Turkey's Road to a Potential EU Membership : A Lengthy and Arduous Journey

Sammanfattning: The European Union have continued to grow since its inception with more and more nations becoming member states. In 2016 that changed, when, for the first time, a member state decided to leave, and the EU might explore its enlargement strategy to fill the void left by the United Kingdom. Turkey is a potential addition to the EU, one that could provide a valuable ally from both a monetary and a security perspective. However, there are some doubts regarding democracy in the country, which is one of the cornerstones of the EU. This paper is a qualitative case study that examines Turkish democracy in the period of 2011-2021, and its alignment with the EU accession criteria. Robert Dahl’s famous definition of democracy will be used as the theoretical framework of the study, and the European Commission’s own reports on Turkey’s progress on the EU accession criteria will be the material used for the analysis. The main conclusion of the study is that Turkish democracy is in sharp decline, and fundamental freedoms are regressing in the country. The negotiations have stalled in the wake of the coup attempt in 2016, and restrictive and anti-democratic measures introduced by the government has brought Turkey further away from having a realistic chance of becoming a member state. Future research could focus on other aspects of the Turkey-EU accession talks, for example the economic criteria.