Turkey and Non-Membership of the European Union: Issues, Prospects, and Challenges

Abstract

This paper on "Turkey and Non-membership of the European Union" explores the issues, prospects, and challenges that seem intractable in Turkey's accession to European Union (EU). The paper adopted secondary sources (books, journal articles, internet materials, dailies, monographs, etc.) for data collection. The findings were analyzed using content analysis while anchoring on the integration theory, which served as its theoretical framework of analysis. It was discovered that religion and cultural identity, weak economy, demographic nature, and other reasons constitute the principal challenges impeding Turkey's membership application into the EU. The paper also revealed that Turkey is a member of NATO and its geographical location and military strength appears to favour NATO's interest in the Middle East. Nevertheless, her illegal occupation of Northern Cyprus has strongly complicated negotiations for her membership in the EU. Findings revealed further that the uncontrollable and controversial issues had negatively impacted Turkey and the European Union in areas like political, security, economic, social, and humanitarian needs of the people. Therefore, this study regrettably observed that the relationship between Turkey and the EU appears to remain a distant prospect in the unknown future. This is why the paper recommends that the EU should adopt the modernisation of Ankara's agreement and a gradual integration model as a mechanism to enhance a better working relationship with Turkey even if both parties later fail to marry together.