Turkey—or is it Europe—at the Crossroads
By Shaanti Kapila
On April 4, 2007, Dialogues: Islamic World-U.S.-The West hosted a panel discussion on “Turkey—or is it Europe—at the Crossroads” to debate the policy implications of Turkey’s entry to, or refusal by, the European Union. The panel was moderated by Mustapha Tlili, Dialogues’ founder and director, and featured Steven Cook, Douglas Dillon Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations; Baki Ilkin, Ambassador and Permanent Representative of Turkey to the United Nations; Tony Judt, Director of the Remarque Institute at NYU; Bahadir Kaleagasi, Permanent Representative of the Turkish Industrialists’ and Businessmen’s Association (TUSIAD) to the European Union (EU) in Brussels; and Fernando Valenzuela, Ambassador and Permanent Observer of the European Commission to the United Nations.
Mustapha Tlili opened the panel by explaining the approach of Dialogues to: 1) bring contentious issues between the Islamic world and the West into a more rational plane; and 2) highlight the work of bold Muslim leaders and thinkers who are seeking modernization—the leaders through courageous reforms and the thinkers by applying the tools of contemporary social science to challenge long-standing interpretations of Islamic scripture and heritage and thus critique Islam from within. The matter of Turkish accession to the European Union is of interest to Dialogues because it falls within the category of misunderstandings that need to be addressed in a rational manner.
During the Cold War, Tlili noted, Turkey was considered by the West to be a loyal, staunchly committed member of the Atlantic community. He posed the question of what would have happened had Turkey applied for membership in the European Community at the height of the Cold War. The outcome might have been different, he suggested, because at that time Turkey would not have been scrutinized within the framework of the current ideological and geopolitical context, dominated by a widespread fear of Islam. There are many voices in Europe today—Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Jacques Delors, and Nicolas Sarkozy, to name a few— who insist that Europe’s identity is a Christian identity, ample reason, therefore, to reject Turkey’s bid to join the EU. But, Tlili asked, isn’t this formulation too simplistic in the end? Doesn’t it hide other considerations that can be addressed in a more rational way?
Tlili then introduced the panelists. Probing the issue of Europe’s Christian identity, he directed the first question of the evening to Tony Judt, asking him to comment on whether Europe is confused about its identity. Although some prominent voices proclaim that Europe is a Christian continent, public opinion polls indicate that God seems to have disappeared from the public space and collective consciousness.
Tony Judt responded that there is indeed a paradox. Europe today is largely de-Christianized; yet over the course of the last 15 years there has been a growing tendency among Europeans to identify Europe as Christian. Since the end of the Cold War and the resultant blurring of the boundaries of “Europe,” the EU has become obsessed with its own identity. Identifying with the word “Christian” is a way for the EU to define its boundaries, and the idea of “us Christians” is a cultural definition of Europe. For the most part this conflation of Europe and Christian does not represent religious fervor (although there are exceptions in some parts of Eastern Europe), but it does represent a sense of not being Muslim. For European leaders, this is a veiled way of making a point about domestic Muslim populations while avoiding a domestic confrontation.
Thus, according to Judt, what we are hearing when Nicolas Sarkozy, Angela Merkel and others say they don’t want Turkey in the EU is a klein europäische perspective— a view of an EU not engaging with world. To bring Turkey in is to plunge the EU into international political and military issues. With Turkey as a member, the EU would become a major actor in the Near East, the Mediterranean and the Caucasus. To reject Turkey is to turn Europe’s back on the possibility of being a major and effective actor in the Islamic world. Such a view seems to be characteristic of the baby boomer generation, which, Judt asserted, lacks great historical vision. It is a means of retreating from problems that would result from a larger responsibility and role in the world.
In conclusion, Judt condemned the use of “Christian” as a European identity tag, deploring such rhetoric as a catastrophic retreat to Europe’s Cold War past.
Mustapha Tlili then addressed the next panelist, Ambassador Baki Ilkin, and asked him to respond to the question of whether there is a relationship between Turkey’s secular legacy and its drive for accession to the European Union.
Ambassador Ilkin began by recalling the history of the Ottoman era—the empire’s rise from the 14th to 16th centuries, followed by a period of stagnation from the late 17th to the early 19th century, and then its fall from the mid-18th century to its ultimate collapse at the end of the First World War. In the mid-19th century the Ottoman intelligentsia concluded that the empire’s stagnation resulted from its failure to keep up with technological and scientific developments in the West. It was then that modernization and westernization started to become synonymous.
When the Turkish republic rose from the ashes of a fallen empire and war, the father of the new state, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk adopted a series of reforms, including a new dress code (banning the Fez for men and the veil for women), a new alphabet (replacing the Arabic alphabet for the Latin) and a new calendar. These reforms were intended to separate religion from the running of world affairs and to bring Turkey closer to the West. Under Ataturk and his successors, Turkey joined various Western organizations—the League of Nations, the Council of Europe, the OECD, NATO and the OSCE. Thus, Ilkin said, it was only natural that when the European Economic Community came into being, Turkey sought close relations with it. Ilkin asserted that Turkey has historically been part of Europe; it is now; and it will be in the future.
Ilkin stressed that the secularist principle is well embedded in Turkish society. Turkey has not seen the accession process as a safety net for maintaining its secular model. Regardless of whether Turkey joins the EU, it will remain secular and will continue to promote secular democracy and stability in the region. However, Ilkin added, it would be unfortunate if Turkey were excluded from the EU after fulfilling the terms of its accession negotiations. This would reflect poorly on the EU and would send a signal that Turkey is being denied admission for other reasons, namely because it is a Muslim country.
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