Between Europeanization and transactionalism :|the EU Turkey statement and its impact on EU-Turkey relations

Abstract

The main goal of this study is to understand the nature of the EU Turkey statement, how it regulates migratory as well as non-migratory areas of cooperation between the European Union and Turkey, and how the statement shapes overall EU-Turkey relations nowadays. One of the main reasons for the conclusion of the EU Turkey statement is the growing externalization as well as the increased securitization of the EU’s migration policies. In this context, the thesis first will analyze the development of the European Union’s migration policies and its tools. After this, the thesis will show that, unlike the EU, the most important reason for the conclusion of the EU Turkey statement for Turkey was not the country’s evolving migration policy, but a rational strategy for migratory and non-migratory areas of cooperation, in the context of stalled accession negotiations. After this overview, the statement will be assessed and analyzed within the scope of its successes and failures. This thesis argues that the EU Turkey statement, while it was initially conceived as a migration tool, it has also accelerated a policy shift from a norms-based approach to a transactional one, increased the supremacy of inter governmentalism over supranationalism in framing EU-Turkey relations, and de facto replaced existing cooperation frameworks between the EU and Turkey.