Which Turkey in What Europe?

“A tempest in a teapot” is perhaps the best description of the recent squabbles about opening the European Union’s accession negotiations with Turkey. The election in Germany was in part fought on the issue, as Chancellor Angela Merkel ran on a platform of offering Turkey a “privileged partnership,” rather than full admission. The Austrian government’s posturing – motivated as much by its upcoming elections as genuine foreign policy concerns – seemed to threaten the opening of the accession talks themselves.

But German foreign policy has always been marked by continuity, and the new foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, the chief of staff under former Chancellor Gerhard Schröder, has repeatedly advocated full membership for Turkey. It is thus unlikely that the Grand Coalition will adopt a different political approach towards Turkey than the previous Red-Green government.

After a bit of drama, Austria also gave up its opposition to the accession talks, in exchange for a promise of admission for Croatia, and the intra-European squabbles have been patched up. So the British, under Tony Blair’s current presidency of the EU Council of Ministers, have gotten their way for now, and the Americans – keen backers of Turkey’s EU aspirations – have once again succeeded in acting as a “European power.” Accession negotiations with Turkey are now a fact.

But much of the debate about Turkey’s possible accession has been focused on the wrong issues: whether Turkey is culturally “in line” with Europe or whether Europe is in some sense “Christian” and could assimilate 100 million Muslims. The real issue – not disputed even by most Turks – is that Turkey is neither economically ready nor, above all, a mature enough democracy for full EU membership.

and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, Turkey’s prime minister, can place his trust in the near automatic mechanisms that characterize the EU’s instDespite substantial progress, democratization is only a torso. Human and civil rights still do not meet Western European standards, religious and ethnic minorities are recognized only on paper, acknowledgment of the historic genocide of the Armenians is given mere lip service, and civilian control over the military remains weak.

Raising this long list of shortcomings puts Western critics in an uncomfortable position with their pro-European Turkish interlocutors. Turkey’s pro-Western forces find just as much fault with their country’s political system as the European critics, but they expect the prospect of EU membership to accelerate the progress of reforms. Nationalist Turks, on the other hand, regard joining the EU mainly as a confirmation of national power and view all criticism of the country as a violation of Turks’ collective honor.

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Had the start of accession negotiations been postponed or canceled, Turkey’s pro-Europeans would have suffered from a nationalist backlash. Even now, Turkey’s unrequited love for Europe can still fade into aversion, with Islamic fundamentalism and Greater Turkey nationalism continuing to represent other, eastward-leaning options.

Advocates of a conditioned accession are thus under extraordinary pressure to be nice, even as Turkish officials stage provocations, like the recent suit against the noted author Orhan Pamuk for “public denigration of Turkish identity” because he dared to question the official position on the Armenian genocide. As a result, a general lack of clarity about what kind of Turkey should be accepted characterizes the accession debate, which focuses – much as in the recent referenda on the EU constitution in France and the Netherlands – on rather meaningless generalities.

But, more importantly, the lack of clarity on the Turkish accession question reflects Europe’s ambivalence regarding its image of itself. To be sure, Turkey shows substantial political and cultural differences, especially when it comes to the importance of civil society, sexual equality, and the role of religion in public life. But the real question is this: what kind of Europe do Europeans themselves want?

“Deepening” and “widening” European integration are the superficial opposites here. Austria does not want any more members – with the inconsistent exception of Croatia – but wants to deepen the EU’s political and cultural unity. Many “old” Europeans, including Germany after Schröder’s resignation and France under a weakened Jacques Chirac, share that stance. Britain, the leading nation of “new” Europe, has no desire for an EU constitution, more executive and parliamentary power in Brussels, a stronger European Parliament, or the euro.

Like many new members, Britain prefers a loosely connected Europe of different nations – essentially a free-trade zone, but with open borders at its periphery – with sufficient strategic coordination to constitute a quasi-empire in geopolitical terms, on a par with the United States. The fundamental difference is that a loosely tied Union is attractive to all sorts of aspirants, including Georgia, Ukraine, and other Soviet successor states – and perhaps even North African countries like Morocco – while a “deepened” Europe, with a clear political identity, high social-welfare entitlements, and growing cultural homogeneity, would naturally set itself apart and not be particularly attractive to these countries.

Paradoxically, then, what the British, with their opposition to “deepening” European integration, are really offering the Turks is precisely the sort of “privileged partnership” that Austria, together with Angela Merkel, has been backing. Both positions reject the idea of making Turkey really “European.”

The structure that Britain seems to have in mind is, according to some, reminiscent of the loose alliance binding the British Commonwealth. But “History’s ruse” could be that even as the British succeed in improving Turkey’s prospects for admission, the renegotiation of the Nice treaty, which will become necessary if Croatia is admitted, is likely to lead to stronger European integration. Thus, what we may get is both deepening and widening of the EU – something that today seems like squaring the circle.

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