Book review

Citation

Rankin, A. (2004), "Book review", European Business Review, Vol. 16 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ebr.2004.05416aab.005

Book review

Turkey and the European Union: Domestic Politics, Economic Integration and International Dynamics

Edited by Ali Carkoglu and Barry RubinFrank CassLondon/Portland, OR2003ISBN 0 7146 8335 3 (paper); 0 7146 5402 7 (cloth)Review DOI 10.1108/09555340410512466

Turkey and the European Union provides the specialist reader or the student with an informative, but never doctrinaire, rigorous, yet highly readable collection of essays. They are mainly written by Turkish scholars, a fact that is refreshing in itself, and address the range of political and economic issues associated with Turkey’s relationship with, and proposed entry to, the European Union (EU).

The relationship between Turkey and the EU is complex, fraught with ambiguity and characterised by ambivalence and paradox. For example, the Kemalist emphasis on secularism was intended by Ataturk to refashion Turkey as a modern and “European” nation. Today, the diligence with which secular ideology is enforced provokes serious clashes between the Turkish state and the EU’s bureaucratic-legal complex for restricting the liberties of Islamic radicals, and often more moderate religious and cultural movements. (Ataturk banned the contemplative Sufi orders, for example; these operate freely in countries like Syria, which are otherwise less democratic than Turkey.) One might previously have thought that Kemalism and pro-EU sentiment would go hand in hand. However the relationship is far more complicated than that, because the pan-Europeanist ideology challenges Ataturk’s ideal of the sovereign, unified nation-state.

Turkish opponents of EU membership recognise that joining the EU could transform Turkey’s political culture and might even lead to the break-up of Turkey as we know it, along ethnic or linguistic lines. Most of the Turkish Euro-sceptics, it seems, are secular nationalists. Islamists, ironically, look eagerly towards Brussels and Strasbourg, as do the revolutionary left, still a force to be reckoned with in Turkey, and Kurdish separatists who seek understandably to right a historic injustice. Secular nationalists who oppose the EU are not opposed in principle to forming confederations or co-operation with their neighbours. Many see Turkey’s true interests lying in Central Asia, with the Turkic-speaking peoples of the former Soviet Union. Central Asia is rich in human talent and natural resources, and there are some strong, attractive arguments for a Turkic bloc, such as containing fundamentalism, ending Central Asian isolation and strengthening civil society and democratic institutions in all the participating nations.

Those who look to Central Asia might also justly reflect that it is decisions made in Europe that have caused some of the region’s serious problems. It was Europeans, after all, who carved up the Ottoman Empire, creating by a series of lines on the map artificial and chronically disunited nations, such as neighbouring Iraq[1]. It was Europe, indeed, that set the boundaries of modern Turkey, including the problematic incorporation of the Kurds. A Turkey looking eastwards might be able to resolve its Kurdish question more equitably and without a national loss of face. Instead of being a somewhat hesitant player, straddling two continents, Turkey might emerge as a positive, confident power in which democratic humanism and Islamic spirituality were properly reconciled.

There are a lot of “ifs” and “mights” in such a vision. For the moment, it remains a minority current, albeit a powerful, persuasive minority that is boosted by the EU’s intransigence. Turkey’s political class is, as this book shows, still Europhile in the main, its members crestfallen and puzzled by European negativity. To the political and cultural elite, there is a strong and emotional westward pull, a wish to prove that Turks are Europeans at heart, although most of Turkey is geographically in Asia. The defensive Europeanism of Westernised Turks throws into relief an unsettling but unspoken question underlying the arguments addressed in this book. That question is “what is Europe?”

At some level, many Westerners see Turkey as largely, or entirely, non-European, an enigmatic, vaguely threatening Other. This view has strong historical and cultural underpinnings, deriving largely from religious difference. Looked at from one standpoint, these objections look increasingly weak. Western Europe today is scarcely a confidently “Christian” culture. Shared values derived from Classical Antiquity and the Judaeo-Christian heritage have yielded in many areas to an inflexible “liberal” fundamentalism in the elite and a pagan insouciance among the masses. Besides, as the work of cultural historians like Ziauddin Sardar reminds us, there have been times when Islam has played a pivotal role in European development. The Muslim, including Turkish, population of Europe is rising and is becoming politically confident[2]. Most of Europe’s Muslims are not fundamentalists at all, despite the lurid headlines that some groups generate. Many, indeed, have come to Europe to escape from oppressive theocracy. A form of European Islam is evolving, and with it a powerful electoral lobby for which politicians of left, right and centre will have to compete.

However understated, the “Islamic factor” underlies certain Western perceptions about Turkey, including the idea that Turkey is not a natural candidate for EU membership. This cultural objection is now quite flimsy. It is overlaid by a series of complex political, economic and demographic anxieties. In Western Europe, some believe that a westward movement of population from Turkey would contribute to economic prosperity and at the same time solve the “demographic time bomb” caused by an ageing labour force. Others fear the political instability, and cultural conflict, that can so often arise from large-scale immigration and the backlash against it. Conversely, some Turkish commentators welcome the opportunities that free movement of capital and labour would bring, whilst others fear a brain drain.

These arguments about Turkey reflect a wider anxiety about the EU enlargement and the challenge of uniting peoples with differing historical experiences and, in some cases, differing values. The Eurocentric question, “is Turkey ready for Europe?” can be inverted to “is Europe ready for Turkey?” Absorption of the former Communist states will create for the EU many stresses as well as benefits. But Turkish accession would alter the whole of the EU project and send its designers back to the drawing board.

The problem of European-drawn borders has plagued other areas of the postcolonial world, especially Africa. There, historic nations such as the Yoruba and the Hausa have been divided by European boundaries, whilst rival or even hostile nations have been artificially unified. For a case study of the effects of these borders, see Oguntimoju (2002)

In some European nations, such as Albania and Bosnia-Herzegovina, Muslims are the majority or largest minority of the population.

Aidan RankinEditor, New European, London, UK