey. Westerwell’s points have gained recognition in the media, even more than Cameron’s, because the former played his much needed message with realistic European politics, stating that Turkey has yet to work harder on its judicial reforms as well as guarantee minority rights in order to successfully qualify for EU membership. Methodology For this paper, a complete qualitative data collection method will be employed due to the nature of research objectives that weaken the need for quantitative findings, evaluations and analysis. The purpose of this research requires a combination of understanding of the relevant theory and previous research with the results of empirical research that this paper tends to make. Hence our data will require: an in-depth literature review on the major stances presented by different authors, analysts, foreign ministers of the EU and Turkey, and stakeholders in this respective accession possibility; and interactive interviews and focus group sessions from credible respondents and sources that will have substantive opinions. In turn, the research strategy that we will adopt would be survey that will entail the use of open ended questionnaires to be distributed amongst our neighborhood in [the X vicinity]; interactive interviews with colleagues and seniors from our department; focus groups of our institution’s and [X’s college] professors from the Social Sciences department and/or of people who are driven by our research agenda and willing to discuss various implications regarding our research questions; as well as observation from various news reports both in print and electronic media. Collecting and analyzing all this unstructured data will be daunting and time consuming. With such volumes of information and extracting meaning out of them certain manual methods of data analysis might be used. Data analysis methods to be employed for this qualitative research are: - Analytic Induction: Through this method we will conduct observation of our multiple focus group sessions; we will develop a hypothetical statement of our observations from one focus group and then repeat it in our next focus group(s) to see whether or not the hypotheses match and if there is any need to revise it. - Content Analysis: This method will be used to analyze literature, documents, and various speeches and news reports to evaluate the emerging themes and implicit discussions and how they relate to each other, or we could also follow overt emphasis to look at the matter from surface level (Weber, 1990). We will keep it theory-driven to achieve validity and reliability. The resulting analysis from the aforementioned analyses’ approach will be concocted and thrown into our third most important data analysis method: - Concept Mapping: For this method to work, first we will draw a picture of all the ideas related to our primary research question [Should Turkey join EU?] and then determine how the ideas are related by manually constructing a map with each idea in a separate box and lines adjoining the interrelated ideas ‘and labeling them with connecting terms [like results from, leading to, is a part of etc.]’ (Jackson & Trochim, 2002, p. 312) Ethical Issues and Limitations: Since this research is purely qualitative, there are several ethical issues to be encountered. First off there is plagiarism issue, which will be avoided to the maximum. Secondly, fabrication of data is a critical issue, which is sometimes practiced in case of lack of meaningful findings that could deliberately lead the research toward the stated hypothesis. Then there are problems associated with faulty data-gathering methods that occur due to different protocols; replication of data which may occur due to unsafe data storage procedure. Data must be stored safely and recorded correctly so that it is available to be verified later. There is a more critical issue which could even be charged as plagiarism in most cases, and that is misleading authorship. Written content could be entirely paraphrased but it is still imperative to acknowledge the source, failing to do so will lead to this crucial ethical issue. Limitations of this research may include the lack of adequate literature available on our research topic; the unavailability of the respondents to participate in the survey and focus groups; and time constraint which may limit our in-depth analysis. References BBC News, 2004. Should Turkey join the EU? Accessed Nov. 10 from: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/talking_point/3683204.stm Bleiweis, S. 2010. Should Turkey join the EU – The view from Europe, Atlantic Council, Accessed Nov. 10 from: http://acus.org/new_atlanticist/should-turkey-join-eu-view-europe Erdogen, R. T. 2011. The Robust Man of Europe, In Newsweek Magazine, Accessed Nov. 11 from: http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2011/01/17/the-robust-man-of-europe.html Jackson, K. M. Trochim, W. M. K. 2002. Concept Mapping as an Alternative Approach for the Analysis of Open-ended Survey Responses, Organizational Research Methods, Vol. 5 No. 4 p. 312 Rouleau, E. 2000. Turkey’s Dream of Democracy, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 79 No. 6 Weber, R. P. 1990. Basic Content Analysis, Newbury Park, Cal: Sage. Van Herpen, M. H. 2004. Should Turkey join the EU? – The Anti-Turkish stance of the French UMP and German CDU/CSU, The Cicero Foundation, Accessed November 10 from: http://www.cicerofoundation.org/lectures/vanherpen_may04.html Vassiliou, G. 2006. Why Turkey should join the EU, Europe’s World, Accessed Nov. 10 from: http://www.europesworld.org/NewEnglish/Home_old/Article/tabid/191/ArticleType/articleview/ArticleID/20782/language/en-US/Default.aspx Read More