Policy towards turkey in programs of German parliamentary parties

At the beginning of the 21st century, Germany plays a key role in the European integration. Leaning on their economic weight and potential Berlin can promote political initiatives at the European level. Objectives and effectiveness of the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) substantially depend on German efforts. Simultaneously Turkey became a regional power in the Middle East and aspired to strengthen their positions. Officially, Ankara declares itself as a part and parcel of the European family and emphasizes a goal to become an EU member as strategic one. EU-Turkey relations develop in the framework of the association regime. At the same time, strategic depth conception by A. Davutoǵlu proclaims Turkey as a self-sufficient, regional power with its own interests. Under these circumstances, German strategy toward Turkey has become an actual research problem. As Germany is a parliamentary republic, exactly parliamentary parties elaborate political course of the country. The main goal of this research is revealing basic political approaches of Germany towards Turkey. Leaning on the leading parties’ documents and coalitional agreements, the author solves research problems on importance of Turkey for Germanу, German Agenda for bilateral cooperation, correlation between German and EU policy towards Turkey and Turkey’s perspectives to be an EU member. The main result of this research work is that all political parties stand for convergence with Turkey, but only one of them, namely CDU/CSU, opposes the full EU membership for Turkey. As this party is the most popular in the country, Turkey will not join EU in the near future.