Editorial: New Perspectives on Turkey-EU Relations

摘要

This special thematic issue of the Journal of Contemporary European Studies deals with a familiar topic-Turkey-EU relations-but approaches it in a variety of different ways. The underlying idea is that we need to look at Turkey and the EU afresh in order to appreciate the richness and complexity of a relationship which is now more than fifty years old (a fact alone that suggests no ordinary relationship) and is still not close to reaching fulfilment (Cakir, 2011). To this end, the articles collected here challenge conventional attempts to understand Turkey-EU relations. They reveal that EU integration studies has been rather poor at developing a global context (or even demonstrating a global awareness). More surprising perhaps integration studies has also struggled to give sufficient weight to the potential of Turkey's domestic politics to shape EU enlargement. Taken together, the seven articles contained in this issue attempt to correct these imbalances by offering both a global context and new perspectives on the drivers of domestic politics.