One of the most significant decisions of the EU, after the Maastricht Treaty, was its enlargement decision to accept new members as they fulfill the economic and political criteria. As a result of enlargement decision, in May 2004 10 new members, mostly East European countries, and in January 2007 Bulgaria and Romania joined the European Union. Enlargement is still a working policy process for the EU, in which accession negotiations with formal candidate countries (Turkey and Croatia) are still proceeding and further expansion to the Western Balkans are being considered as a possibility.
Despite its success, the EU enlargement has not been free from skepticism. Among several other reasons opposition to Turkey's EU membership played an important role to explain the skepticism toward the EU enlargement. Especially after the latest round of enlargement process Turkey's accession negotiation became a critical topic for the future of Europe. In this framework, this study attempts to understand the dynamics of sociopolitical structure of the European opposition to Turkish EU membership.
Recent literature indicates four major issues and concerns regarding the Turkey's EU membership; identity related concerns, general concerns about future enlargement, individual economic expectations, and the concerns about immigration and crime. The first phase of this study considers each issue area as a separate topic and measure the effect of Turkey related variables independently. The second phase measure the level of opposition to Turkey's membership using all issue areas and other explanatory variables in a single model.