Turkey, Europe, and Paradoxes of Identity: Perspectives on the International Context of Democratization

The complex and enigmatic relationship between Turkey and Europe has been a source of continuous debate and controversy for many years. The debate has intensified in recent years, however, following the latest wave of the European Union’s enlargement process toward the east, which will incorporate the formerly communist Central and Eastern European countries (CEECs) liberated from Soviet control and influence in the aftermath of the revolutions of 1989.

Turkey formally applied for full membership in the EU in 1987. By that time, the contours of the debate concerning the legitimacy of Turkey’s application had been fairly well established. The debate in many ways had reached a stalemate. From the perspective of the Turkish political elite, Turkey’s full membership in the EU has been considered a natural and inevitable step, culminating the process of Westernization and modernization whose roots in contemporary times could be traced back to Ataturk’s reforms in the early days of the Turkish Republic, reforms designed to establish a secular order in a country with a predominantly Muslim population.

On the European side, in contrast, major objections have been raised against Turkey’s claim, based primarily on economic and political as opposed to explicitly cultural criteria. They emphasize, for example, a natural Christian-Muslim divide as a central line of demarcation between Turkey and contemporary Europe. The apparent consensus underlying the European approach to Turkish-EU relations was that Turkey was economically backward and, at the same time, had failed to satisfy the criteria in relation to democratization and human rights necessary to qualify for full membership in the foreseeable future. The logical implication of this perspective was that it was perfectly possible for Turkey to join the EU as a full member provided that it managed to establish the necessary domestic conditions for full membership in the economic and political spheres. This argument fits in nicely with the image of the EU as a demanding club, whose membership is open to any country willing to satisfy the rather tough entry conditions, which necessitate significant reforms relating primarily to domestic economic and political structures.

The emergence of the Central and Eastern European countries during the 1990s, and the relative ease with which they have been included in the latest round of EU enlargement at a time when Turkey’s claims to full membership once again were receding into the background, highlights the view that the EU is essentially a civilizational project. A comparative perspective on Eastern and Central Europe and Turkey reveals a number of strong similarities concerning levels of economic development and legacies of authoritarian political structures, as well as similar deficiencies in democratization and human rights performance as judged by the standards of Western Europe. Actually, one may argue that, in spite of periodic breakdowns and substantive limitations, representative democracy has been the norm in Turkey during the post-World War II period, while it was not the experience of the CEECs under communist rule. The EU, however, has been much more receptive to the idea of including Eastern European countries, where membership has been seen as an instrument for improving economies as well as strengthening democratic regimes. Ironically, the same conditions—economic weakness and the deficiencies of the democratic regime—have been singled out as obstacles to Turkey’s claim to membership.

The central thesis of this essay is that a favorable international environment is vitally important for “emerging” or “peripheral” countries such as Turkey or Poland in terms of their ability to consolidate their relatively fragile democratic regimes. The possibility of full integration with Europe sets into motion a powerful set of incentives—a virtuous circle that leads to the graduation of countries from fragile to established democracies over remarkably short periods of time. This was the experience of the Southern European countries—Spain, Portugal, and Greece—during the late 1970s and the 1980s and has been the case of Hungary, Poland, and the Czech Republic more recently.

The absence of the possibility of full membership in or deep integration with the EU can destabilize the process of democratic consolidation or deepening, as the Turkish experience during the mid- and the late 1990s clearly illustrates. There has been a striking dichotomy in the roles played by the EU with respect to democratization in Eastern Europe and Turkey. Remarkable progress toward democracy in a number of advanced CEECs has been accomplished with an incentive of relatively smooth transition to full EU membership. In contrast, Turkish democracy, in spite of its much longer history, has been handicapped by serious conflicts of identity over religious and minority rights, a process that has clearly been exacerbated by Turkey’s relative isolation and the EU’s failure to provide a definitive path toward full membership.

