‘Cosmopolitan Europe’ and the EU–Turkey question: the politics of a ‘common destiny’

Abstract

This paper assesses cosmopolitanism in practice in Europe via an engagement with the ‘EU–Turkey question’, analysing the extent to which a ‘cosmopolitan outlook’ is emerging within Turkey and in European reactions to Turkey and the ways in which this plays out in the face of important political opposition in both settings. It argues that in the context of Turkey's internal politics and the European Union's (EU's) consideration of Turkey's candidature, an essentialist view of identity is constitutive of hostile relations between the EU and Turkey and within Turkish and European societies. Conversely, the adoption of a critical and reflexive cosmopolitan outlook as theory and political practice – examples of which are to be found in the Turkish political reform process and some of the recent practice of the European Commission – offers the best hope for a cosmopolitan Europe inclusive of cosmopolitan Turkey.

Keywords:

• Conditionality
• cosmopolitan Europe
• methodological nationalism
• Turkey

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to dedicate this paper to the memories of the late Alessandro Missir di Lusignano – a colleague and friend from the Commission's Turkey Unit – and the late Hrandt Dink – a Turkish journalist of Armenian descent whom I met in Istanbul in 2005. Thanks to Ted Svensson, James Brassett, Dan Bulley and Ben Rosamond for advice and encouragement. I also wish to acknowledge the anonymous referees for their helpful comments.

Notes

This concept and definition of a ‘model Turk’ owes much to an interesting discussion with a group of Turkish academics and writers in Istanbul in 2004.

Thanks to the late Hrandt Dink for this insight.

The moderate leadership of the General Staff under Hilmi Ozkoc in the run-up to the EU's decision in 2005 may be particularly significant in this context.

While Erdogan's roots lie within Erbakan's political movement, he and other notables in the AKP, such as former Foreign Minister and now President, Abdullah Gul, have modernized the agenda of traditional Islamists such as Erbakan.

The assassination of Hrandt Dink stands as a testament to the risks that intellectuals face when expressing views which conflict with extreme Turkish nationalist ideology. Dink might be regarded as the personification of the immanent cosmopolitan Turkey that this paper seeks to describe and advocate (see Dink and Shafak 2007), while his assassination alerts us to its very fragility.

See also the concrete list of priorities laid out in the 2006 EU Accession Partnership with Turkey.

In 1997 the Luxembourg European Council confirmed Turkey's eligibility for accession to the EU and at the 1999 Helsinki summit it was decided that ‘Turkey is a candidate State destined to join the Union on the basis of the same criteria as applied to the other candidate States.’

It was arguably this controversial issue that sparked the above-mentioned tensions in 2008, when in February the AKP sought to repeal the ban on wearing the headscarf in universities.