EU Public Opinion on Turkish EU Membership: Trends and Drivers

FEUTURE Online Paper No. 25

This is a paper about European public opinion towards Turkey’s prospective EU membership. It outlines a trend of reclining support, makes an analytical attempt at spelling out the drivers that underpin both the numbers and the trend, makes an assessment about the direction that it is likely to push Turkey-EU relations into in the 2023 timeframe of the FEUTURE research framework, and concludes with a few initial recommendations. The conjecture of the paper is that European public opinion towards Turkish EU membership is likely to edge Turkey-EU relations in a more conflictual orientation. The paper spells out how and why. Mindful of the unpredictability of current international relations, the paper unfolds a few possible exceptions to this conjecture, and concludes with three initial recommendations e.g. on trust-building, expectation management around the necessity (if not want) of further cooperation etc.