ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the impact of European Union (EU)-Turkey relations on Turkish environmental policy with special emphasis on the sustainable development as well as Turkey's position to international environmental regimes. Attempts to integrate the idea of sustainable development into policy-making particularly sped up after the 1992 UNCED in Rio. However, as a member of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) and a candidate country for EU membership, Turkey faces many difficulties to establish this position at international level. The experiences of both the Southern Europe and the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) accessions clearly demonstrate that environment matters for the EU enlargement. EU-Turkey relations have started to influence Turkish environmental policy particularly by the establishment of the Customs Union in 1995. Regional Environmental Centre (REC) Turkey runs grant programmes for environmental non-governmental organizations (NGO) and initiates certain platforms and seminars to increase the stakeholder participation.
