Why Europe must say yes to Turkey

The EU faces a momentous decision

SHOULD the European Union open membership talks with Turkey? The question sounds bland, even technical - and yet the answer will be both controversial and momentous. Turkey is already in all the other big European organisations, from the Council of Europe to NATO. So long as it fulfils the Union's usual membership criteria, there might seem little reason not to take it. After all, this club has just let in a motley crew of mostly ex-communist countries from central Europe.

Yet Turkey is different from these, in four key respects. It is very large; it is very poor; not all of it is in Europe; and it is Muslim. In the past, it has suffered from plenty of failings, ranging from political and economic instability, to the interfering role of its army, to a record of human-rights abuses. These made it easy for the Europeans to fob off previous Turkish bids to join. But over the past two years, the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan's Justice and Development party has enacted a swathe of reforms, in the hope of meeting the “Copenhagen criteria” that govern eligibility to join the EU.

In two weeks' time the European Commission will publish its assessment of whether Turkey has done enough. Barring a last-minute hiccup - such as almost happened this week, until a plan to criminalise adultery was shelved at the last minute - it is expected to recommend that entry talks should start soon, meaning early next year. In December, EU leaders must decide at a summit meeting if they agree ()see pages 32-34.

Risk and reward

Plainly a decision to negotiate Turkey's entry entails risks for the EU. Start with its size. Turkey already has 71m people. If it joins the EU, within 15 years it will overtake Germany as the biggest member, with the heaviest voting weight in Brussels and the largest national block in the European Parliament. Yet even then it will have only 15% of the total EU population, and it will be just one of 28 or 30 countries - hardly a position from which to dominate decision-making. There is no logic to barring a country because it is big: indeed, it could be argued that the EU suffers from the smallness of many present members.

Poverty is harder. Turkey's GDP per head is only 29% of the EU25 average, way below all existing members. Over a third of its people work on the land. The prospect of having to make huge transfers to Turkey already makes Europe's finance ministers blanch. The risk that waves of poor Turks might migrate westwards does the same to interior ministers. Yet even if entry talks start next year, Turkey is unlikely to join for at least ten years. There will be a long transition period before labour moves freely. For their part, the Turks say they are not looking for copious hand-outs: they want foreign investment.

Next is the question of whether Turkey is even in Europe. The EU's treaties are vague on the Union's physical boundaries. But nobody disputes that a chunk of Turkey, including its biggest city, Istanbul, lies on the European continent. Most of Cyprus, which has just joined the EU, is east of Ankara, Turkey's capital. In any case, Brussels conceded as far back as 1963 that Turkey was sufficiently European to be a candidate one day. It cannot now go back on grounds of geography.

Which leaves the fourth and biggest worry of all: Islam. The European Union is not a Christian club. Already as many as 12m EU citizens are Muslim, and the Union's founding articles include respect for religious freedom. The religious argument against admitting Turkey rests on two other propositions. One is that Islam is, by its very nature, incompatible with a secular, liberal democracy. The other is that Islamic fundamentalism is on the rise in the Muslim world, including Turkey. This is not a case of equating Islam with support for Osama bin Laden. But the two propositions still make many Europeans hostile to Turkey's plan to join their Union.

Yet ever since Ataturk, successive Turkish governments have been fiercely secular. The only other European country that is as rigorous over enforcing a separation of church and state is France; not coincidentally, these are the only two countries that ban the Islamic headscarf in public schools. As for Turkey's democratic credentials, although they may have been tarnished in the past, they now look stronger than those of some countries that have just joined the EU. The media are free and lively; parliament has noisy and open debates; Mr Erdogan's party was elected by a thumping majority in 2002, and is expected to be re-elected in two years' time.

There is no denying that the party has Islamist roots, however. Mr Erdogan himself was once imprisoned for reciting an Islamist poem in public, an act deemed to incite religious hatred. His government has also promoted some Islamist measures, including its failed attempt to relax restrictions on religious schools, and now its abortive plan to criminalise adultery. The EU is right to fret about these. But such measures themselves are mild compared, say, with the condition of Ireland when it joined in the 1970s. The Catholic Church then held sway over most of Irish public life, keeping such things as contraception, abortion and divorce all illegal.

Islamophobia

It is impossible to demonstrate a priori that Islam is compatible with liberal democracy. But Turkey is as good a test-case as any with which to prove the point. Indeed, it is precisely in order to encourage Turks (and other Muslims) to buy into liberal democracy that Turkey must be given the benefit of the doubt, and offered EU membership talks. If the Turks move backwards, whether on human rights or on religious fundamentalism, they can always be shown the door again.

The ramifications stretch far beyond Turkey. America and its allies are seeking to foster liberal democracy in the Middle East. In the post-September 11th world, a no to Turkey could have catastrophic consequences. If the EU were to turn its back on Turkey now, not only might Turkey's own reforms be under threat, but it would be widely interpreted in the Muslim world as a blow against all Islam. Conversely, if Turkey becomes part of the European club, it would serve as a beacon to other Muslim countries that are treading, ever so warily, down the path to freedom and democracy.

Editorial says that the EU must say yes to Turkey's membership.