Communicative Action Theory and Turkey's Membership to the EU.

Turkey's relations with the European Union date back to 1959 when Turkey made its application for an associatin with the then EEC. The relations have passed through verious stages, periods of suspension, aloofness, crisis and reinvigoration. The 1999 Helsinki European Council marked a turning point in that Turkey was güven the perspective of candidacy to the EU. Turkey went through a comprehensive and accelerated legal reform process to meet the political Copenhagen criteria and started negotiations for accession as of 3 October 2005. The negotiations have been suspended in 8 chapters of the acquis due to Turkey's non-recognition of Cyprus and not widening the customs union to include that new member state. Recently, the optimistic mood in the relations gave way to even a graver condition with the change leadership in two of the fundamental states of the EU, Germany and France, and the repugnance of the new leaders to Turkey's membership prospects. The paper aims to discuss the question of the recent turn in Turkey-EU relations by analyzing the rhetoric on both sides on such issues as Turkey's eligibility for EU membership, its Europeanness and the Copenhagen criteria. The paper will study the arguments developed both in Turkey and the EU, and try to assess the role of the speech acts involved in the process of defining Turkey's status in and vis-a-vis Europe and the EU and the logic of appropriateness that is at work in the process of interaction. Overall, the paper will aim at reaching a conclusion on the applicability of the theory of communicative action to Turkey-EU relations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]