The EU and Turkey: political machinations in a three-level game

Abstract

The possible commencement of negotiations on Turkey’s membership of the European Union has, towards the end of 2004, charged to the top of the European political agenda. This is an intensely contested issue, comprising many sub-themes and multiple tangents. I adopt the conception of a three level game1 to examine arguments, interests and influences circulating and interconnected to the core question of potential Turkish EU membership. This extends Robert Putnam’s ‘Two-Level Game’,2 represented here as activity within individual EU member-states (domestic level) and between EU and other states (international level), to include activity among EU states, institutions and other European actors (European level). The paper discusses economic, cultural, and security-strategic considerations, all of which are politicised by advocates and opponents alike.