28/9/2007
EU and Turkey – It’s not about Culture, Stupid! Contributed Article by Ole Frahm

When German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Nicolas Sarkozy met at the Franco-German summit two weeks ago at Meseberg, Turkey was once again part of the agenda – as it seemingly has been on every other occasion in the last couple of months. While disagreement over other issues including energy privatisation and the Franco-German spaceship agency has been mounting between the two conservative leaders, they remain unified in their stance on further EU enlargement: Turkey, since October 2005 formally involved in accession negotiations, is not supposed to become a full member. Instead, a rather loosely defined “privileged partnership” is to be instated, which would in all likeliness not mean a substantial upgrade over the already existing “de facto” privileged partnership centred around a Customs Union in place since 1996.

Much has been made of the domestic political motives for opposing Turkish EU membership. Turks or men and women of Turkish origin are by far the largest ethnic minority group in Germany and the German perception of these former guest workers and their descendants does in fact provide the lens through which Turkey as a whole is being seen and portrayed. And in the current atmosphere of mistrust towards Islam and Muslims, the fact that 99% of Turks are nominally Muslim combined with Central Europeans’ collective memory of centuries of struggle against the Ottoman empire, make it a lot easier for Europeans to conceive of Turkey as ‘the other’. A negative ‘other’ that Sarkozy’s proposed “Council of Wise Men”, would desperately need in order to fulfil its task of defining the external borders of the European Union. For it is of yet unclear what constitutes the positive essence that connects Finland and Greece, Spain and Latvia and that sets them apart from Ukraine, Israel or, say, Turkey. 

Columnists ranging from the Daily Telegraph to Le Monde, from Frankfurter Allgemeine to Rzeczpospolita have argued that this sought after essence of the EU is its Christian heritage. Thus, it is not so much that the vast majority of the EU’s citizens profess to the Christian faith (a claim probably only justified for Poland and maybe Ireland) but that their intellectual, legal and ethical traditions are based on and grounded in Christianity. Now, that is a very interesting postulation, indeed.

First of all, the bases of today’s serious intellectual and academic discourse in Europe – no matter which field you take – are the Enlightenment and its liberation of the church’s dogmatic yoke. Hence, freedom from religious thought control and the separation of the state’s organs from those of the church are crucial to the European ideological tradition. As a friend from Sarajevo once told me: “To be considered ‘Bosnian Muslim’, you don’t have to be Muslim. You just have to have been Muslim – either yourself or your parents or grandparents.” Analogously, being ‘EU-ropean’ would therefore primarily require to have lost your Christian belief somewhere in your genealogical line.

For one, such a line of development – if one subscribes to the claim at all – can hardly be construed for the totality of current EU member states and societies. The church-state-society relationship has followed along quite varied trajectories, differed vastly in their dates of departure and still today, the church has managed to preserve a strong political influence in a number of countries, in particular in Orthodox (e.g. Greece) and Catholic (Poland) ones. Additionally, it would appear that events from the not-so-distant past should receive more weight in our evaluation of cultural factors than wobbly notions of a presumed common heritage. If Nazi Germany’s extermination of millions of Jews, if French, Belgian, British and Dutch colonial atrocities, if Poland’s, Hungary’s and Romania’s Communist oppression do not prevent them from being EU-members, then what should impede Turkey from joining?

But even if we accept the contention that a societal movement of alienation from religious pre-dominance is what constitutes the EU’s heart and soul, Turkey still cannot be excluded from the club. Atatürk’s reforms of the 1920s, abolishing the caliphate, introducing a liberal education system and legally ensuring the equality of men and women seem to qualify as being in the European tradition of laicité. Today, a broad segment of Turkish society supports the secular nature of the state – including many devout Muslims. Prime Minister Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP), in power since 2001, has so far steered a very pro-EU course, passing a number of laws to accommodate EU legislation and being a staunch supporter of EU membership.

Whatever the motivation behind Turkey’s recent European policy, which culminated in the fulfilment of the Copenhagen criteria and the opening of accession talks, the EU has never been as relevant in Turkey before. As soon as a realistic membership perspective is abandoned, however – e.g. by the threat of a French popular veto – much of the EU’s clout, credibility and bargaining power will be lost.

As a whole, European leaders should therefore show more honesty about their intentions when dealing with Turkey, not least for their own sake. The EU will only then be reckoned with as a reliable global political actor if it can disprove the notion that a change in government in a single member country may alter the course and content of its overall foreign policy. If Turkey, which borders many of the most explosive areas in Europe’s vicinity and is home to Europe’s largest army, ought to be left out of a European Union seeking a global political role, we will have to furnish proper convincing arguments to sustain that case. Alleged cultural-religious difference will not do!