Turkey's EU Membership Process in the Aftermath of the Gezi Protests
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2025
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Taylor and Francis
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The Gezi Park protests represent an unprecedented wave of social resistance in the history of the modern Turkish Republic. It would not be an exaggeration to argue that Gezi had repercussions not only for Turkey’s domestic politics but also for foreign relations, in particular, relations with the EU. This chapter discusses Gezi’s implications for Turkey’s EU accession process. The EU has interpreted the violations of political freedoms surrounding Gezi as signalling Turkey’s shift away from Europe’s liberal democratic norms. Indeed, the perceived ‘normative distance’ between Turkey and the EU over fundamental democratic values made apparent by Gezi led the EU to postpone the opening of the next membership negotiation chapter with Turkey (Chapter 22) until after the publication of the European Commission’s 2013 Progress Report in October 2013. Although the chapter was opened in November 2013, this came amid the EU’s increased democratising pressure on Turkey as well as its declared intention to use the opening of individual negotiation chapters as an instrument for anchoring the country’s further democratisation
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267
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281
