Turkey is now, finally, negotiating with the European Commission the terms of its possible membership in the European Union. But whether “possible” becomes “eventual” remains very much an open question. Indeed, completing the negotiations is likely to prove as difficult as the decision to start them.

Recall that Turkey made its first application to join in 1959, and that since 1963, the European Economic Community, the forerunner to today’s EU, responded with a delaying tactic: a request for a customs agreement. At the same time, having never had to take “no” for an answer – and after receiving a series of nods and winks that hinted that membership might one day come – Turkey’s expectation of eventual EU integration became increasingly palpable.

But ordinary Europeans have begun looking at maps, and the geography that they see cannot be denied: 95% of Turkey’s territory and 80% of its population is in Asia. As a result, the fierce and lively debate – in Turkey and much more emphatically in the EU – about whether Turkey really belongs to Europe has continued, despite the start of negotiations.

Of course, the question of Turkey’s European identity cannot be answered with geography lessons. At least half of the body of Greek theater and philosophy was produced in Asia Minor. The first Christian evangelization trips of Saint Peter and Saint Paul were to Turkey. Later, Ottoman Turkey was for centuries considered a part of the “concert of Europe,” proving indispensable in defining and securing the strategic balance among the European continent’s Great Powers.

Yet this historical evidence is not enough to unite European sentiment in favor of Turkey’s EU membership. On the contrary, “the Turkish Question” will be resolved on the basis of the current political preoccupations and concerns for the future. Fortunately, that choice was not settled prematurely and peremptorily: the process that will lead to a final decision was merely allowed to start with the opening of negotiations.

Membership talks can’t help but be long and arduous, if only because adopting the acquis communautaire (the body of EU law) requires that Turkey integrate around 10,000 pages of texts into its legislation. However, all this now seems to have a serious chance of succeeding.

And yet Turkey scares countless Europeans. With 67 million people today, and a population that will reach 80 million in 20 years and 100 million in 2050, Turkey is bound to become the most populous of all European nations. It is also a very poor Muslim country.

To be sure, a few countries in Europe, mainly Germany and Austria, have welcomed strong inflows of Turkish immigration. But the immigrants have been mostly poor peasants from Anatolia, whose integration has proven to be difficult. By contrast, Turkey’s large, secular intellectual community, whose cultural background is European, and from which the Turkish state recruits most of its executives, has remained in Istanbul and Ankara.

Europe, then, is frightened by the prospect of more immigration by Turks who find it almost impossible to assimilate. For the moment, such immigration has almost stopped, owing to rapid economic growth – indeed, the fastest in Europe – in recent years, which is absorbing the country’s available labor and has thus stemmed the flow of emigrants. Yet the fear remains that membership in the Union will unleash a new human tide.

Economic fears are not the only concern for EU citizens. Turkey was the theater of exceptional violence in the twentieth century: its participation in WWI fueled hatred and gigantic massacres, with the genocide of the Armenians the last vicious spasm of the Ottoman Empire’s brutal demise.

Moreover, while Kemal Ataturk restored Turkish national pride by creating the secular Turkish republic, his legacy is mixed, for it includes both Turkey’s strong attraction to the West and a militarization of public life. The latter explains much of the repressive attitude towards free speech and independent opinion that has characterized much of Turkish public life – a straitjacket that has left little room for real negotiations with Turkey’s restless Kurds or for resolving the division of Cyprus.

But Turkey’s EU aspirations mean that it is now being forced to demilitarize its democracy and to find negotiated and peaceful agreements with all its neighbors and future partners – Armenians, Kurds, and Cypriots. Thus, if Europe manages to overcome its fears and hesitations and open itself to a powerful Muslim state, it will consolidate peace in one of the world’s most dangerous regions.

Indeed, by integrating Turkey, Europe would show that it is not a Christian club, that the supposed “clash of civilizations” need not be fatal, and that the European project, born out of a desire for reconciliation and the need to promote development, can spread its benefits far beyond the Western half of Europe. In opening itself to Turkey, the EU would finally begin to play its proper role in confronting today’s most daunting political challenges.