It would be misleading to identify the external constraint as the only or even the predominant element affecting democratic politics in an individual country. Nonetheless, in retrospect it is quite clear that the European ambivalence toward Turkey’s claims to full membership has created the appropriate climate for the rise of authoritarian brands of identity politics, namely, political Islam, as well as ethnic nationalism. Both have emerged as major threats or challenges to Turkish democracy in the 1990s, threats that have clearly facilitated the reemergence of the military as a major actor in Turkish politics in the context of a fragmented party system and a weak parliament. The EU’s relations with both Turkey and Eastern Europe in the 1990s also raise deeper questions concerning the various dimensions of European identity and the boundaries of and the ambiguities surrounding the European project.

On the Paradoxes of European Identity

To an outside observer, a number of powerful notions are associated with the idea of a European identity. These typically include social Europe, Europe as a promoter of democracy and human rights, Christian Europe, and Europe as a global power. Of these visions, which seem to offer a strong characterization of European identity, and which are relatively weak or ambiguous?

Any kind of identity is reinforced by the existence of contrasting or opposite identities that provide a definitional frame of reference. Scholars suggest that European identity is reinforced by the existence of two powerful “others,” one in the west and one in the east. ¹ Clearly, the United States provides a powerful other against which European political identity can be defined. In retrospect, one of the major constituent elements of the European project is to develop an alternative model of capitalism, one that places much more emphasis on capitalism’s social ramifications. In this model, individuals’ social responsibilities and duties to society are emphasized more than in the U.S. model, in which the overriding values are those of self-help and individual rights. As a result, Europeans are willing to tolerate a degree of government regulation of society to achieve a balanced and equitable market-oriented economy, a kind of regulation and government influence that would be inconceivable in U.S. society. Hence, the European model of capitalism or market economy is one that accepts the need for greater control and regulation, placing far more emphasis on balance and harmony among different classes as well as regions and nations within the boundaries of the EU itself. The conflict of visions between the United States and Europe also manifests itself in relation to the promotion of democracy and human rights at the global level. At the risk of oversimplification, perhaps, the following contrast stands out between Europe and the United States. Europe has traditionally placed far less emphasis on its role as a global power, delegating its role in this respect to the United States, while it has placed much more emphasis in its external relations on the concepts of democracy and human rights. In contrast, the United States, the only superpower with global strategic objectives, has had to balance considerations relating to stability, security, and democracy. Consequently, it has been less vocal in promotion of democracy and human rights issues.

In the east, Russia, having a Slavic identity and having experienced centuries of despotism, traditionally has constituted the second principal other for the Europeans, thereby drawing attention to the civilizational dimension of the European project. In the contemporary period, if not traditionally, Islam and the Middle East constitute a major but secondary other in the hierarchy of alternatives to the vision of a united Europe. It would be extremely misleading to emphasize Christian-Muslim conflict as the principal element in the formation of the contemporary European identity, given that most Europeans tend to define their identities primarily by reference to the United States and Russia. Nonetheless, the Christian element in the European identity is important and manifests itself clearly in the EU’s lukewarm relations toward Turkey in the current wave of expansion. Hence, in spite of all the controversies surrounding European identity, for the average European the eastern boundaries of Europe are fairly clear and definitive. Russia in the east and Turkey in the southeast provide the appropriate lines up to which the EU can naturally expand. Islam as a major, if not a principal, other of contemporary Europe reinforces these lines, as evidenced by the exaggeration of the threat posed to Europe by the Islamist movements or Islamic fundamentalism, as well as by the reaction of extreme right-wing movements in Europe to Muslim minorities within the European countries themselves. ²

On the global level, the EU has been criticized as being passive and withdrawn, failing to play an active and decisive role in major international crises. A prime example of such behavior was seen in the Bosnian war, which is also important in terms of attracting attention to yet another example of the Christian-Muslim conflict. A number of Islamic countries have been heavily critical of the failure of the major European governments to act swiftly in the Bosnian crisis to protect the Bosnian Muslims against the aggression of the Serbs. A recent provocative essay by Jacques Santer, however, highlights the difficulties of providing a firm judgment on Europe’s role in international conflict resolution. ³

