Publication

The "Progress Report" on Turkey's efforts on its way to accession, published by the European Commission on October 14, is mostly a routine step in a highly ritualized political process. It deals with the obvious and hardly touches upon the issues of the "agenda behind the agenda." These are political factors such as an almost total breakdown of the functioning of the mechanism of "conditionality-compliance" that is central to any granting of accession; or the intricacies of the Cyprus issue beyond the question of the application of the Additional Protocol; or a far-reaching reconceptualization of Turkish foreign policy, including accession policy, under the AKP government.