EXPECTING THE SAME RESULTS FROM DISSIMILAR LEGAL TEXTS: AN ASSESSMENT OF ASSOCIATION AGREEMENTS OF TÜRKİYE AND GREECE

Abstract

In this article, the Association Agreements of Greece, which signed the first association agreement with the European Economic Community (EEC), and then Türkiye, which signed a similar agreement, were compared. It has been argued for a long time that the Athens and Ankara Agreements concluded by the EEC at that time were alike agreements, and that the Ankara Agreement was even “inspired” by the Athens Agreement. This article tries to reveal that although the aims and purposes of these Agreements are similar, they diverge considerably when examined closely both in spirit and wording. It is understood that the protection shown and the political support given to Greece played an important role in the major difference in their functioning and speed. The argument of the article is that the Athens Agreement was prepared from the very beginning by the EEC to bring Greece to full membership as quickly as possible. Indeed, thanks to this agreement, Greece entered the customs union with the EEC in 1968 and became a full member of the Union in 1981. The Ankara Agreement with Türkiye, on the other hand, appears to be a derivative agreement very close to the Athens Agreement at first glance, but it is an agreement with different important clauses and a “deliberately” weakened regulative power. As a result, the Ankara Agreement, which is still in force and forms the legal basis of the relations of Türkiye with the EU, neither at the time it was signed nor today has the proper content to carry Türkiye into full membership. It is not meaningful in this context to expect equal results from legal texts that differ in this way. This paper attempts to prove this assertion.