Europeanization of Turkey and the Long Way to EU Membership

For a few decades, Europe watches Turkey evolution in a matter of politics, policy, policies, human rights and so on. Everything begins in 1959 when Turkey applies to associate membership to the European Economic Community. But unfortunately for Turkey, the accession to the Community was not to accomplish. In time, the European Economic Community became the European Union. The organization pass through the enlargement process multiple times that today it is the Union of the 28 countries, but still without Turkey as a member. After all this time, a question is raised: what drags Turkey from achieving the membership status in all this time? In this paper, we try to answer the above question through the Europeanization spectrum.

Membership, Associate Membership and Pre-accession Arrangements of CERN, ESO, ESA, and EUMETSAT

Although there is abundant literature on membership of international organizations such as the United Nations, the European Union or the WTO, membership issues concerning European scientific organizations are rarely looked upon. This can be explained by the focus of the legal community on political and economic organizations. The introduction of the article clarifies why separate European scientific organizations were needed and how the scientific community created European cooperation on a sectoral basis, sometimes aided by US scientists. The scientific organizations maintained themselves as independent organizations notwithstanding the absorptive capacity demonstrated by the dynamics of the European Union. The article argues that the four European scientific organizations developed a similar but not identical legal practice regarding admission of new member states and membership obligations. CERN and ESA are the two conceptual models for the development of legal solutions to membership questions which contributes to the formation of a similar law pattern of European scientific organizations. Treaty amendment has been avoided and legal practice is developed by the plenary organ, the Council. Legal similarities offer the advantage to states, as members of the four scientific organizations, to understand better the particular nature of scientific organizations and their operations. The article pays attention to recent expansion of membership as a complex issue which reinforced the adoption of similar legal solutions and the introduction of a pre-accession policy with increased membership conditionality.