European Student Think Tank

Myth 4: Tur­key is not in Europe.

Is Tur­key in Europe? If you ask Turko-skeptics, it def­in­itely is not. The pop­u­lar rhet­oric is that only 3% of the Turk­ish land mass is in Europe and that does not qual­ify it as a “European” coun­try. It is true that the per­cent­age of Turk­ish ter­rit­ory on “European con­tin­ent” is rel­at­ively small. How­ever, if a country’s right to EU- mem­ber­ship would be based on ter­rit­orial grounds than there would be even less jus­ti­fic­a­tion for the mem­ber­ship of Cyprus, which has no land con­nec­tion to “the con­tin­ent”. How­ever the prob­lem with this argu­ment – Tur­key not being in Europe- is not about the per­cent­ages. The prob­lem is lim­it­ing “Europe” to geo­graphy whereas ignor­ing polit­ical, eco­nomic, cul­tural, social, edu­ca­tional Europe and the Europe of val­ues. In the fol­low­ing parts let us look at the reas­ons why a geo­graph­ical approach to Europe is espe­cially pop­u­lar when it comes to coun­ter­ing the Turk­ish bid to the EU and then move on to the dis­cus­sion whether Tur­key is in Europe, or in what kind of Europe.

European Geo­graphy

The geo­graph­ical fron­ti­ers of Europe have always been inde­term­in­ate and arbit­rary. One his­tor­ical geo­grapher actu­ally notes that the very term, the “Con­tin­ent of Europe” is a mis­nomer, because accord­ing to the most recent, that is nine­teenth cen­tury, recog­nized defin­i­tion of ‘con­tin­ent’, it should be a mass of land sur­roun­ded by seas: ‘The notion of a “con­tin­ent” was formed in that Medi­ter­ranean civil­iz­a­tion (The ancient Greeks and the Romans etc..) but does not fit its own self-description as the ‘‘con­tin­ent of Europe’’.[1]

For the European polit­ical pro­ject which we now call the EU, geo­graphy is not irrel­ev­ant but as we have wit­nessed through­out its 60 years of his­tory, it is not strict either. Start­ing with a lim­ited num­ber of core states, the pro­ject has expan­ded to include almost the entire “Con­tin­ent” and even an island state with which it does not share any land con­nec­tion at all. This is a clear indic­a­tion that geo­graphy is a part of our under­stand­ing of Europe yet it does not have as clear and well defined cri­teria as in the case of the polit­ical, fin­an­cial and norm­at­ive aspects of the EU. Does this answer whether Tur­key is in Europe or not? Not entirely, but when one asks if Tur­key is in Europe the answer should include geo­graphy but should not be lim­ited to it. Oth­er­wise it will clearly under­es­tim­ate the vis­ion and true mean­ing of Europe and the Union. 

Pop­ular­ity of geography

Why is the geo­graphy argu­ment pop­u­lar? The answer is simple: this is the least favor­able cri­teria for Tur­key. Fur­ther­more, unless they decide to “invade” (!) new ter­rit­or­ies in “Europe”, the Turks can­not solve this ter­rit­orial prob­lem. Nat­ur­ally, even the Turks under­stand that this would not be a very bright idea.

It is true that Tur­key does not lie at the heart of “European “geo­graphy” but it is equally true that when Cyprus, Esto­nia or Mol­dova received the ticket to the EU, the geo­graphy argu­ment was not of great import­ance. There are vari­ous aspects of Europe and the new or poten­tial mem­bers are expec­ted to uphold cer­tain cri­teria to be able to become a part of this community. 

On the other hand, as Europe is an entity lar­ger than the ter­rit­orial under­stand­ing it entails, the involve­ment of Tur­key in vari­ous com­ple­ment­ary aspects of Europe are dif­fer­ent. In other words, Tur­key is a part of eco­nomic Europe, social Europe, edu­ca­tional Europe and it is try­ing to become a part of polit­ical Europe and Europe of values.

Many Europes

Without going into detail, I would say that it is a well estab­lished fact that Tur­key is already an integ­ral part of Eco­nomic Europe. Cus­toms agree­ment, high volume of tour­ism industry and con­stantly increas­ing levels of trade has already made Tur­key a part of Europe.  Moreover, it could even be argued that Tur­key is even ‘more part’ of Eco­nomic Europe than sev­eral mem­bers of the Union.

Every year thou­sands of European stu­dents come to Tur­key and an even higher num­ber of Turk­ish stu­dents go to vari­ous EU coun­tries. Exchange pro­grams, dif­fer­ent EU-funded edu­ca­tion pro­jects that take place at vari­ous edu­ca­tion levels, vis­it­ing and per­man­ent schol­ars on each side, all  strengthen the ties cre­ated via edu­ca­tion and proof the fact that Tur­key is already very much part of edu­ca­tional Europe.

When it comes to val­ues, the reform­a­tion pro­cess which achieved sig­ni­fic­ant pro­gress dur­ing early 2000s, yet faltered in the last couple years due to issues and prob­lems on both sides, provides the key for Tur­key to improve its place in Europe of val­ues. Tur­key wants to be an insep­ar­able part of the European val­ues sys­tem and it has taken ini­tial steps toward it even though sig­ni­fic­ant issues are await­ing atten­tion (Armenia, Cyprus, Kurds and other minor­it­ies). How­ever, European ambi­val­ence about the Turk­ish mem­ber­ship and the anti-Turkish rhet­oric of the lead­ing EU mem­bers cause fluc­tu­ation in Turk­ish gov­ern­ments’ efforts. It is dimin­ish­ing the very much needed polit­ical mor­ale to con­tinue reform­ing the prob­lem­atic areas.

Finally, Tur­key is not entirely in polit­ical Europe but that is the point of aspir­ing to be an EU mem­ber any­way. Until a coun­try is a mem­ber of the Union, its involve­ment in polit­ical Europe will be lim­ited. The Turk­ish gov­ern­ment is par­ti­cip­at­ing in vari­ous bod­ies of the European polit­ical sys­tem, the final step being full membership.

All in all, Europe is much big­ger than the geo­graphy argu­ment entails and Tur­key is a part of dif­fer­ent faces of Europe at dif­fer­ent degrees. The geo­graph­ical argu­ment against Tur­key is pop­u­lar as it is more vis­ible and more fixed yet it is also an area where in Europe has been rel­at­ively flex­ible in the past. What Tur­key needs to do is to main­tain and strengthen its pos­i­tion in eco­nomic, social, edu­ca­tional and espe­cially norm­at­ive Europe to pave the way to its integ­ra­tion in polit­ical Europe.

Related posts:

1. The Myths about Tur­key: Part I
   April 1st, 2011
2. The Myths about Tur­key: Part II
   April 3rd, 2011
3. The Myths about Tur­key: Part III
   April 5th, 2011
4. Rethink­ing the EU’s future: Two play­ers of a game, Tur­key and the EU
   March 14th, 2012
5. Turkey-EU Rela­tions at Crit­ical Cross­road
   Octo­ber 17th, 2012