THE MIGRANT CRISIS EFFECTS ON THE RELATION BETWEEN TURKEY AND THE EU

Abstract

As far as the relation between EU and Turkey is concerned, they have a long past. Turkey’s desire to join the EU has stretch for more than 40 years as negotiations began and it still continues till this day. Turkey is a founding member of the United Nations (1945), a member of NATO (1952), the Council of Europe (1949), the OECD (1960) and the OSCE (1973) and was an associate member of the Western European Union (1992). On the 31st July 1959, Turkey made its first application to join the newly‐established organisation. The Ankara Agreement, signed on the 12th September 1963 started relation between Turkey and the EU. The aim of the Ankara Agreement, as stated in Article 2, was to promote the continuous and balanced strengthening of trade and economic relations between the parties. After the Customs Union’s decision, Turkey‐EU relation entered in a totally new dimension as it was one of the most important steps for Turkey’s EU integration objective. Unfortunately, the EU has highlighted many negative reasons objecting to the joining, such as human rights’ problems, immigration problems and also the Kurdish problem in Turkey. Recently, on the 100th anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, the EU passed a nonbinding agreement asking Turkey to recognize the Armenian Genocide. This was also followed by some EU Member States, like Germany and Austria, recognizing the genocide. This has not gone well with Turkey and the diplomatic ties have soured.