79 Zoltán Egeresi* National University of Public Service Budapest, Hungary TURKEY-EU RELATIONS: MAIN DYNAMICS AND CHALLENGES ABSTRACT Tis study aims to review Turkish-EU relations by highlighting the main dy- namics of the Turkish accession eforts It argues that although the early 2000s led to a visible legal transformation and Europeanization supported by almost all-party consensus in Turkey yielding fruits, afer 2006 the initial enthusiasm evaporated and the EU accession negotiations afer 2016 were stopped in practice due to several reasons Te paper intends to reveal the main causes of the change and to describe how Turkey’s relation deteriorated with the EU and its several Member States KEYWORDS: Turkey, European Union, enlargement, Europeanization 1. Introduction Turkey's relationship with the European Union and its predecessor organizations started in 1959 when it submitted its application for associate membership Ten a long and troublesome road to become (fnally) a full member started It had im- portant cornerstones like signing the Association Agreement (1963), the Customs Union Agreement (1995), obtaining candidate status (1999), and opening of ac- cession negotiations (2005) Afer a period of great enthusiasm in the early 2000s, the initial momentum on both sides slowed down, the pace of opening chapters decelerated, and emerging debates (on human rights, freedom of the press, arrests motivated by political considerations) essentially stalled the project of Turkey’s accession to the EU Te diplomatic confict with several EU Member States, the * E-mail: egeresizoltan@uni-nkehu