The ambiguous role played by Europe is illustrated by a number of striking examples. Although passive in resolving the Bosnian conflict, Europe has contributed more in financial terms than the United States toward the reconstruction of Bosnia and Herzegovina. It has contributed more aid to the Palestine territories than the United States. Similarly, Western Europe appears to have funded 60 percent of the total aid directed to Russia and to the former communist countries in Eastern Europe. These figures, according to Santer, clearly illustrate the fact that Europe is not a “political dwarf,” as some political commentators argue. Yet it is also clear that at this time the EU is not playing an international political role commensurate with its economic power.

In summing up all of these aspects of European identity, the following deserve emphasis. First, the principal other of contemporary Europe is the United States. An overriding mission of the European project is to develop an alternative and a socially more responsible model of capitalism relative to the U.S. counterpart. To what extent it will be possible to maintain this alternative model of social Europe in the future, given the pressures of global competition and the possibility of serious capital flight in the context of economic globalization, is a serious question in its own right. A number of investigators point out the structural weaknesses of the social Europe in relation to the U.S. and Japanese counterparts in recent years as evidenced by comparatively higher European rates of unemployment. ⁴ For our purposes, it is clear that the principal reference point of the European project in the contemporary period is the United States, and Europe differs from the United States in its explicit emphasis on social and environmental aspects of economic growth as well as its more pronounced focus on democracy and human rights, attributes that render membership in the EU even more attractive for countries on the European periphery.

In addition to these central attributes of the European project, there exists a distinct civilizational dimension to European identity. The major reference in the contemporary context is Russia. Slavic Russia with a despotic past is identified as one of the principal others of contemporary Europe. To a somewhat lesser degree than Russia, however, the civilizational dimension of the European project or a clash with other civilizations, in Samuel Huntington’s terms, appears in Europe’s self-definition with respect to Islam and the Middle East. ⁵ What is significant is that Christianity is a key component of European identity, even though it may not be its principal or overriding constituent. In the EU’s relations with Turkey, this dimension of the European identity comes to the surface and plays a major determinant role. Indeed, it would not be possible to explain the differential treatment of the CEECs and Turkey, countries broadly at the same level of economic and political development, without reference to this factor.

Finally, although Europe is trying to play a more active role in international affairs, an important asymmetry seems to be evident concerning its approach to and treatment of insiders and outsiders. As an external analyst, one increasingly detects the ambivalent nature of the European project, a project that is sensitive and inclusionary in terms of economic and political development to individuals, groups, or nations within what appears to be its natural borders defined on civilizational grounds and yet much less sensitive and, indeed, exclusionary in its approach to individuals or societies perceived as lying beyond its natural frontiers.

The Latest Wave of EU Enlargement: Expansion toward the East

To an observer of the European scene in the mid-1980s, the process of EU —or, then, the European Community—enlargement appeared to have reached its limits, and the boundaries of the Western European core seemed well established. Yet the unexpectedly sudden collapse of the Soviet bloc in the early 1990s created a vacuum in the eastern half of the continent, generating a renewed momentum of expansion.

In retrospect, the incorporation of Eastern European countries to the Western European core has been a remarkably swift and rapid process. First, in spite of the strains imposed on the West German economy, the long-standing ideal of a united Germany was accomplished with surprising speed in the early 1990s. Furthermore, the EU has played a major role in the economic recovery and the process of democratization of the CEECs extending to the Russian border. The natural outcome of this process of direct involvement in the economic reform and the democratization process was the promise of full membership in the EU.

