European Culture and the European Union's ‘Turkey Question’

Abstract

This article attempts to discern whether Turkey belongs to Europe's emerging pan-European cosmopolitan culture and investigates the political implications of Turkish cultural ‘otherness’. The article revisits Laitin's (2002) suggestion that social mobility in contemporary Europe requires individuals to possess 2 ± 1 cultural repertoires. Then, drawing on analysis of Eurobarometer, World Values Survey, European Values Survey, and original datasets, it compares the cultural repertoires of citizens from four groups of European countries – the EU's founding members, countries that joined the Communities between 1973 and 1995, countries of the 2004/2007 enlargement wave, and Turkey itself. The data support the conventional wisdom that Turkey is culturally quite different from EU norms. Still, the article concludes by interrogating the political implications of this difference and suggesting that Turkey's cultural alterity does not necessarily preclude the possibility of smooth Turkish integration into the EU.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the journal's anonymous reviewers for their sharp insights and helpful suggestions.