European Borderlands: External Differentiated Integration as a Model for Turkey

Turkey remains at least on paper part and parcel of the EU enlargement process. However, its membership prospects are highly uncertain. Given the sheer size of its economy and its geographic location, irrespective of its accession to the EU, Turkey is a significant partner for the EU. This is why, it is important to conceptualize multiple policy areas that would anchor Turkey into EU institutions and policies. One possible mode for such conceptualization could take the form of external differentiated integration. While differentiated integration is essentially used to assess the nature and pace of integration among the EU members, it is possible to evaluate EU’s external relations with its neighbours through a similar lenses. External differentiated integration for a non-EU member such as Turkey might involve temporal alignment to the EU policies and territorial based inclusions- such as its customs union or visa rules for third parties, and policy opt-ins such as the adoption of EU rules in electricity, telecommunications and education. Turkey already has a high degree of functional cooperation with the EU in multiple forms of economic, political, justice and home affairs, energy, environmental cooperation. The Turkish adoption of EU rules and its integration in multiple technical areas indicate the scope of integration that transcends the EU’s own borders. This is also how the EU integration impacts a territorial space, much broader than the sheer territory of the EU member states. Turkey as a case study of external differentiated integration illustrates the extent to which EU rules are adopted beyond the EU borders by non-EU members, and form the basis of functional cooperation in multiple policy areas. These policy areas range from economic integration, cooperation on security and defense policies, Justice and home affairs, counterterrorism dialogue, cooperation on immigration issues and energy related areas to name a few.