A comparative analysis of Turkey and EU member countries? socio-economic indicator performance in the process of full membership

The full EU membership process which started with the application of Turkey in 1959 and became one of the most important political goal of Turkey has been moved to a different dimension with the accession negotiations on 3 October 2005. Within this scope, in this study, to what extent Turkey meets the Copenhagen criteria is examined. For this purpose, the possibility of Turkey's membership is evaluated by comparing Turkey's economic and social indicators with those of the EU member states.Thereafter, to compare the development levels of indexes of the countries is calculated by using ?principle component analysis?, which is one of the multivariate statistical analysis techniques. Social Development Index, Economic Development Index and Development Index are calculated by means of 20 social, 22 economic and 42 socio-economic variables respectively. By using these indexes, member states and candidate countries are ranked and the status of Turkey is determined.According to these analyses, Turkey is ranked 24th in the Social Development Index, 28th in the Economic Development Index and 25th in the Development Index among 30 countries. The social and economic position of Turkey indicates that she could not meet the Copenhagen criteria. Hence, it is not wrong to say the possibility of Turkey?s membership is low in the near future. In addition, other candidate country, Croatia's economic and social situation is worse than the EU member states, but the membership probability of this country is higher than Turkey. Macedonia is the least developed country among the candidate countries.