The Comparative Approaches of the EU and Turkey towards EU-East

Since the 2004-2007 enlargements brought the European Union (EU) closer to the former-Soviet space, the EU has actively developed its vision towards the region as part of its endless search for regional and global actorness. In this context, the EU has devised and/or activated a number of foreign policy tools [i.e. the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), European Neighborhood Policy (ENP), Black Sea Synergy, Eastern Partnership and a few others] in order to label the Union as a political, socio-economic and a humanitarian player in the region, at least on paper. Accordingly, this paper first aims at analysing the dichotomy of the promises and the end-results of the EU’s approaches and policies towards the EU-East, or in other words, post-Soviet Eurasia, with a specific focus on how the EU has contributed to shaping the domestic settings by looking at the impact of the EU’s political conditionality practices mostly embedded in its above-mentioned foreign policy tools. The second aim of this paper is to find out to what extent the Turkish approach towards the EU-East has been consistent with the EU’s promises and practices, with a particular focus on Turkey’s connections to the EU as an associate/candidate/negotiating country.