POLICY OF TURKEY ON “THE KURDISH ISSUE” SETTLEMENT IN THE CONTEXT OF THE COPENHAGEN CRITERIA ENFORCEMENT (THE END OF THE 20th – THE BEGINNING OF THE 21st CENTURY)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.24919/2519-058X.28.287553Abstract
In the article there has been analyzed the main stages of the European integration process in Turkey, the evolution of Turkey in the issue of compliance with the Copenhagen criteria, as well as the main measures taken by the Turkish government regarding the Copenhagen criteria implementation in order to obtain a full membership in the EU from the end of the 1990s to the 2000s. The purpose of the research is to analyze the attempts made by the leadership of Turkey in order to settle “the Kurdish issue” in the context of the Copenhagen criteria implementation, which became an effective alternative to the traditional force scenario to its solution. Economic and legal criteria were key in this context. Since the 1990s and until nowadays, the Turkish government has implemented a number of economic, political and social projects aimed at solving “the Kurdish issue” by integrating the residents of South-Eastern Anatolia into the Turkish society successfully, as well as overcoming uneven social economic development of the Turkish regions. The methodology of the research is based on the principles of historicism, scientificity, an interdisciplinary principle, a valuable approach and the use of general scientific (analysis, synthesis and generalization) methods.
As a result of the scientific analysis carried out with involvement of numerous original sources, the authors came to the following conclusion: taking into account the experience of reforms in the 2000s – 2010s, it became obvious that in the case of continuation of Turkey’s European integration aspirations, “the Kurdish issue” could be solved only in a long term by increasing the level of well-being and education among the population of South-Eastern Anatolia, creating a developed network of health care institutions, modern infrastructure of the region, ensuring a real access of population to the work of local authorities, forming a law enforcement system that would function on the basis of the principles of a social justice and equality of all before the law.
Key words: Turkey, European Union (EU), European Economic Community (EEC), European
integration, Copenhagen criteria, “the Kurdish issue”, South-eastern Anatolia, Kurdistan Workers’
Party (PKK), South-eastern Anatolia Project (Güneydoğu Anadolu Projesi, GAP).
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