Environmental problems and environmental politics: an examination of the context of the EU and Turkey relation

Abstract

Information and communication technologies have been one of these main instruments in the implementation of EU environmental policies. In this respect, EU poses a concrete, influential and important model bearing a potential to generate policies, norms, values and standards on the subject of environment as it does in many other issues. Depending on this suggestion, in this study, we aim to analyze and assess the Turkish and EU policies regarding the role of information and communication technologies in the creation of environmental information, its distribution and public access to environmental information sources. In this regard, EU’s policies and technology-based initiatives have importance to a great extent in this period of serious debates in relation Turkey’s membership talks with the Union. Furthermore, Turkey, by virtue of her geopolitics and geostrategic position in the region as well, stands on the center of regional environmental problems due to its industrial development potential and its crossroads location in the intersection of Black Sea and the Mediterranean among the important energy and transportation routes. Therefore, potential of access to environmental information renders itself vital to handle the ecological problems of the region. The paper is targeting to forecast and analyze these potential and possible future developments from the perspective of Turkish and EU affairs.