Effect of European Union Education Policy on Turkish Education System in Scope of European Union-Turkey Relations

Abstract

By unifying on the basis of common culture and values, the European Union (EU) is aiming to develop cooperation and deepenintegration between 27 member countries. Education issue which holds great importance at the point of reaching these targetsalso plays a great role at the success of Union’s policies. Turkey, who wants to partake in such a Community, concurrentlyrealized various regulations in the education field in the scope of the EU harmonization process as well as the other politicalfields during the full membership process. In this study; EU education policy was handled within the course of history in thecontext of EU-Turkey relations and the effect of EU education policy on the Turkish education system is going to be evaluated.This is a literature review study conducted on written sources, and it was based on the scanning model of the qualitativeresearch method. At the result of the study; it was seen that EU education policy is very effective over the Turkish educationsystem which on its course to the EU full membership process. In this context, Turkey realized significant regulations in theeducation field within the frame of criteria designated for candidate countries by the EU. However, it has been observed thatthere are deficiencies in the regulations. Thus, Turkey should properly designate the root causes of problems regarding theeducation field and strictly accelerate the realization of studies in terms of criteria designated by the EU in this field in order tobe a society with a higher level of development.