Explaining European Ambivalence Towards Turkish Membership in the European Union

The European Union has undergone a great expansion in the past decade, opening its doors to twelve fellow European countries with an accelerated accession process. On the outskirts of this encompassing enlargement process remains Turkey, a country that has attempted to achieve close ties with the European Union in hopes of becoming a committed member state in the European Union. Previous literature on Turkish accession in the European Union has tried to elucidate why Europeans are consistently opposed to Turkish membership in the European Union. This article seeks to explain European attitudes towards Turkey's accession into the European Union through identity and affinity based predictors. The findings in this study show the greatest significance among identity predictors such as European Union citizen support for immigrants, support for Muslims, and support for the European Union, which leads greater credence to in-group theories of identity. Affinity based predictors proved to not be as enduring as identity-based theories, with the exception of the variable for distance. The results from this study highlight the difficulties that Turks may encounter as Turkey continues to vie for membership in the European Union.