Turkey formally applied for membership in the European Union (EU) on April 14, 1987, but it took 12 years to get candidate status at the Helsinki summit of 1999. The year 2014 brought no breakthrough in the negotiations between the EU and Turkey. Public opinion polls show that many Turkish citizens have no hope of joining the EU. Waiting too long for membership in the EU is causing a lot of controversy in Turkey and is one of the most frequently raised issues in the political discourse. In the last three years, the Turkish political class and socjety became more and more sympathetic to perceived integration initiatives in the Eastern direction. Turkey has opened a new road in the form of accession to the Eurasian Union and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. What will happen if Turkey will support its way in this direction? How long can Turkey wait for admission to the EU? Where would it be better for Turkey? The Eastern Alliance or the Western?

The European Union and the Eurasian Union: legal mechanism of cooperation and the problems of establishing

The paper takes a close look at the concept of establishing the Eurasian Union – a political and economic community modeled after the European Union. The author of the article shows the impact of Kazakhstan on the integration process of other countries participating in the establishment of this community: Russia, Belarus, Kyrgyzstan, and Tacgicastan. The author also describes institutionalized forms of cooperation on which the functioning of the Eurasian Union is to be based.

Effective participation in regional associations is a necessary condition for the functioning of a modern state and the tools of implementation of economic and political interests. Th e questions of the impact of the processes of formation of the Common Economic Space, the Eurasian Union on different sectors of the economy, particularly in the system of the higher education of Kazakhstan in the context of international experience in this field are analyzed in this article.