This thesis analyzes the impact of Europeanization on domestic policy structures in states which are not European Union (EU) members within the framework of asylum and refugee policies. It focuses on the influence of Europeanization during Turkey&amp / #8217 / s pre-accession process to the EU after 1999. This thesis has three main goals. The first one is to provide a comprehensive analysis of the dynamics behind Europeanization of asylum and refugee policies. The second goal is to highlight the institutional, administrative and ideational environment in which these policies take place. Finally, it aims to analyze how the dynamics of European integration through legislative harmonization creates systemic transformation in domestic governance systems in the EU candidate countries in their pre-accession process.

Previous literature on the Europeanization of candidate countries has lacked careful empirical investigations into how the process drives domestic policies to change in line with the EU acquis. Selecting on the least-likely case of Turkey and its refugee and asylum policy, I identify that previous work has assumed that Turkey’s policy shifts have been driven by rationalist cost- benefit calculations of its government. The purpose of this study has been to empirically investigate and trace the mechanisms of Europeanization in the selected case, in order to thereby contribute to knowledge on the process of Europeanization in candidate countries in general, and address to the previous research gap. Given this purpose, I have aimed to produce answers to the research question: how has the EU affected Turkey’s asylum and refugee policy after the declaration of candidacy status? I hypothesize that a rationalist model driven by the EU’s conditionality can indeed explain domestic policy changes in Turkey, but also that an alternative mechanism of socialization has been at play. Tracing the process of Europeanization through secondary sources, the results show that what started with behavioral-adaptation of domestic policy change in alignment with the EU’s laws, norms and demands between 1999 and 2010, between 2011 and 2018 the Turkish asylum and refugee policies started to step away from the push power of the external incentives. Nonetheless, significant domestic policy changes continued, suggesting evidence against the rationalist conditionality model of Europeanization in this period. However, I argue that the results are not strong enough to make the claim Turkey’s domestic policy change was driven by a mechanism of socialization, but rather suggest there has been initiation of a switch between the mechanisms.