In 2005 Turkish Foreign minister stated “I believe that Turkey will become a full member of the EU in the end. Then those who have some hesitations about Turkey will have totally different views”.

In fact, “Turkey’s orientation towards the institutions of the West dates from the creation of the Turkish Republic in 1923. Since then, commitments to Westernization and modernization have been central themes of Turkey’s state ideology”.Indeed, Turkish political elite considers that accession to the EU is a “symbol for the successful completion of the long‐term Ataturk revolution”

On the other hand, from the European perspective and according to the last European progress report; Turkey has significant deficiencies from a political, economic and even institutional perspective. And so, Turkey’s membership might not be very well perceived from the European angle.

In fact, even thought significant political and economic changes were made, Turkish accession to the EU is still at a “slow pace”. Some consider that this is due to the fact that turkey’s membership will push the European borders to “some troubled region”, and as a consequence the EU will “acquire direct contact with region of instability”.

And so, if for some, “Turkey will weaken the EU because not only it does not belong to the EU geographically and identically but also because it has many structural and institutional weaknesses” for others “a literate and qualified Turkish population will make a positive impact on the EU” .

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Therefore, the question here will be whether the Turkish membership will strengthen or weaken the European Union. And my thesis is that Turkey’s membership could affect not only the nature but also the functioning of the EU.

In order to answer this question, focuses will be made on the liberal intergovernmentalism theory. In fact this theory considers that “members will calculate the advantages of enlargement in terms of the cost and benefits of socioeconomics interdependence of various types”. And so, liberal intergovernmentalism seeks to analyze how can we “rescue and adapt the nation states mainly by analyzing state preferences not only in economical but also in geopolitical and ideological field”.

Hence to achieve this ‘Chapter I’ will approach how Turkey’s membership will strengthen the European Union ‘Chapter II’ will analyze how Turkey can weaken the EU and finally ‘Chapter III’ will be a synthesis.

Main part

“The European Union has never been an exclusive club. From the beginning of the integration process, fellow European countries were welcome to apply for membership. However, as the Union was deepening its integration and growing in size, the question of where and when to stop the enlargement became controversial”.

In fact, with Turkey’s possibility to join the EU many debates seems to be emerging. Therefore, it seems necessary to the EU to “a democratic governance system to ensure that a Union of 28 or 30 or more countries can function effectively – not become a recipe for stagnation or even implosion.

For the accession to be possible Turkey has also to maintain its progress in both economic and political because “regression would be fatal to its goal of EU membership”.

Turkey Weakening the EU

Many European leaders have argued that the European identity will be lost if Turkey joined the European Union. For instance, former German Chancellor Helmut Kohl once said that a Muslim country like Turkey does not belong in Europe. In addition, the former President of France, Valéry Giscard d’Estaing stated in an interview in Le Monde in 2002 that “a future inclusion of Turkey in the Union would be the end of Europe since Turkey is not a European country.”

In fact, from the union’s perspective the accession of a country is “rational” if it provides security to the union and raises the economical benefit. However since Turkey has a small economy and has limited trade volume, many assume that it will have “marginal effect on growth in the current EU”. As the numbers that were published concerning this subject shows Turkey is considered to have the poorest income in the region. And so, “Turkish accession (…) would increase regional economic disparities in the enlarged EU by an estimated 9%, representing a major challenge for cohesion policy”.

In addition to that, Turkey’s demography is also considered as a burden to the EU. In fact, Turkey’s population estimated at 73 million is considered one of the la