The purpose of this article is to underline the common link between Romanian integration and Turkey accession to European Union. Except the fact that this is a hot topic, it may also represent an interesting subject to make a research on. In order to make this argumentation clear, I would like to delimitate the area we are talking about. For this, I am going to start with my assumption: Turkey accession to European Union it is a long process where the Turkish political system, position, its culture and economy are the key factors.

While Romania is seeking to integrate to European Union, to adopt acquis communautaire, to correlate its legal system to the European Union one in order to achieve European identity, Turkey is trying to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria[1]. The 35 chapters included in the negotiation process cover the most important areas that Turkey has to improve in order to be part of European Union. Even so, the most important issues are about freedom of movement for workers, right of establishment for companies and freedom to provide services, competition policy, agriculture and rural development, food safety, veterinary policy, fisheries[2]. The EU response to drastic improvements in Turkey’s constitutional and legal system through the above reforms has been “now we need to see implementation process.” Most recently, the EU identified several shortcomings in areas of individual rights, continued cases of torture and abuse by the police, continued prosecution of writers, journalists, and publishers, corruption in the public sector, and strong influence of the military in politics[3] Given these developments what can be said about the impact of EU’s political criteria for membership on consolidation of democracy in Turkey? This question begs clear operationalization of consolidation of democracy before it can be tackled.

If it were to take into consideration Linz and Stepan’s[4] theoretical model, Turkish democracy could not fulfill the attitudinal dimension of consolidated democracy as long as any political party with an Islamic fundamentalist agenda or any other party with an anti-democratic agenda (such as authoritarian or totalitarian) continued to be a major electoral force in Turkish politics. Such parties would violate a fundamental task of political parties in functioning democracies – socializing citizens toward system consensus.

Regarding Romania, even if we have political instability, corruption, we can say that from 2007 to 2010 we can notice several changes. The implementation of the European directives has been very good, as only four directives has not been implemented[5], the process of coordinating the Romanian institutions with the European ones is a good one, and practically, from this point of view we can say that Romania is fallowing a good path tough the integration process.

One of the most important criteria regarding Turkey accession to European Union is about the geopolitical factors. As we all know, Turkey would help promote stability in the Mediterranean, Middle East, Caucasus and Central Asia and it also be the link with the Asia, who is becoming more and more important from the economic point of view. Yet, accepting Turkey would also mean to change the concept of European Union due to the fact that Turkey territory is also in Asia. One more point is that Turkey’s boundaries are EU’s boundaries with Asia, which has several implications, like protecting the whole European Union from emigrants or creating a very good trade policy.

From the EU’s point of view, this position would bring more benefits than disadvantages because it has several connections, partnerships, privileged relations with some Asian’s countries, and having Turkey in EU would mean to have a direct link to this developing countries.

Moreover, when we are talking about EU we are talking about “Unity in diversity”, which means that it is respected each country’s religion, traditions, habits, but meanwhile the unity is important. Romanian’s case it’s rather simple by comparison with Turkey, even if we had an authoritarian regime, our political system is rather new, and there is also a gap between our mentality and the the occidental one. When it comes to Turkey, things are much more complicated. This is not only because of the Islamic culture which is different from what you find in the rest of Europe, Christen generally, but also because of the minorities and different levels of perceiving and accepting the occident. What is interesting in Turkey is the fact that there is a big gap between different regions, some of them like Istanbul are very open to occident, but Konya for example is very conservative and traditional.  Recently, the Kurd’s problem in Turkey has become more aggressive, which is a step back to EU accession. From 1989 to 1997 Romania had few rules regarding the minorities rights, but after that, given the NATO and EU pressure because we were looking for membership[6], we adopted several rules which guarantee minorities rights. This was a key factor in Romanian accession to EU, which now, as a integrated country is mainly solved. In Turkey, as this conflict with Kurdish minority is growing, the accession process is delayed. Not to mention the fact that only one of the 35 criteria’s has been successfully fulfilled.

On the other hand, during the last 40^th years Turkish economy has a remarkable evolution[7], as today is the 16^th largest in the world[8]. For the EU having Turkey would bring both money in its budget and economic stability. Let’s take for example the world crisis. Turkey has successfully passed by the economic crisis from the third semester of 2009, which is proof of its  strong and stable economy, not as Romania who is still in economic crisis and also has the loan from IMF. 

Romania succeeded in being a European Union member, in importing the European values and rules, but is still in the integration process, is still adopting and implementing European habits so as to rich the European value and identity. On the other side, Turkey is working on solving its major problems, is trying to fill the gap between the occident and the orient. This is not an easy task, to be the border between two different civilizations, but, in a way or another Turkey is working on improving itself, on developing on reaching the European standard. From my point of view, getting to the further level of development is not very difficult if we are talking about economy, but if we are talking about mentality, about traditional and conservatives values, about the fundamentalists and also minorities, it is a very difficult and lasting process. In this case, is the EU duty to solve and tolerate this problems, so step by step the consensus will be achieved.

ALEXANDRA  RENTEA este masteranda a Facultatii de Stiinte Politice, Universitatea Bucuresti.