Turkey and the European Union. A candidate different from the others. Political Aspects

In December 2002 the EU Member States announced that if by December 2004 Turkey would meet the criteria set by Copenhagen European Council, accession negotiations would start “without delay”. This decision comes forty after the pre-accension agreement – the association agreement signed in Ankara in 1963 – and almost twenty years after the official request for accession, presented by Turkey in 1987. Although the Copenhagen criteria set requisites to be met by each candidate Country both on an economic and political level, in the case of Turkey the political aspects prevailed. In fact, given its size, comparable to Germany’s, and its cultural roots, the perspective of an enlargement to Turkey opened, since the beginning, a wide debate on the future identity of the European union, still in fieri. This paper focuses on the two major issues related to the political criteria and considered by European Commission as a condition sine qua non for the opening of the negotiations: the respect of human rights and fundamental freedoms in Turkey and the resolution of Cyprus problem. These issues are put in their historical background in order to give a more comprehensive overview of the present situation, through the analysis on the EU and International NGOs’ official documents and reports.