Turkey and EU countries have continued to engage in wide-ranging dialogue and bilateral and transatlantic cooperation on key issues, however the accession process has progressed little. Is the relationship between Turkey and the EU bound to be marked by a high degree of alignment but only limited convergence? At the root of the problem, there seem to be different trajectories. EU leaders are the first to recognize the significant progress that Turkey has made in recent years, becoming a widely-praised success story of both economic and political development. Yet, what is celebrated among Turkish ruling elites as the emergence of “New Turkey” is the product of developments that have either been out of sync with EU trends or that the EU has helped trigger but have then taken a distinctly national course.