Abstract:

The European Union - Turkey relations, dating back to early 1960s, have recently made significant gains. A number of political developments, such as the membership status granted to Turkey and the official launch of accession talks between the parties, have drawn the attention of academic circles to the process of Turkey’s alignment with the European Union norms. A wide range of studies based on statistical techniques, especially cluster analysis, was used to determine Turkey’s relative position to the European Union. However, none of the studies employed the EU-2020 indicators. This study, unlike others, tries to determine the position of Turkey and that of the member states in attaining the EU-2020 targets by using the cluster analysis technique. It deduces conclusions for Turkey from these results.

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