A fragile relationship: Turkey and the European Union moving beyond membership with external differentiated integration

Official URL: https://dx.doi.org/10.1080/01402382.2024.2442870

Turkey’s relations with the European Union depend on extensive legal instruments, drivers of interdependence and voluntary compliance to the EU rules. With an Association Agreement dating back to 1963 and accession negotiations opened in 2005, there is a high degree of asymmetric interdependence between Turkey and the EU. This article examines Turkish-EU relations from the angle of external differentiated integration (EDI). Accordingly, this article assesses the feasibility of the current state of Turkey’s fragile relations with the EU as a functional model of external differentiated integration. Turkish EDI provides an innovative framework for keeping Turkey anchored to the European order, for which neither full membership nor a complete break up seems plausible. To assess shades of non-membership for Turkey, the article relies on an extensive keyword-based assessment of EU-Lex documents, trade statistics and a co-occurrence network analysis for the EU’s 2012 and 2022 Progress Reports on Turkey. The findings shed light on the complexities of the EU’s EDI with non-members.