ABSTRACT
First, the higher the domestic power costs were, the less likely it was that compliance occurred. High domestic power costs remained the central obstacle to compliance: in the Turkish case; all reforms more or less stalled until 2002 – in the costly military issue even until 2004. The first changes were therefore made in so-called low cost areas (death penalty) or in areas in which domestic costs had considerably decreased (minority rights) because of the dissolution of PKK terrorism or the ending of Ecevit’s government. The instrumentality of reform was all-pervasive: the death penalty was not abolished because of high resonance (i.e. its inhumanity), but in order to get rid of a symbolically important (but low cost) obstacle to EU accession. What is more, as long as domestic power costs were very high, compliance did not progress at any rate. Even when the highly resonating AKP made it into government, compliance with the EU’s military standards or the peaceful borders norm (Cyprus) did not change until the new political elite encountered more favourable domestic circumstances.