The EU’s report “Agenda 2000” established a dual categorization concerning the former Soviet bloc countries of Eastern Europe. ⁶ The first group involved the relatively advanced set of five countries that had already accomplished significant progress toward economic and democratic reforms. This group of countries included Hungary, Poland, Estonia, the Czech Republic, and Slovenia. During the critical Luxembourg summit in December 1997, the EU explicitly declared its intention to open negotiation for full membership with these first-tier CEECs; it is envisaged that these countries will become new members of the enlarged EU from 2002 onward. It is also interesting to note that Cyprus has been classified as a sixth first-tier country, with a secure prospect of early membership. A second group of CEECs, including Romania, Slovakia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Bulgaria, appeared to lag behind in terms of undertaking the required adjustments and restructuring in the economic and political spheres. The implication of the Luxembourg summit for the latter countries was that they would eventually become full members once further progress had been made toward economic reform, democratization, and conformity with the basic principles of human rights. It appeared quite certain that these countries eventually would be members of the EU. The only doubt concerned timing.

In contrast, the Luxembourg summit failed to deliver a favorable outcome from the Turkish point of view. Turkey was not included among either the first- or second-tier CEECs. The summit did not explicitly rule out the possibility of Turkey’s eventual membership, but it was evident from both the outcome of the summit and the underlying “Agenda 2000” report that what the EU wanted to develop was a distinct and close relationship with Turkey on a third-party basis, one that would fall significantly below the expectation of full membership. The EU specified a number of explicit political criteria that must be met before Turkey could even be considered for full membership. These criteria appear impossible to satisfy in the foreseeable future, effectively ruling out the prospect of full membership for Turkey.

The reasonably smooth pattern of integration of the Eastern European periphery into the Western European core is a paradoxical phenomenon that deserves some investigation. In retrospect, several factors were at work in helping to accomplish this process. First, a major motive of the leading Western European states was to prevent the insecurity and instability that would follow the vacuum created in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s collapse. It would naturally be in the material interests of the leading Western European states to contribute to the process of economic reconstruction and regime transformation in Central and Eastern Europe to achieve a stable and secure territory close to their border, which would act as a natural barrier to any potential threat of Russian expansionism in the future. Material interests and security concerns are, therefore, critical factors underlying the EU’s approach to the former Eastern bloc countries, an approach also supported by the United States as the leading global power.

Another major factor in the rapid assimilation of Eastern Europe to the Western European core centers around the specific role of Germany, the leading economic and political power in Western Europe. ⁷ As part of its Ostpolitik, Germany had always endeavored to develop strong relationships with Poland and other neighboring Central European states. A revival of close relationships with these group of countries in the post-Cold War context was, therefore, not a surprise. It was a basic impetus for rapid expansion toward the east to reconstruct strong economic and noneconomic ties. It would not be an exaggeration to suggest that the German influence was decisive in the drive toward full membership for these countries. It is also interesting to observe that while Germany was extremely receptive, more so than any other major European country, to the early assimilation of the Central European states to the European core, it was the single most important country in terms of opposing Turkey’s full membership.

From a comparative perspective, a significant parallel exists between the incorporation of the countries of the south in the 1970s and the 1980s and of the east in the 1990s and beyond. In both cases, countries in the European periphery, backward economically and with significant elements of an authoritarian past, have been incorporated into the basic nexus of the EC over an astonishingly short period of time. Arguably, security interests of the core European states have been instrumental in each case, the enlargements providing southern European security in the Cold War context in the 1970s and building a secure and stable Eastern Europe as a barrier to Russian expansionism in the post-Cold War era. However, stability and security concerns, important as they are, are unable to account for the rapidity and depth of the EU’s enlargement to the east. One may argue that more fundamental cultural or civilizational factors have been operative in the process. From the perspective of the elites as well as the ordinary citizens of the leading European states, the incorporation of countries like Greece and Spain during the 1970s or Poland and Hungary during the 1990s (in spite of their relative economic backwardness, authoritarian political heritage, and nascent democratic institutions) did not pose a fundamental problem or threat for European identity. These are countries that fall within the natural boundaries of Europe, and the underlying consensus is that these countries need help before they fully establish themselves as natural members of the wider European order.

