Working Paper Series #2006-024 How “black” is the black sheep compared to all others? Turkey and the EU İ. Semih Akçomak and Saeed Parto June 2006 United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology Keizer Karelplein 19, 6211 TC Maastricht, The Netherlands Tel: (31) (43) 350 6300, Fax: (31) (43) 350 6399, e-mail:
[email protected], URL: http://www.merit.unu.edu How “black” is the black sheep compared to all others? Turkey and the EU İ. Semih Akçomak and Saeed Parto1 2 June 2006 Abstract In this paper we question the validity of the arguments against Turkey’s membership of the EU and challenge the political wisdom of excluding Turkey from Europe. First, we argue that fundamental European values are not as uniform as they are made out to be. There are significant differences among the member states and the different European regions on basic values relating to religion and democracy. Second, we argue that many of Turkey’s supposed cultural differences with the rest of Europe are in fact unsubstantiated. We support our arguments by analyzing widely available macroeconomic evidence and the data from the European Values Study, 1999 (EVS99). Keywords: Turkey, EU, Institutions, Institutional Analysis, Values, EVS JEL codes: A13, Z12, Z13 UNU-MERIT Working Papers ISSN 1871-9872 Copyright © 2006 UNITED NATIONS UNIVERSITY Maastricht Economic and social Research and training centre on Innovation and Technology, UNU-MERIT UNU-MERIT Working Papers intend to disseminate preliminary results of the research carried out at the institute to attract comments 1 Semih Akçomak is at UNU-MERIT, Maastricht University.