ABSTRACT
EU-Turkey relations date back to the early stages of the European project. Turkey’s belonging to Europe continues to be contested, however, and the country was only officially recognized as a candidate for membership in 1999. With the grand-scale enlargement of May 2004, the pressure on the EU to respond to Turkey’s request for a date for opening accession negotiations increased. In October that year, the European Commission (2004) announced that Turkey sufficiently fulfilled the Copenhagen political criteria and recommended that negotiations with Ankara be opened. Based on the decision taken by the Brussels European Council (2004a), the member states started negotiations with Turkey on its accession to the EU on 3 October 2005 (Council of the European Union 2006).
