Knocking on the European Door? Normative Power Europe and the Turkish EU Accession

Abstract: This thesis deals with the discussions on the ‘Normative Power Europe’ thesis, EU enlargement, conditionality and compliance, and the extent to which rational and ideational forces are mutually exclusive in this context. Through a qualitative case study of Turkey, it will investigate to what extent the EU can be seen as possessing and exercising normative power through its enlargement policy. The findings, based on fieldwork conducted in Istanbul during April 2013, suggest that rather than being mutually exclusive, rational and normative processes occur simultaneously and independently, sometimes even reinforcing each other.