Turkey and the enlargement of the European mind

The relationship between Turkey and the European Union (EU) attracted much attention in the closing months of 1997. A fierce debate raged round what appeared to be an abstruse point. This was whether Turkey, an associate member of the European Economic Community (as it then was) since 1963 and, as such, deemed officially to be eligible for full membership (for which it had applied in 1987), should be included in the list of candidates for enlargement. The unwillingness of the European Union to name Turkey as a candidate for full membership, even on the understanding that its case would not come up until the second round of enlargement when the applications of Balkan countries would be discussed, some time in the twenty-first century, left the distinct impression that European diplomats were not candid in explaining their reservations. In 1989/90, when the European Community refused to entertain Turkey's application, economic disparities, in other words the backwardness of the Turkish economy, were cited as the main obstacle. Now, it was violations of human rights in Turkey, and Turkey's disagreements with Greece over the Aegean and Cyprus. True, these problems had not prevented the conclusion between the EU and Turkey of a customs union which came into effect on 1 January 1996. But full membership would mean integration. And Germany, to give but one instance, which had found it difficult to integrate two million Turkish workers and their dependants,l shuddered at the thought of extending European citizenship to 63 million2 of their compatriots. Nor was it only a question of numbers. Europe, a Christian Democrat politician declared, was a 'civilisational project'.3 Turkey belonged to a different civilization. But did it? A number of recently published books could help answer the question. In Turkey's Relations with a Changing Europe,4 Meltem Miiftiiler-Bac provides a competent account of the ups and downs of the relationship between Turkey and the EEC/EC/EU up to the entry into force of the customs union. When the association agreement was signed in Ankara in September 1963, the European Commission president Walter Hallstein declared that Turkey was part of Europe (p.5). As Muftuler-Bac points out, the agreement was signed for political reasons. 'For the EC, it was a way of