Asharq Alawsat (The Middle East), UK
May 2 2008
Sarkozy is Wrong About Turkey
02/05/2008
By Amir Taheri
`I am no ideologue,’ insists French President Nicolas Sarkozy at every
opportunity. He was doing so the other evening during a 90-minute long
live television exposé marking the first anniversary of his
election victory. By saying he is no ideologue, the French leader
tries to present himself as a pragmatic politician, open to argument
and ready to admit errors. This was what he did during his TV
marathon. On at least six occasions, referring to various aspects of
his policies, he said: I admit I made an error!
There was, however, one issue on which Sarkozy sounded like an
ideologue: Turkey’s application for membership of the European
Union. Sarkozy has opposed Turkish membership for years, a position he
emphasised during his campaign last year.
Hoping that Sarkozy is open to argument, let us see if we could
persuade him to change his mind for to shut Turkey out of the EU is
harmful to both.
Sarkozy’s key argument is based on geography. He insists that Turkey
is not `in Europe’. However, the EU is an economic and political club,
not a geographical one. Geographically, Switzerland is in the heart of
Europe but not in the EU. Norway and Iceland are also European in
terms of geography but neither wishes to join the EU. Albania,
Croatia, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Macedonia, Serbia, Montenegro, Moldova
and Ukraine are all geographically in Europe and wish to join the EU
but cannot because membership requires something more than
geography. Belarus is in Europe but the EU would not touch it with a
bargepole because it lacks the minimum political qualifications.
As far as the conventional geographical description of Europe is
concerned, only five per cent of Turkish territory is European. But
Europe is not always defined in such narrow terms. Turkey is a
founding member of the Council of Europe, a body that includes
countries such as Georgia, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Kazakhstan that
have no geographical connection with the continent.
Should the fact that a part of a country’s territory falls outside the
traditional geographical limits of Europe automatically exclude it
from EU membership?
There is no such rule in any of the treaties that have produced the EU
since 1949. If such a rule were to be established, Russia, most of
whose territory is geographically in Asia, could never consider
joining the EU. Denmark would also be excluded because its vast
possessions in Greenland are far away from the continent. France
itself has quite a few overseas possessions in the Americas, Africa,
Asia and Australasia.
When France, in association with West Germany, Italy and the Benelux
countries, was building the future EU it still regarded Algeria as two
if its provinces. That meant that only a quarter of French territory
was actually located in Europe at the time.
Turkey has strong geographical links with Europe.
It has land and sea borders with five European nations: Russia,
Ukraine, Moldova Romania, Bulgaria and Greece (the last three are
members of the EU).
Turkey controls the vital link between two key European waters: the
Black Sea and the Aegean, and occupies a strategic position on the
Mediterranean, the heart of European civilisation.
Turkey’s historic ties with Europe are even stronger.
Several of the earliest European states, including those of the
Hittites and the Greeks, were located in Anatolia. For many centuries,
the Ottoman Empire, based on present-day Turkey, was a major European
power with a leading role in the Balkans. In the 19th century, when
Western Europeans called the Ottoman Empire `the sick man of Europe’,
they never questioned its place in the continent.
Furthermore, ethnically, Turkey is predominantly European. The
majority of the population are from Lydian, Hittite, Greek, and
Thracian stock with addition from Slavs, Armenians, Caucasian nations,
and, of course, Turkic peoples from central Asia. If Turks were
`Asiatic’ as Sarkozy implies, they would look like Kazakhs, Uzbeks or
Koreans rather than southern Europeans.
Sarkozy might point out that the Turkish language is not European.
That is true. Turkish belongs to the Altaic family of languages while
all but three European languages come from the Indo-European
family. The EU, however, is not a linguistic club either. If it were,
Finland and Hungary, whose national languages are not Indo-Europeans,
would be excluded. France itself, along with Spain, is home to the
Basque language that is also `alien’ because it is not related to any
European linguistic family.
In any case, there are already more Turkish speakers within the
current EU than there are Bulgarian, Catalonian, Czech, Danish,
Estonian, Finnish, Gallic, Greek, Hungarian, Latvian, Lithuanian,
Maltese, Portuguese, Swedish, or Slovenian speakers.
Turkish is already a major EU language thanks to the presence of an
estimated 12 million Turkish immigrants. Only seven of the EU’s 25
recognised languages, German, French, English, Italian, Spanish,
Polish and Romanian, are spoken in its present boundaries by a larger
number of people.
There is one other factor that Sarkozy takes into account, albeit
without giving it headline treatment: Turkey is a majority Muslim
nation.
However, that factor, too, need not exclude Turkey.
Islam is already the second religion of the EU in terms of the number
of its adepts. France itself is home to some six million Muslims. In
22 of the 27 current EU members, Muslims represent the largest
religious minority. Islam may also be the fastest growing faith in EU
in terms of demography. Some scholars project Islam to become a
majority faith in Europe within the current century.
However, the EU is not a Christian club either. If it were it would
have to exclude its 2.5 million Jews as well as its 20 million
Muslims, not to mention millions who practice no faith at all. Should
Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, where Muslims form majorities, never
become EU members? Both have already started the preliminary stages of
applying for membership.
If there are no objective reasons to keep Turkey out of the EU, there
are many reasons to support its candidacy.
The EU is Turkey’s largest trading partner. It is also the biggest
foreign investor in the Turkish economy. Some 80 per cent of visitors
to Turkey come from the EU while the EU is the number-one destination
for Turks doing business, receiving education or holidaying abroad.
It is not only by adopting the Latin alphabet that Turkey has tried to
draw closer to Europe. It has adopted the democratic system, is
building a secular republic and promoting a culture of
pluralism. Trying to meet EU conditions, Turkey has reformed its
cultural, social, and economic policies, and judicial system (the
process is known as mise-a-niveau or bringing up to standard). Today,
Turkey is closer to EU standards than many of the current members.
As already mentioned, Turkey is a founding member of the Council of
Europe. But it is also a founding ember of the North Atlantic Treaty
Organisation (NATO) and provides its second largest army. No so long
ago, Turkey led NATO’s efforts to stabilise post-Taliban Afghanistan.
Sarkozy is wrong on Turkey, and the sooner he admits it the better for
all concerned.
Amir Taheri was born in Iran and educated in Tehran, London and
Paris. Between 1980 and 1984 he was Middle East editor for the London
Sunday Times. Taheri has been a contributor to the International
Herald Tribune since 1980. He has also written for The Wall Street
Journal, The New York Times, and The Washington Post. Taheri has
published nine books some of which have been translated into 20
languages, and In 1988 Publishers” Weekly in New York chose his study
of Islamist terrorism, "Holy Terror", as one of The Best Books of The
Year. He has been a columnist Asharq Alawsat since 1987
2&id=12615