Europeanization of the Aegean Dispute: An Analysis of Turkish Political Elite Discourse.

This paper examines how the Aegean dispute which has been one of the contentious issues between Turkey and Greece for more than three decades has been Europeanized on the Turkish side. This Europeanization process started, in particular, with Turkey's candidacy to the European Union granted at the Helsinki Summit of 1999. In this article, the extent of the Europeanization of the Aegean dispute is measured by making references to the security and foreign policy discourses in Turkey. The change in the Turkish elite's discourses, or more concretely, the shift from the confrontational to cooperative discourses, is identified in the speeches delivered by the political leaders from the Turkish side. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]