easily be branded as a power demonstration of national sovereignty. Reforms encouraging multiculturalism can stir up tensions with Turkey’s sizeable Kurdish minority. By pressing the government to repeal the controversial article 301 of the Penal Code—which made it illegal to insult “Turkishness”—Brussels essentially claimed competences belonging to the state. The government’s Euro-fervor has turned into the strongest indictment against the AKP, and the EU into a sort of Trojan horse
into Europe will spell “the end of the EU” it is ideology talking. Rather than the technical standards that are supposed to guide the EU accession negotiations, antiTurkey ideology has directly or indirectly something to do with Turkey’s religion. And even when that is not the case, Turkey is still supposed to be aiming for European-style modernity (whatever that is). Should Ankara turn away from the EU rules and conditions, its European journey will suffer. More than that, however, the encrypted message is that Turkey will have chosen to turn its back on modernity.
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aiming at the country’s political system. The elements of the secular elite that were formerly at the forefront of the modernization of Turkey have become more introverted, insular and Euro-skeptical. The final twist is that the European posture towards Turkey has itself become increasingly introverted and insular. The European project ultimately concerns the encounter of competing ways of interpreting European values. The rights of ethnic minorities, for example, have been arranged differently in European countries; as have the civil-military relations. Europe is about both the more liberal blend of secularism, as well as the stricter laïcité (sekularitet). The European modernity is supposedly about diversity and inclusion, rounding off edges rather than sharpening them. Europe is “postmodern”, precisely because it rejects absolute and univocal explanations of what “modern” is supposed to mean. Yet, in relation to Turkey, the canons defining European modernity have become inflexible and nonnegotiable. When Austrians refer to the 1683 Ottoman siege of Vienna to explain their opposition to Turkey, or when politicians, such as former French President Valery Giscard D’Estaing, argue that Turkey’s entry
Noter 1) Website of the General Staff, Turkish Armed Forces, April 27 2007. Translation by the Turkish Daily News http://www.turkishdailynews. com. 2) Quoted in Christopher de Bellaigue: “Turkey at the Turning Point?” The New York Review of Books, Vol. 54, Number 16, October 25, 2007. 3) Revealingly, “No Islamic law, but no coup either!” was the slogan chanted by the masses crowding the streets of Ankara and Istanbul in that hot spring of 2007 that preceded Gül’s election.
Fabrizio Tassinari is Head of the Foreign Policy and EU Studies Unit at the Danish Institute for International Studies. This article draws from the author’s recent book Why Europe Fears Its Neighbors (Praeger). The author acknowledges ABC-Clio’s permission to reproduce this text, which will appear in the publisher’s World Geography Database. IPMONOPOLET
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