Europeanization of foreign policy of a candidate country : an evaluation of Turkey's policy towards Cyprus (2002-2012)

Abstract

This thesis has analyzed the dynamics, conditions and determinants of the EU’s transformative impact on a candidate state’s foreign policy. Concerned with the question of how the process of EU accession shapes candidate states’ policies, this case study questions how the machinery of Europeanization, interacting with the national factors and context, works in the transformation of Turkey’s policy towards Cyprus. Inspired by the premises of the studies on Accession Europeanization, the study is designed to understand the impact of the EU external pressures in shaping Turkey’s Cyprus policy between 2002 and 2012. In the light of the time processing analysis, the study suggests that the transformative impact of the EU in Ankara’s approach towards the Cyprus issue in the long-run is best explained by the actorcentered “external incentives model”. In this sense the study concludes that domestic actors’ perception of the EU membership process and the ways in which EU adaptation pressures intervenes in the domestic institutional equilibrium determine EU’s transformative power.