Relatively low levels of economic development and a long history of authoritarian communist rule in the Polish case, for example, are not sufficient to eliminate the basic cultural affinity between Germany and Poland, which, in turn, has been instrumental in the relatively smooth transition of Poland from an associate to a potential full member in the EU. By similar logic, the threat of migration from low-wage Poland to high-wage Germany poses less of a political problem than migration from low-wage Turkey to Germany, because Turkey implicitly is not regarded as part of Europe. In fact, Christian Democrats in Europe and Germany, in particular, have been quite explicit in their references to cultural and civilizational criteria as a means of opposing Turkey’s entry. ⁸ What needs to be reemphasized, therefore, is that the EU is not only an economic or political project but ultimately a cultural and civilizational project. This, in turn, explains the basis of the duality observed in the treatment of the CEECs and Turkey in their recent dealings with the EU. The arguments concerning economic backwardness and deficiency of democratic institutions have been used for helping the Eastern Europeans over a difficult period of adjustment, while similar deficiencies have been identified as a barrier for Turkey’s admission to the EU as a full member. Clearly there is some element of verification for Huntington’s much publicized clash-of-civilizations thesis from a comparative investigation of the EU’s recent relationship with Turkey and the CEECs.

Having made the point that the assimilation of the Eastern European periphery to the Western core has been a relatively smooth process, a major qualification is called for. It is quite obvious that the economic performance and the average per capita incomes of the Eastern European newcomers are significantly below Western European averages. It has been estimated, for example, that the average per capita incomes of the eleven CEECs, included in the “Agenda 2000,” are substantially below the per capita income of the poorest current member of the EU, Greece, and represent only about 30 percent of the average per capita income of the current EU members. Not surprisingly, therefore, major strains will be imposed on the present members as a result of the new wave of enlargement toward the east, and some of the key community institutions will need to be restructured substantially to accommodate the addition of new members.

It is well known that social and regional funds represent a fundamental equalizing force within the EU. A basic conflict of objectives, however, emerges between the Maastricht criteria, which place great emphasis on fiscal discipline, and the eastern enlargement process, which requires a major expansion of budgetary resources, if social and regional funds are to continue at current levels and made available to newcomers on the existing scales. Clearly the two objectives are inconsistent, and what many observers anticipate is a major downward adjustment in the scale of social and regional funds in the future. It is certain that the Eastern European newcomers will not be able to benefit from these funds in the same way as the earlier Southern European entrants. ⁹

Another key institution of the EU that is likely to undergo a major revision and restructuring is the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP). Considering that the CEECs are typically countries with large farming populations, their entry is likely to impose an intolerable burden on the existing members. As in the case of social and regional funds, CAP is likely to be substantially restructured, and we may safely predict a radical phasing out of agricultural subsidies in Europe over the coming years.

In retrospect, the assimilation of Eastern Europe has been a comparatively rapid process. It is also evident, however, that the new EU, following the latest wave of expansion, will no longer be the same union as in the past. Increasingly, we are likely to witness a two-tier or multilayered Europe with deep integration and widening proceeding at the same time. ¹⁰ Notably, the redistributive mechanisms that have been the traditional building blocks of the EU are unlikely to survive in the future, at least not on the scale that we have been accustomed to in the past.

