Constantine Arvanitopoulos (Ed.)
Berlin Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag, 2009, ISBN: 978-3-540-88196-4, 215 pp., £72.00(hb.)
Turkey’s accession to the European Union (EU) has probably been the mostextraordinary case in the EU history. The reason why it is such an extraordinarycase is because Turkey’s European integration is related not just to the basis of theCopenhagen membership criteria but also to the ideational and religious componentsof the Union. That’s why there needs to be a lot of research done in terms of cultural,ideological, political and economical aspects of the EU integration.
Fortunately, there has been a visible increase in the number of such studies recently.Turkey’s Accession to the European Union: An Unusual Candidacy is a splendidcombination of 17 research papers published under the editorship of ConstantineArvanitopoulos, Professor of International Relations at Panteion University (Athens)and the Director of the Constantinos Karamanlis Institute for Democracy, seekingto provide a comprehensive examination of political, security and socio-economicaldimensions of Turkey’s membership process.
The papers are full of insight with informative and contemporary debate from variousscholars and researchers of different national backgrounds in order to make a bettercontribution to the ongoing public discussion of Turkey’s accession. As ConstantineArvanitopoulos and Nikolaos Tzifakis state in the introduction part, the book is dividedinto three parts. While the first part (Chapters 1-6) discusses the institutional aspects ofthe EU such as EU enlargement, the fear of Turkey’s integration from the perspectivesof Europeans and Turks, the second part (Chapters 7-12) tries to come to grip thesecurity implementations of Turkey’s accession to European structures. Finally, the lastchapter (Chapters 13-17) raises current socio-economic issues emphasising identity,religion, culture and political economy.
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* Published in the First Issue of Journal of Global Analysis (JGA).