Europe's Turkish Conundrum.

• Author: Poprzeczny, Joseph
• Position: 168619625
• Pages: 51(6)

Is the 71-million-strong, nominally secular, Turkish state suited to become a fully-fledged member of the European Union (EU)? That is a question which increasing numbers of European politicians and voters are asking themselves and will continue to ask over coming years, with many already concluding in the negative.

And this despite Turkey having been a NATO member since 1952, ongoing commercial ties with the EU and its predecessor, the European Common Market (ECM), plus a sizeable Turkish minority living within the EU's borders, especially Germany's, since the 1960s. Not widely known is that Turkey was the first country outside the ECM's six foundation members to seek membership in 1960. When it realized this would not happen, it gained associate status in 1963, following Israel.

It is perhaps also worth recalling that when Turkey was at the centre of the powerful Ottoman Empire, its formidable armies besieged Vienna twice--in 1529 and 1683--first under Sultan Suleiman I (the magnificent) and then under Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha. The intention, in 1683 at least, was to establish an Islamic fiefdom that stretched across central Europe--the lands of present-day Austria and Bavaria.

If the Hussars of Poland's King Jan III Sobieski (1629-1696) hadn't arrived in the nick of time to help rout the Ottomans outside Vienna's walls, Europe would now be Islamised in part or in whole from the Atlantic to the Polish-Russian border, and resemble, on a larger scale, multi-ethnic present-day Bosnia-Herzegovina, with Muslims in the majority. Instead, Austria's Habsburgs, through the military genius of French-born Prince Eugene of Savoy (1663-1736), who fought with Sobieski outside besieged Vienna, steadily rolled back the 200year Ottoman advance into the heart of Europe, southwards towards Belgrade.

Thereafter, Austria's Holy Roman Empress Maria Theresa (1717-1780) and her son Joseph II (1714-1790) fostered costly ongoing colonisation programmes to re-Europeanise or re-Christianise Hungarian and northern Balkan lands which were largely depopulated and Islamised, as Spain had been until the late fifteenth century. It was only in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that Turkey was finally forced out of all of Greece, the spiritual home of Western art, literature and philosophy, and out of neighbouring lands which it had held for centuries.

The EU's final decision on Turkey, whether for full membership or a special status, which may involve referendums in all member states, therefore promises to be a truly historic one since it could be viewed as an accommodation of two earlier Turkish attempts to enter Europe, even if under markedly different terms and circumstances. Although there is nothing...