Turkey's Political Reforms and the Impact of the European Union

The European Union has played the most important role in stimulating political change in post-World War II Europe. Turkey had to become more democratic in order to attain candidacy for EU membership in the second half of the 1990s, and when it became a candidate, it had to adopt sweeping political reforms in order to fulfil the EU's accession criteria so that accession negotiations could begin. Thus, this article proposes that Turkey's EU candidacy since 1999 has stimulated Turkish political and legal reforms and intensified the Europeanization process in Turkey. The article analyzes the political reforms in Turkey in the light of EU membership and argues that Turkey's Europeanization is greatly motivated by the EU.