Who is European?
All of which brings us back to the question "What is Europe?" If it is the embodiment of an idea of a set of political principles and democratic values, similar to those that form the political foundation of the United States, there is no reason why Turkey - or anyone else - cannot join the European Union when its political and economic system is mature enough. These values are enshrined in the so-called "Copenhagen criteria" for new EU candidates, named after the 1993 EU summit in Copenhagen at which they were adopted.
However, a lot of Europeans see the question of Turkey's membership quite differently. Otherwise dedicated to the proposition of erasing national and ethnic boundaries within Europe, many EU supporters draw the line at Muslim Turkey with its large and fast-growing population and its geographic location between Europe and Asia. Former French President Valery Giscard D'Estaing, who heads the committee that is now writing the new European constitution, expressed it bluntly in an interview. Turkey has "a different culture, a different approach," he said, "It is not a European country . . . In my opinion, [Turkish membership] would be the end of the European Union."
"Europe is a continent, an Asian appendix, with a Christian faith," so Nikolau Lobkowicz, director of the Center for the Study of Europe at the University of Eichstatt, Germany, said recently at a conference on EU enlargement organized by the Italian Fondazione Liberal. "Western and Central Europe have always been part of Catholicism and free from the Ottoman Empire. To this, they all owe their European character." This does not sound hopeful for the Turks.
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washtimes.com
Who knows, one day, the Turks may eventually understand that --contrary to the American model-- one doesn't become European: either you are European or, because of your ancestry/background, you are not, and hence never will.... Out of the 2.5 million Turks living in Germany, only 500,000 were granted German citizenship, but that doesn't make them genuine Germans/Europeans. They're at best, to quote far-right leader JM Le Pen, paper Germans/Europeans.
Anyway, the irony might be that, in a couple of years from now, Turkey will do a U-turn vis-a-vis Europe and stay clear from a geopolitical bloc mired in social and economic troubles... Politically speaking, the final stage of Europe will likely be a replica of the United Nations --let's call it, the United Nations of Europe (UNE). That is, a comprehensive body of 25+ nation-states supervised by an exclusive European Security Council made up of UNE heavies (France, Germany, Britain, Italy and Spain). Of course, in order to give the UNE bureaucracy a human face, a figurehead will be picked by the same UNE heavies to handle the media/PR job --a UNE Secretary-General of sorts. Accordingly, and unlike the US President, the UNE Secretary-General will never act or speak in his/her own capacity but always on behalf of his/her "godfathers"....
Socioeconomically speaking, I'm afraid the UNE will resemble Latin America, that is, a social fabric based on segregation --as opposed to the US co-optation model....
Gus |
