Paris – ESI at Science Po conference: Candidate Countries: With or Without You?

Amphithéâtre Caquot, 28, rue des Saint-Pères,
75006 Paris, 13.00 - 19.00
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"Candidate Countries: With or Without You?" is organised by a group of eight students of Sciences Po with the main goal to bring together students, researchers, and professionals around the question of enlargement. Three round tables, each of them dealing with a particular aspect of enlargement, will strive to offer a new and original point of view on this debate accompanying the unification of Europe.

Gerald Knaus, Chairman of the European Stability Initiative and Associate Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School's Carr Center, discussed the dynamics of Turkish politics in the run-up to the Turkish parliamentary elections on 12 June. Ultimately, the election will set the stage for an overhaul of the present constitution, a relic of the 1980 military coup. What are the main issues at stake? What kind of a balance will the new charter strike between the state and its citizens? How will the political leadership reconcile diverging interests and accommodate the needs of Kurds and Alevis, the pious and the secular, women and sexual minorities? Poised between East and West, with the legacy of a dominant nation-state and a shared but contested demand for reforms, where is Turkey heading?