Introduction

It has been fifty years since Turkey applied for associate membership of the European Economic Community (EEC) on 31 July 1959.1 As of 2009, Turkey is still not a member of the – now – European Union (EU), and by even the most optimistic estimates, it cannot become a member before 2014.2 Being the next applicant after Greece – who lodged its application to the EEC only a few weeks before Turkey, but who became a member in 1981 – Turkey’s long stay in the waiting room deserves closer examination. It is true that decades are like days in the lives of countries. It is also true that admission to a family of states may take a long time. For instance, among the states of the United States it took 40 years for Arizona, and 62 years for New Mexico to achieve their statehood status.3 In the case of the EU, the ‘average waiting time’ is around 9 or 10 years, whilst Turkey will have waited 55 or 27 years if it manages to become a full member in 20144 (see Table 1.1.)

This considerably long waiting time of Turkey has a few important connotations:

Since the coming into force of the Ankara Agreement in 1964, Turkey-EU relations have followed a certain schedule: the schedule that was put forward by the Agreement itself. Accordingly, the relations would go through three stages (Art. 2 of the Agreement): (i) a preparatory stage, (ii) a transitory stage, and (iii) a final stage. The final stage would possibly culminate with Turkey’s full membership (Art. 28).