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constitutional and legal system which would help Turkey to improve the democracy in its country like the democracy of Europe.
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4. EUs Response T oward Turkey’s Application for EU Membership
Status Before PM Erdogan Era
Turkey had started the struggle to pursue membership status of EU since 55 years ago, but the response of EU toward this accession was considered very slow
compared to the accession proses of other countries. This phenomenon was actually seemed quite unfair for Turkey as his process of accession is the longest
process ever experienced by the candidate of full member of EU. The postponement of EU toward Turkey‟s accession was based on several factors.
Among them are: economy, government system, Turkish Culture, and Its problem with Greece. And here are the details:
1. Economic
Economic factor is one of the EU‟s considerations to include Turkey into full membership of the European Union. Turkey had once unstable economy in
the early time of applying the full membership of EU. Turkish economy has not been able to overcome its traditional problem of endemic instability and recurrent
crisis. The performance of the economy in that year was characterized by a low- growth, high-inflation equilibrium.
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By the time, the GNI of Turkey was still far below the European Union‟s, which was 1730 USD in 1987 compare to the EU
65
Ilhan Ozturk and Kamil Sertoglu , “Turkey and European Union Relations: Concept of Customs Union”. p: 7.
66
Ali Carkoglu and Barry Rubin, Turkey and the European Union: Domestic Politics, Economic Integration and International Dynamics
, Frank Cass and Comoany Limited, Great Britain, 2003, p: 16
32
9667 USD in 1987.
67
In this period also, Turkey was a country that once was still highly depending its economy on the agriculture sector and was still not much
projecting the development of the industrial sector, in addition, 43 of the Turkish population are poor farmers.
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These things showed that the Turkish economy at this time was at the low level and still left behind compared to
European Union countries. It was true that EU would help in stabilizing the economy of its member states, but there were the standards that were determined
by the European Union for the candidate countries to be accepted as a permanent member of European Union, those standards are: at the macro level, the deficit of
candidate‟s government must not exceed 3 from the GDP. Besides, the government debt also should not exceed 60 from the GDP, while the average
nominal long-term interest rates that were raised by candidate states should not exceed 2 of the average interest rate.
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Those standards have to be fulfilled by all candidate countries so that the EU itself would not feel very hard to help the
member countries to stabilize their economy and so that the economic integration in EU itself would always be kept in balance. Then the economic situation was
being one of the reason behind the postponement of Turkish accession in this period.
2 . The Government System
There was nothing wrong with the Turkish government system, because Turkey adopted a democratic system for its government after founding of the
secular Turkish state, but something wrong according to EU about Turkey here
67
Index Mundi,
European Union-GNI
per capita
, online
database, accessed
from: www.indexmundi.comfacteuropean-uniongni-per-capita
, 552014
68
Atika puspita, Recep Tayyib Erdogan: Turki, Islam, dan Uni Eropa, Heptacentrum Press, p: 35
69
Ibid, p: 30
33
was the implementation of democracy itself. Generally, democracy has meaning of freedom which means that all elements of state and society have a voice in
policy making, of course the democracy itself has been distinguished with the term from the people, by the people, for the people. But what happened in the
government of Turkey can be said quite far from the real implementation of democracy. Turkey was still dominated by a repressive military rule, the role of
the military was very dominating and authoritarian in policy making in Turkey, this was a legacy of Mustafa Kemal At-
Taturk‟s secular system. In the other side, although Turkey declared itself as a democratic country, there were still
happening a lot of human rights violations in Turkey, the biggest example was about the conflict with the Kurds.
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So from these facts the EU saw that Turkey was not ready to join the European Union which notably uphold the democracy.
3 . Turkish Demography and Culture
Another major consideration of EU to include Turkey as a member was Turkeys geographical location. According to the European Union, Turkey was
not part of them geographically, it was seen from the Turkish culture that was very different with EU. In addition, Turkey with very huge population that was
the second-largest population after Germany in Europe with Muslim majority was also being a strong reason of EU to suspend the membership of Turkey. The
demographic factor has been certainly worrying the EU about the impact brought by Turkey to the EU Parliaments decision if Turkey were a permanent member of
EU, because the EU parliament‟s voice is determined by the vote of European
70
Ziya Onis, Turkey, Europe, and Paradoxes of Indentity, p: 5
34
Union people itself,
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in the other words the EU worry that Turkey would bring the circulation of EU politics into the different directions because of the Muslim
majority of Turkey. Not only the EU elite that tried to reject the full membership of Turkey, but
the majority of the EU people were also reluctant to approve the accession of Turkey. The number of European society that rejected Turkish membership in the
EU was 58 in 1997 and this number continued to increase every year until the EU officially announced that Turkey was an official candidate of the EU in 1999.
The number of European people who still refuse at that time was still 61.
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The number was certainly had a big influence in the European Councils decision in
deciding the Turkish membership in the European Union.
4. Turkish Problem with Cyprus
