Özet:

With the end of the bipolar system after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the national security concept has undergone significant change in many countries across the world. As an important player of the Cold War, Turkey was also not immune from this change. For many states including Turkey - both before and during the Cold War - the national security was defined mostly within the framework of a traditional and military security perspective. With the end of the Cold War, not only the definition of but also the sphere of security has been extended. With the extension of the security sphere, new issues such as immigration, environment, democracy, human rights, and economy have become important parts of the security studies’ agenda. In other words, security has become multi-dimensional encompassing not only military but also social, political, economic and environmental aspects.Turkey’s national security has also started to undergo a transformation to some extent after the end of the Cold War. However, the genuine transformation of Turkey’s national security began after the decision taken at the EU Cardiff Summit in 1998. The purpose of this article is to evaluate and analyze the role of the Copenhagen political criteria, which have to be fulfilled in order to be a member of the EU, in the transformation of Turkey’s national security. At the end of the analysis it has been found that the large-scale legal and constitutional reforms realized in political, judicial, social and cultural spheres to fulfill the Copenhagen political criteria have a direct or indirect impact on the transformation of the Turkey’s national security. Turkey which embraced a ‘defensive real-politik’ security perspective with a ‘securitization’ approach in the past has started to let off itself from this perspective and replace it with a multi-dimensional security perspective with a ‘de-securitization’ approach after the legal and constitutional reforms aimed at meeting Copenhagen political criteria. It is concluded that ‘de-securitization’ approach, which attaches great importance to using ordinary (normal) political means, methods and rules to deal with the security issues, has become the linchpin of Turkey’s national security instead of ‘securitization’ approach, which emphasis on using extraordinary means and methods in dealing with security threats.It is also concluded that it is quite early to come to a conclusion whether this new security perspective is successful or not in solving the Turkey’s national security matters. The researches that will be done on this question in the coming years will come up with betters answers and more tangible results

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