An important question raised by many political scientists is the impact of the EU enlargement policy on the political transformation (democratic and state quality) of candidate countries. It concerns not only the previous enlargement rounds (first of all the Southern and later Eastern enlargements), but also the current process. The present determinants such as “enlargement fatigue” and more cautious EU enlargement strategy allow a researcher to put forward a hypothesis that the above mentioned impact may be changed. This paper is the an analysis of the case of Turkey. Taking the new institutionalist approach the author would like to answer the question how dynamic changes of the institutional framework of the EU enlargement policy – the formal principles of the enlargement strategy as well as informal rules and mechanisms influence the consolidation of the Turkish democracy as well as the transformation of state and state-citizens relations. First of all the following question is worth analysing: Will the negative developments (e.g. deficits of principle of conditionality or politicisation of the enlargement process) stop the changes in Turkey driven by the pre-accession process – i.e. the transformation of hegemonic nature of the state to build more liberal-democratic and citizens oriented regime (described in the literature as “mild democratization” or “institutionalization of the moderate instrumentalism”)? It is argued that there are other factors which will enable the development of these processes even if the EU enlargement policy loses its effectiveness.