EU and Democracy by Convergence: Southern Europe during the 1970s and Eastern Europe during the 1990s

In spite of the emphasis placed by the literature concerning transitions to democracy on the predominant role of domestic actors in the transition process, it is increasingly recognized that the external environment is also extremely important. In fact, the emerging consensus appears to be the following: The external context may play an important, if secondary, role in a successful transition process, but from the point of view of constructing long-term, durable forms of democratic governance, in terms of democratic consolidation, in other words, a favorable external environment may be a variable of crucial significance. ¹¹

Consider the example of Greece. An external shock, negative in this case—its defeat in the Cyprus war in 1974—provided a crucial blow to the colonels’ regime in the same year. The discrediting of the existing regime by an unfavorable external event, with the influence of the EC in the background, performed an instrumental role in the collapse of the authoritarian government and paved the way for the installation of the civilian government formed by Constantine Karamanlis. It would not be an exaggeration, however, to argue that the real impact of the EU on Greek democracy became operative once the transition itself was safely accomplished. Through a set of conditions and incentives associated with full membership, a durable democracy emerged in Greece over a remarkably short period of time.

A similar dichotomy may be identified with reference to the cases of Spain and Portugal. Spain under Francisco Franco experienced a long period of dictatorial rule, and, as long as it failed the test of representative democracy, the EU could not exert direct pressure that might have led to the collapse of authoritarian forms of governance. Once the authoritarian regime had collapsed, however, membership in the EU resulted in a remarkably secure and durable form of democracy in Spain over a comparatively short period of time, a process that surprised many observers, considering the country’s long history of authoritarian rule.

A similar process seems to be occurring in the current historical conjuncture in relation to the CEECs. These countries have also experienced long periods of authoritarian rule under communist regimes. The EC had no direct impact in terms of reversing the fortunes of these societies until after the revolutions of 1989. Once the revolutions were under way and these countries made an attempt to return to market-oriented economies and institutions of representative democracy, the role of the EU, as in the earlier wave of Southern European cases, became absolutely crucial. The countries that are classified in the first-tier group with immediate prospect of full membership now have an ability to implement economic reforms and to fulfill basic tests of democratic governance that is quite remarkable. ¹² It is undoubtedly the case, as in the earlier examples of Spain, Portugal, and Greece, that the mix of conditions and incentives provided by the EU has been a fundamental factor at work in this process. Hence, there is an extraordinary degree of similarity between the consolidation of democracies in Southern Europe during the 1970s and the 1980s and the ongoing process of democratic consolidation in Eastern Europe. Processes are under way that are clearly intra-European phenomena, associated with the powerful integrative and conditioning role of the EU and largely absent in other parts of the world.

What exactly is the role played by the EU in the process of successful democratic consolidation that is missing, for example, in the Latin American democracies’ evolution? The prospect of full membership during the first stage, followed by a graduation to full membership itself after a period of transition and adjustment, creates a virtuous circle, whereby economic and political factors interact to produce a durable democracy over a comparatively short period of time.

The economic benefits associated with full membership are of considerable significance. During the initial stage of adjustment, the possibility of full membership provides the much needed discipline or the external anchor required to legitimize the reform process to the electorate and to undertake the necessary set of economic reforms over a brief time span. The availability of resources from the EU during this phase in the form of aid significantly reduces the pains and costs associated with the adjustment process. Once full membership is achieved, the availability of resources from the social and regional funds plays an important role in terms of overcoming shortages of capital and building up the critical infrastructure in what are essentially newly industrialized countries (comparable to their Asian and Latin American counterparts) with per capita incomes and levels of development at the inception of full membership being substantially below the standards established by the core group of Western European countries. Free access to the large European market and the availability of foreign capital on a significant scale constitute additional major economic benefits for the countries concerned. The inflow of foreign capital itself is, in part, a response to relatively low wages in these countries but is conditioned by the rapid build-up of physical and human infrastructure as well as the stable investment environment, both of which are closely associated with full membership itself. Furthermore, membership in the EU provides much needed security and protection for the elites in these countries. Once the business elites themselves feel secure from threats to their dominant position or hold on property, the establishment and consolidation of civil rights and liberties become relatively smooth processes.

