The European Union’s refugee crisis and rising functionalism in EU-Turkey relations

Abstract

This article investigates the evolving relationship between the European Union (EU) and Turkey following the 2015 refugee crisis. It argues that post-crisis relations have become predominantly functional, measured by strategic EU-Turkey partnership based on interdependence as well as the EU’s relative retreat from political membership conditionality. This is particularly demonstrated by the March 2016 EU-Turkey ‘refugee deal’ whereby functional cooperation deepened amidst material and normative concessions that the EU granted Ankara. The article concludes that although functionalism is set to guide the relations beyond the question of Turkey’s EU accession, a future EU-Turkey external differentiated integration arrangement remains uncertain due to pending challenges.