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This article examines the European Union (EU)'s response to the 2015–2016 refugee crisis. Departing from the understanding that Europe is a contested phenomenon, it investigates how different – Thick, Thin, Parochial and Global – Europes influenced the EU's management of the crisis culminating in the March 2016 EU-Turkey 'refugee deal'. Two findings are advanced. First, European actors reacted differently to the EU's initially attempted Thick Europe approach to the crisis, following their respective Europe conceptions. Second, faced with growing divisions, they ultimately united around a lowest common denominator solution represented by the refugee deal which illustrated Thin Europe at the expense of a more norm-based policy associated with Thick and Global Europes. The findings demonstrate the significance of embedding the various European reactions to the crisis within different Europe categories while showing that consensus was still possible to tackle an external problem. ; Scopus - Affiliation ID: 60105072

How consistently has the EU used membership conditionality to address illiberalism? Has it sufficiently and effectively used its conditional, transformative capacity in the first place, i.e., independent of the domestic factors gaining ground in third countries and paving the way for illiberalism? This paper proposes to assess this question by focusing on the EU's recent relations with Turkey, as the longest standing EU candidate, within the context of the 2015 Syrian refugee crisis. This episode of EU-Turkey relations provides a real test case for the EU's ability and willingness to consistently use conditionality since doing so coincided with the EU's other foreign policy aims linked with external border security (relatedly also, the integrity of the Schengen area) and even, protection against terrorism.

The year 2015 closed with crucial developments formally boosting Turkey-EU relations in the wake of Europe's refugee crisis. The EU-Turkey deal reached on 29 November 2015 raised Turkey's strategic importance for the EU to a whole new level. The Turkish government was offered key economic and political incentives in exchange for its agreement to host the Syrian refugees in Turkey, while attending to their socio-economic needs and help stem the refugee flow to Europe. Among the perks were a generous financial aid package of 3 billion euros to support Turkey in this daunting task, the prospect of visa liberalization for Turkish citizens by the end of 2016 contingent on Turkey's full implementation of the 2013 EU-Turkey readmission agreement and a "re-energized" EU-Turkey accession negotiations process.

WOS:000337223000006 ; The literature on European Union (EU)-Turkey relations has mostly focused on explaining the general slowdown in the Justice and Development Party (AKP)'s post-2005 Europeanization rather than analysing the more puzzling question of why some reforms persisted as opposed to others despite the falling credibility of EU membership in the same period. To fill this gap, the paper studies the AKP's differential 'Europeanization' concerning civilianization, rule of law and fundamental freedoms. While reforms targeting civilianization persisted over the years, democratic progress in the other two areas rather stalled after 2007. It is argued that this variation is induced by AKP's changing domestic political empowerment needs. Specifically, AKP used the EU reform process as an instrument of political survival followed by power consolidation after 2007.

2-s2.0-84864631448 ; This article analyzes the EU's December 2004 Brussels decision regarding membership talks with Turkey. While the Brussels Council launched accession negotiations with Turkey, the adopted Framework for Negotiations formulated exceptionally stringent membership terms. This is a puzzle for normative institutionalism because prior to Brussels, Turkey had sufficiently complied with the EU's liberal democratic membership criteria and systematically engaged in "rhetorical action" to "entrap" the EU in its liberal, inclusionary enlargement discourse. It is argued that the puzzle is explained by how the EU member states' enlargement preferences played out in an intergovernmental bargaining context when it came to the inclusion of Turkey.

1\. Introduction 5 2\. Overview of the Literature 7 2.1 Credible EU Conditionality 7 2.2 Liberal Ruling Parties (or Low Political Compliance Costs) 10 3\. Data and Argument 11 3.1 Measurement of Conditionality 11 3.2 Measurement of Compliance 14 3.3 AKP's Political Identity Reconsidered 15 3.4 Argument on AKP's Compliance Trends 21 4\. Conclusion 26 Literature 27 Appendix 30 ; What explains the EU compliance of Turkey's ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP)? Since it came to power in 2002, AKP has launched legislative reforms in order to meet the European Union's political membership criteria (i.e., democracy, rule of law, human rights and minority rights). These reforms are puzzling since they happened in the absence of the two conditions of compliance argued in the literature: (1) credible EU political conditionality, (2) liberal ruling parties in EU candidate states. I argue that AKP's pro-EU reform agenda is explained by neither a belief in the possibility of membership via democratization (credible conditionality) nor liberal political identity. Rather, democratic measures under AKP are instrumentally induced. Two broad political motivations have guided AKP's reform commitment: (1) the electoral incentive to please Turkey's pro-EU membership electorate as well as AKP's conservative/religious constituency eager to see freedom of religion expanded under EU conditionality, (2) the motive to use reforms to weaken domestic secular forces (i.e. the military and high courts) and "survive" as a party with Islamist roots in Turkey's secular political system. The paper supports the argument with evidence gathered from original coding data for both conditionality and compliance as well as process-tracing.

Elbasani, Arolda/0000-0003-0225-3549 ; WOS:000334059500004 ; What explains Islamic organizations' differing support for European integration and the democratic reforms that it entails? The question is highly relevant in the context of European Union (EU) enlargement towards Muslim-majority countries in the Balkans as well as theoretical debates on reasons and forms of Islamic moderation. Yet, almost no comparative research has been done on Balkan Muslims' support for European integration with the exception of the Turkish case. This article explores the role of interest- and belief-related factors in explaining Muslim organizations' differential support for the EU accession project in Albania and Turkey. The comparison of the most powerful Muslim organizations in both countries enables a most similar cases research design - our cases are similar in all aspects of the identified theoretical framework except for organizational capacities, which we argue explain the difference of attitudes towards the EU.