Description
Turkey’s EU accession negotiations remain in a state of coma and their full-fledged revival appear to be considerably unlikely in view of continuing backsliding in Turkey’s alignment with the EU’s constitutive norms, on the one hand, and the upsurge of Euroskeptic and populist dynamics in EU member states, on the other. Lately, severe divergences between both parties regarding foreign and security policy orientations, as reflected in the rise of ‘Europe’s next crisis’ in the Eastern Mediterranean even prompted the spillover of hostile relations to other issue areas driven by mutual strategic interdependencies. Growing ambivalences and severe changes in the macro-political features of EU-Turkey relations call into question the evolution of the studies on EU-Turkey relations over time. This paper aims to reveal the way EU-Turkey relations have been studied in different periods featuring distinct milestones and map the shifts and continuities in EU-Turkey studies. The paper offers a qualitative and quantitative content analysis of the publications on EU-Turkey relations from 1996 to 2020 in a priori selected 21 national and international SSCI journals based on their theoretical and conceptual perspectives, methodological approaches and thematic /policy-specific focuses.
