Publication

This paper argues that the stagnation of Turkish democracy goes hand in hand with the impasse in EU-Turkey relations. A combination of domestic factors with a loss of credibility of EU conditionality led to a situation in which political reform is substantially stalled and in cases where it is realized, it is mostly conducted to serve the interests of the ruling political elite and with no real reference to the EU. The virtuous cycle of reform that characterized the 1999-2005 period has been replaced by a vicious cycle in which lack of effective conditionality feeds into political stagnation which in turn moves Turkey and the EU further away from one another.