Why Is It So Difficult to Say ?No? to Turkey?: A Path Dependent Approach to EU Enlargement.

As skepticism concerning Turkey-s EU membership is deepening among both the publics and elites, the odds that have marked EU-Turkey relations for decades are becoming more insurmountable. Does the EU have a choice to say "no" to Turkey? I claim that the choice to say "no" to Turkey is constrained by historical and institutional forces. A series of policy choices that the EC/U made especially during the Cold War era concerning Turkey and its ultimate membership, which was part of a broader effort to integrate Turkey into the West European political and economic systems, has embedded Turkey in European integration. Because of Turkey?s well-established involvement into the institutional, political and economic life of the EU, the EU has trouble to say ?no? to Turkey. As such, this project presents a further extention of historical institutional approach in the EU literature. While the existing applications examine the historical and institutional forces in the vertical deepening of European integration (Pierson, 1996), historical and institutional forces driving the horizental extention or enlargement of integration remained relatively neglected. This project demonstrates that like in its vertical deepening, EU integration is constrained in its horizental extention by the policy choices made in the past, the choices that were often made in response to immediate concerns. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]