Turkey’s possible membership of the European Union from a cultural perspective

Even though Turkey’s odyssey to become an EU member started in 1959, EU membership is still not in sight. The existing literature identifies the barriers to Turkey’s EU membership to be of political, economic, and foreign-policy nature. While cultural dissimilarities of Turkey vis-á-vis the EU have been mentioned on many occasions, they have rarely been a subject of scientific inquiry. This paper focuses on the cultural aspects of the Turkey–EU relations by employing the World Values Survey for Turkey, the EU, and the Muslim world. The empirical results indicate that Turkey’s shared values are between those in the EU countries and in the Muslim world, reflecting the country’s dualistic cultural landscape. Religiosity has been increasing in Turkey, accompanied by an increasing tendency toward traditionalism and a decline of confidence in the EU. Regression results confirm that higher religiosity increases the chance of higher justifiability of traditional values, stronger criticism of democracy, and lower confidence in the EU. From the critical and liberal constructivist approach, Turkey’s cultural dissimilarity matters for possible EU membership.