I was looking at the Times today and happened upon this article on the latest development in Turkey, a judge banned an openly Islamic candidate from running. Well, what really amused me and got me thinking was that Turkish news was obviously filed in the World section, and also, if you look at the top of the article, in the Europe section. I feel like the Times has implicitly already made its decision regarding Turkey’s Europeanness or lack thereof (if only prompted by the paper’s format forcing them to).
It is an interesting question, that of Europeanness, and it really makes one wonder what the criteria for inclusion are. It is almost certainly not linguistic, comprising Indo-European, Finno-Ugric, and Semitic languages. If one posits common bonds of history, one must note that the greatest portion of the EU is outside the bounds of the Roman Empire which really was the foundational culture of Britain, Iberia, France, and Italy. It is clearly not ethnic, comprising a large variety of ethnically-diverse states. Nor is it wealth, when one looks at the huge disparities between western Europe and the former Soviet states.
The question becomes under what criteria may the Turkish legitimately be kept out. One certainly cannot appeal to a “common culture”; what, precisely, do the Danes share with the Greeks, or the Spanish with the Latvians? Not to mention that any “common culture” broadly construed enough to justify the current members would call for the admission of the North African nations (Morocco’s application was already rejected) and could even be taken to include Israel or Canada. The closely-related idea of a “common history” is also clearly so much hogwash, for the same reasons. If it is a matter of geography, Turkey does in fact bridge Asia and Europe, so it seems kind of silly.
Given the untenability of the aforementioned criteria for Europeanness, one wonders if it really is a religious one. For all the differences between “Europe”, they are all predominantly and historically Christian nations (be they Catholic, Protestant, or Orthodox). In fact, if one looks at a map of dominant religions in Europe, one will see that the only nations with strong historical Muslim populations are exactly the ones not in the EU (Turkey and the western Balkans). Granted, this is by no means a guarantee that this is the reason (the western Balkans have disqualifying problems enough), but it is a possibility that I think has some legitimacy. It is not a matter of strong anti-Muslim views, but perhaps a desire of moderate or liberal middle-class citizens to keep Muslims out of their neighborhoods; it is a form of discrimination very familiar to Americans.
In that context, one must appreciate the bind that the Turkish government finds itself in. In suppressing its Muslim identity, it hopes to bring itself closer to Europe, however uncertain the hope of membership might be. However, the more it does so, the less democratic and thus less acceptable it becomes as a candidate state. Furthermore, there is the obvious danger of alienating its own population. All in all, an unenviable situation.
-Alex Copulsky, Layout Editor