Will Accession to EU Membership Spur (Non)Convergence of GDP Per Capita to High-Income Economy : The Turkish-EU Economic Performance

This study aims to investigate possible developments in the Turkish economy, in case Turkey becomes a full member of the European Union (EU), by examining the economic performances of the new members of the EU in the 2000s. Due to the convergence theorem, new member countries have highest growth rate than the EU and Euro Area in income per capita in 1995-2021 period. Lithuania was ranked at the top with the growth rate from the membership date to 2021. Latvia, Estonia, Poland and Czechia have followed Lithuania in order. Cyprus has the worst performance in the country set and Croatia has the second worst performance in income per capita increase after their membership. The Spearman's rho correlation coefficient between the number of members and average GDP per capita in the EU was 0.832, which indicates a high positive correlation