Turkey is now, finally, negotiating with the European Commission the terms of its possible membership in the EU. But whether "possible" becomes "eventual" remains very much an open question. Indeed, completing the negotiations is likely to prove as difficult as the decision to start them.
Recall that Turkey made its first application to join in 1959, and that since 1963, the European Economic Community, the forerunner to today's EU, responded with a delaying tactic: a request for a customs agreement. At the same time, having never had to take "no" for an answer -- and after receiving a series of nods and winks that hinted that membership might one day come -- Turkey's expectation of eventual EU integration became increasingly palpable.
But ordinary Europeans have begun looking at maps, and the geography that they see cannot be denied: 95 percent of Turkey's territory and 80 percent of its population is in Asia.
As a result, the fierce and lively debate -- in Turkey and much more emphatically in the EU -- about whether Turkey really belongs to Europe has continued, despite the start of negotiations.
Of course, the question of Turkey's European identity cannot be answered with geography lessons. At least half of the body of Greek theater and philosophy was produced in Asia Minor. The first Christian evangelization trips of Saint Peter and Saint Paul were to Turkey. Later, Ottoman Turkey was for centuries considered a part of the "concert of Europe," proving indispensable in defining and securing the strategic balance among the European continent's Great Powers.
The turkish question
Yet this historical evidence is not enough to unite European sentiment in favor of Turkey's EU membership. On the contrary, "the Turkish Question" will be resolved on the basis of the current political preoccupations and concerns for the future.
Fortunately, that choice was not settled prematurely and peremptorily: the process that will lead to a final decision was merely allowed to start with the opening of negotiations.
Membership talks can't help but be long and arduous, if only because adopting the acquis communautaire (the body of EU law) requires that Turkey integrate around 10,000 pages of texts into its legislation. However, all this now seems to have a serious chance of succeeding.
And yet Turkey scares countless Europeans. With 67 million people today, and a population that will reach 80 million in 20 years and 100 million in 2050, Turkey is bound to become the most populous of all European nations. It is also a very poor Muslim country.
To be sure, a few countries in Europe, mainly Germany and Austria, have welcomed strong inflows of Turkish immigration. But the immigrants have been mostly poor peasants from Anatolia, whose integration has proven to be difficult. By contrast, Turkey's large, secular intellectual community, whose cultural background is European, and from which the Turkish state recruits most of its executives, has remained in Istanbul and Ankara.
Europe, then, is frightened by the prospect of more immigration by Turks who find it almost impossible to assimilate. For the moment, such immigration has almost stopped, owing to rapid economic growth -- indeed, the fastest in Europe -- in recent years, which is absorbing the country's available labor and has thus stemmed the flow of emigrants. Yet the fear remains that membership in the EU will unleash a new human tide.
Theater of violence
Economic fears are not the only concern for EU citizens. Turkey was the theater of exceptional violence in the 20th century: its participation in WWI fueled hatred and gigantic massacres, with the genocide of the Armenians the last vicious spasm of the Ottoman Empire's brutal demise.
Moreover, while Kemal Ataturk restored Turkish national pride by creating the secular Turkish republic, his legacy is mixed, for it includes both Turkey's strong attraction to the West and a militarization of public life.
The latter explains much of the repressive attitude towards free speech and independent opinion that has characterized much of Turkish public life -- a straitjacket that has left little room for real negotiations with Turkey's restless Kurds or for resolving the division of Cyprus.
But Turkey's EU aspirations mean that it is now being forced to demilitarize its democracy and to find negotiated and peaceful agreements with all its neighbors and future partners -- Armenians, Kurds and Cypriots.
Thus, if Europe manages to overcome its fears and hesitations and open itself to a powerful Muslim state, it will consolidate peace in one of the world's most dangerous regions.
Indeed, by integrating Turkey, Europe would show that it is not a Christian club, that the supposed "clash of civilizations" need not be fatal and that the European project, born out of a desire for reconciliation and the need to promote development, can spread its benefits far beyond the Western half of Europe. In opening itself to Turkey, the EU would finally begin to play its proper role in confronting today's most daunting political challenges.
Michel Rocard, a former prime minister of France and leader of the Socialist Party, is a member of the European Parliament. Copyright: Project Syndicate
In their recent op-ed “Trump Should Rein In Taiwan” in Foreign Policy magazine, Christopher Chivvis and Stephen Wertheim argued that the US should pressure President William Lai (賴清德) to “tone it down” to de-escalate tensions in the Taiwan Strait — as if Taiwan’s words are more of a threat to peace than Beijing’s actions. It is an old argument dressed up in new concern: that Washington must rein in Taipei to avoid war. However, this narrative gets it backward. Taiwan is not the problem; China is. Calls for a so-called “grand bargain” with Beijing — where the US pressures Taiwan into concessions
The term “assassin’s mace” originates from Chinese folklore, describing a concealed weapon used by a weaker hero to defeat a stronger adversary with an unexpected strike. In more general military parlance, the concept refers to an asymmetric capability that targets a critical vulnerability of an adversary. China has found its modern equivalent of the assassin’s mace with its high-altitude electromagnetic pulse (HEMP) weapons, which are nuclear warheads detonated at a high altitude, emitting intense electromagnetic radiation capable of disabling and destroying electronics. An assassin’s mace weapon possesses two essential characteristics: strategic surprise and the ability to neutralize a core dependency.
Chinese President and Chinese Communist Party (CCP) Chairman Xi Jinping (習近平) said in a politburo speech late last month that his party must protect the “bottom line” to prevent systemic threats. The tone of his address was grave, revealing deep anxieties about China’s current state of affairs. Essentially, what he worries most about is systemic threats to China’s normal development as a country. The US-China trade war has turned white hot: China’s export orders have plummeted, Chinese firms and enterprises are shutting up shop, and local debt risks are mounting daily, causing China’s economy to flag externally and hemorrhage internally. China’s
During the “426 rally” organized by the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and the Taiwan People’s Party under the slogan “fight green communism, resist dictatorship,” leaders from the two opposition parties framed it as a battle against an allegedly authoritarian administration led by President William Lai (賴清德). While criticism of the government can be a healthy expression of a vibrant, pluralistic society, and protests are quite common in Taiwan, the discourse of the 426 rally nonetheless betrayed troubling signs of collective amnesia. Specifically, the KMT, which imposed 38 years of martial law in Taiwan from 1949 to 1987, has never fully faced its
RSS