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Soon, Turkey will start negotiations with a view to eventually joining the EU. Is that good or bad? It’s certainly controversial – there would be many economic and strategic benefits, but is Turkey european? Not everybody thinks so: Valery Giscard d’Estaing, the Frenchman at the head of the EU constitutional convention, said that if Turkey joined, it would be the end of the EU, because it had “a different culture, a different approach, a different way of life. Its capital isn’t in Europe, 95% of the population live outside Europe – it isn’t a European country.” Nicolas Sarkozy, the future president of France (possibly!) says “Turkey is not European, not geographically, not culturally, not historically. Its place is not in Europe.”
So the real question is what does the word “Europe” mean? Or – if I’m a European – who am I?
I said in bulletin 2 that words are symbols: they can represent anything I want them to. If I think that Europe means land as far as the Black Sea, then obviously Turkey is not a part of it. If I say it means a country with a Christian history, then Albania is excluded as well. If Europe is land corresponding to the territory of the Roman Empire, then Turkey is included – but not Hungary or Wales. In fact, the history of our continent is very complicated, and Turkey was directly implicated in it (for example, with Romania ... even if not always as a friend ...)