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Güncelleme: 18. 11. 2003

Cliches against Turkey's EU membership
A pocket guide for debaters

Historically speaking, relations between Turkey and Europe involve almost a thousand years of mutual fascination, and they can hardly be reduced to a sole belligerent dimension. They certainly involved conquests and reconquests, but also interactions between Europe and an Ottoman Empire that was not only the standard bearer of the Islamic world but also the heir and extension of the Byzantine Empire.

The Ottoman was a pre-modern cosmopolitan empire, quite the opposite of the British or the French Empires. It was a stabilizing factor (pax ottomanica) that one had to treat with. It was also a danger for Western Europeans to unite against. Indeed the idea of the first comprehensive union of Western powers was developed by the Spanish humanist Juan Luis Vives against the Ottoman Empire. For six centuries, the Ottoman Empire played its part in European affairs, as it occupied a place in the collective Western imagination. We can trace this in historic figures ranging from Machiavelli to Montesquieu and Louis the 14th among many others. The substance of these relations began to change with the advent of the age of Enlightenment. The Ottomans ignored the Renaissance and remained increasingly behind their European adversaries, both technically and politically speaking. More important, the medieval image of the Ottomans underwent a radical change, the effects of which are still at work today: Reshaped by the Enlightenment, the only feature the collective European imagination retained from the medieval image of the Ottoman (called 'the Turk', which was historically incorrect as the 'national' trait happened much later) was its conquering and heretic (because Muslim) character.

In the early 19th century, the Ottoman State became the sworn enemy of "free nations" for whom it personified the hateful image of the imperial yoke. These attributes came to designate Europe's 'alien body', a metaphor that soon turned into an official policy, aimed at pushing back the body as soon as it showed signs of weakness, from the late 17th century onward. Ottoman withdrawal, which first began in the Balkans, did not involve a rupture with Europe. Military retreat was a painful process but it also triggered a fascination for European know-how. The European has become now, for the first time, the Ottoman's 'Other', as it still is for Turks today. This was soon to rhyme with 'westernisation' which is still ongoing today. Westernisation was a voluntary and self-imposed phenomenon, which was implemented through local means. It constituted the basic dynamics of the last three centuries in these lands.

All the successes, but also all the failures of Turkish modernity are part and parcel of this process including clich‚s, stereotypes and resentments on both sides that need to be overcome by EU integration. The geographical argument closely follows the religious concerns and often serves as an excuse to reject Islam. It is not difficult to guess how Turkey's membership would have been considered if the Anatolian Greek populations had remained behind instead of being transferred to Greece under the exchange of population agreement between Atat�rk and Venizelos after 1922; or if Armenians would have been still living in Anatolia in large numbers. Geographical limits are political constructions that are determined in precise historical contexts.

Modern geography's main endeavour consists of understanding and thus questioning what qualifies a given space. As such it challenges the old school that poses the limits first and then studies what is inside these limits. In the beginning of the 18th century when Taticheff, Peter the Great's chief geographer pointed out the Uralic limit to the east his purpose was to consolidate the European anchor of the new Russia. Today the inclusion of the territory inhabited by Turks into the geographical definition of Europe will mean a Europe capable of composing with particular values that share the common political principles and thus showing a universal vision of humanity and human society that is unprecedented.

Cultural difference and difficult integration
More and more we hear that Turkey has a distinct model of society and historical values. Widely used, this argument seems to have become the last harbour of the opponents to Turkey's membership. But the cultural argument is so vague that it can be used in every sense and direction. Everyone has his own ready-made definition of what is historical and what is cultural. Some Hungarians do not consider Rumanians as Europeans; for Croats, it is the Serbs and the Bosnians who fall out of the definition; for some Southern Europeans, Scandinavians are not really European, as for Luigi Barzini. Turks like most of their contemporaries elsewhere in the world, aspire to become individualistic consumers in an environment of rule of law and social justice. No more no less. European opinion tends to see the Turkish population as hostile and impossible to integrate when in fact 4 of the 70 million Turks live and work in the countries of Western Europe, where their successive generations are gradually integrating with local populations. On the economic front, sizeable numbers of former Turkish factory workers are now successful businessmen who employ local populations. (cf. Centre for Turkish Studies Essen www.uni-essen.de/zft) The integration in the host societies takes place when clear national and/or regional policies exist.

Indeed, integration becomes extremely difficult when foreign workers are considered as temporary guest workers although they live there 40 years. Fortunately, strong new policies aiming at integrating foreign populations are now taking shape in many host countries and the recent change in German nationality law has allowed some 800,000 Turks living there to opt for German nationality. This naturalisation trend is also valid for other host countries of the EU.

The 'end of Europe'
Turkey's membership is seen as an Anglo-American operation, not to say a conspiracy, aimed at diluting the original European project by giving a free hand to a mercantile Europe, thereby tarnishing nascent European political identity. Turkey is supposed to be at odds with this project and that identity. The 'Anglo-American conspiracy' argument seems to be the most elaborate, incidentally referring to the current debate on tomorrow's political Europe. However the integration of a country like Turkey would probably require a policy mix between the Anglo-Saxon and Jacobin positions. In such a Europe all particularities and differences would be recognised, conditions of their free expression provided and their adaptation to the mold of common and non-particularistic values ensured.

This will allow the overcoming of self-imposed limits of identity based almost exclusively on religion or condemned to refer constantly to a universal but abstract secularism. Can we not assume that, as a universal model, the future EU will recognise all differences, including religious ones, without privileging any? In this sense, the Turkish membership of the EU would certainly be a test case for the motto 'different but equal'. A military version of this view stresses the American affinities of the Turkish army, without mentioning the historical fact that it was European sulkiness towards them that led the Turks to seek closer ties with the U.S. Turkey's Atlantist inclinations are seen as a potential menace to the gestating European military identity. Continental Europe would be caught in sandwich between Europe's two most Atlantist armies, the British and the Turkish. This argument makes sense in view of recent developments regarding Iraq.

The parliamentary vote of March 1, 2003 refusing the passage of U.S. troops via Turkish territory has created an unbearable feeling of 'strategic loneliness' in Turkey. Western Europeans were neither keen nor ready to fill this vacuum and as a result the government tried to regain the American confidence by deciding to send additional troops to Iraq. In an enlarged Europe no one expects all members to be on the same wavelength for common and federal policies. That is why we have invented 'reinforced co-operations'. As usual core and like-minded members will get together to go ahead on various issues for more federalism. The others, including Turkey, will follow suit sooner or later.

 

 

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