Timothy Garton AshNovember 14, 2002When should Iraq join the European Union? A ridiculous question, you may say. But next month Europe's leaders will be talking very seriously about taking in Iraq's immediate neighbour, Turkey. If Turkey, why not, eventually, Iraq?
Because it is not a European country, you say. But is Turkey? By all conventional geography, only a tiny part of Turkey, our side of the Bosphorus, lies in Europe. Through much of European history, Europe defined itself against "the Turk", the Arabs and Islam. For the EU to cross the Bosphorus is already to cross a rubicon. This is to move from a community based on centuries-old notions of shared history and geography to one based on shared democratic standards and the future. Turkey, they say, is a "bridge" between Europe and the Middle East, but having stepped on to that bridge it would not be a much larger step - in terms of history and geography - to cross to Iraq.
Yet we may be right to step on to the bridge. The case for accepting Turkey is strong, especially in the post-9/11 world. It has everything to do with the "war against terrorism". This is not because Washington will need Turkish co-operation for the northern part of its planned three-prong invasion of Iraq, although it will. That must not sway Europe, one way or the other, in such a big decision. But if you are going to address the deeper causes of Islamist terrorism you need to show people in the Middle East the benefits that can flow to Muslims who accept the basic standards of democratic modernity. What better example could there be than the moderate Islamist party which just swept to power in free and fair elections in Turkey, which accepts the secular state, and whose leader will tomorrow start a tour of European capitals to press for his country's EU membership?
Of course, to join the EU you must be a democratic state, respecting human and minority rights. Obviously Iraq - less a haven for terrorists than a regime of state terror - is light years from that. But Turkey has also been far removed from the necessary standards. It has routinely persecuted its own dissidents, and especially its Kurds. Human Rights Watch notes detailed reports of torture involving 55 people since February this year. This summer, however, the country passed a raft of legislation abolishing the death penalty, freeing the media and improving minority rights for the Kurds. It has a draft anti-torture law which the new, Muslim government will probably enact.
Why is Turkey getting better? Because it wants to join the EU. Who is its strongest supporter inside the EU? Its historic enemy, Greece. What a chance! The logic of spreading democracy and respect for human rights, of addressing the deeper causes of terrorism, of helping Islam to adapt to the modern world and avoiding a bloody "clash of civilisations" cries out for us to say "yes".
Yet last week Valery Giscard d'Estaing said what many Europeans actually think: never! Turkish membership would, he opined, "be the end of the EU". There are some very bad reasons for saying this. A Turkish member of the Convention on the Future of Europe immediately retorted that Giscard is a mirror-image of the Muslim integrationists: "He's a Christian integrationist. He thinks the union is a Christian club." And, we might add, a rich white man's Christian club, reluctant even to admit not-so-rich Christian Slavs, let alone poor and not-quite-so-white Muslim Turks.
However, there is one good reason beside the bad ones. Giscard is not just an elderly, white, conservative, Catholic Frenchman; he is also president of that Convention on the Future of Europe. If you are trying to think how the European Union might itself be a more coherent political community then the prospect of Turkey joining can lead you to blow a fuse.
As I argued in my last column, it is hard enough to imagine a vibrant democratic community of 25 European countries with no common language. Throw in 70 million mainly Muslim Turks, with such a different history and political culture, and the mind boggles. Can you see Shropshire farmers or Scottish workers happily accepting a Brussels decision swung by Turkish votes?
At stake is not just whether this thing could still be called a European Union. It is whether it could ever be a union at all. So when they talk Turkey next month, at the Copenhagen summit, Europe's leaders will be asking the biggest question of all: what's Europe for? Two powerful logics clash at the gates of the Bosphorus: the logic of unity and the logic of peace. If Europe is mainly about creating a coherent political community, with some aspirations to be a superpower, we stop this side of the Bosphorus - for another decade, at the very least. If we think it is more urgent to promote democracy, respect for human rights, prosperity and therefore the chances for peace in the most dangerous region in the world, we step boldly on to that bridge.
Yet we must know what we are doing. Each bridge leads to another. Morocco's application for membership of the EU has been turned down on the grounds that it is not a European country. Can we really argue that Turkey definitely is a European country and Morocco definitely is not? Just down the road from Turkey is Israel - a chunk of Europe implanted in the Middle East. European-type solutions, with lots of cross-border cooperation, putting economic ties before military ambitions, are just what the state of Israel and the new state of Palestine will need. If it comes to war with Iraq, you can bet your bottom euro that Europeans will be centrally involved in the subsequent "nation-building". ("America does the cooking, Europe does the washing up," as the bitter quip goes.) So then you could end up with a European protectorate - Iraq - right next to a European member - Turkey.
Of course, the ideal thing - at least from the point of view of rich, pro-integration Europeans - would be for countries in the Middle East to make their own Middle Eastern union, one of a worldwide network of unions of democratic states. But that hardly seems likely. A rejected Turkey would not just turn round to make a nice little local copy of the EU in the Middle East, even if it could.
We have to decide. Giscard thinks including Turkey would turn the union into the old British dream of an ever larger free trade area. Even Britain is way beyond that.
But an EU including Turkey would be somewhat less European and somewhat less of a union. It might more accurately be described as a community of contiguous democracies. Is that necessarily a worse thing? It's quite possible to conclude that Turkey is not a European country and should join the European Union.
So, with Iraq and Osama bin Laden in mind, should we want Turkey in? For decades, Europe's answer has been: we very much want Turkey to go on wanting to join, but we secretly hope it will never quite make it. Now the space for such false-bottomed ambiguity is shrinking. The crunch is near.
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