The central point, therefore, is that once EU membership is achieved, the economic benefits offered to the relatively backward countries are so immense that any democratic reversal, which would naturally lead to a loss of these benefits, becomes almost inconceivable. To the economic benefits associated with EU membership, one ought to add also the benefits of security and stability of being part of a broader political union and the benefits of interacting with the vibrant European civil society, all of which aid in the development of a democratic political culture. Stability and security associated with rapid economic growth and immunity against geostrategic threats are critical in terms of their contribution to a flourishing democratic polity.

Economic success and democratic consolidation are mutually reinforcing phenomena. It becomes much easier for individual states to handle complex problems pertaining to minority rights once they are part of a broader union, partly due to the availability of additional resources but also due to greater ability and willingness of the national elites to delegate part of the difficult decision-making process both to supranational and to local arenas of governance. Finally, free labor mobility within the union is another unique and distinguishing feature of the EU and clearly alleviates the pressure of unemployment and raises per capita incomes of countries that achieve full member status. The virtuous circle of conditions and incentives associated specifically with EU membership is synonymous with the process that Laurence Whitehead describes as “democracy by convergence.” ¹³

A similar process of democracy by convergence is also visible in other parts of the world, notably in Latin America, but arguably in a considerably weaker form because for Latin American countries, under the U.S. sphere of influence, the precise mix of conditions and incentives provided by the EU is largely absent. Consider the example of Mexico interacting with the United States in the context of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). It is undoubtedly the case that the strong economic ties between Mexico and the United States, in the form of free trade and large flows of capital, are helping to generate an environment conducive to political liberalization in Mexico, leading to the erosion of the one-party regime. Nevertheless, the form of interaction provided by NAFTA is different from that provided by the EU in two crucial respects. First, there exists no explicit redistributive element in NAFTA mirroring the EU’s social and regional funds or the free mobility of labor. As a result, a country such as Mexico is unable to benefit from the equalizing force inherent in EU membership. Secondly, and more significantly, NAFTA is primarily an economic agreement. Unlike EU membership, it contains no single-minded insistence on democracy and human rights. Hence, not surprisingly, the form of political opening or democracy by convergence is an extremely weak process in the Mexican example compared with the processes that have occurred in Southern Europe and that are currently taking place in Central and Eastern Europe.

The Economic and Political Logic of Turkey’s Customs Union Agreement with Europe: A Critical Perspective

The fortunes of Greece and Turkey followed a similar path during the early decades of the post-World War II era. During the 1950s, both countries found themselves under the U.S orbit of influence as NATO allies of key strategic importance in the eastern Mediterranean. During the 1960s, both countries shifted their attention to Europe in an attempt to diversify their external relations and reduce their overdependence on the United States. Both countries signed association agreements with the European Economic Community during the early 1960s. ¹⁴ The critical turning in Turkey’s relations with Europe came with the Ankara Agreement of 1963, which envisaged a full economic union with Europe in 1995, following a necessary period of adjustment. However, the paths of the two NATO countries diverged radically in the 1970s. Greece, following the collapse of its military regime and the transition to democracy, developed increasingly closer links with the EC and became a full member in 1981 as part of the community’s wave of expansion toward its southern periphery.

Turkey moved in the opposite direction. The Cyprus war of 1974 strained relations with Europe, and the second half of the 1970s constituted a period of economic and political crisis. While Greece applied for full EC membership, Turkey’s relations with Europe deteriorated further following the collapse of democracy and the installation of military rule in September 1980. In retrospect, an interesting question to pose is what would have been the outcome if Turkey and Greece had simultaneously applied for admission into the EC. A realistic assessment would suggest that the chances for Turkey becoming a part of the community at any time in recent history, including the mid-1970s, were extremely remote, to say the least. One possibility to reflect upon, however, is that the community might have refused admission to both countries during simultaneous application. Such a decision would have significantly altered the course of Turkey’s relations with Europe during the post-1980 period. Indeed, once Greece became part of the EC, given the nature of the bilateral conflicts between the two countries over Cyprus and the Aegean Sea, Turkey’s ability to extend and deepen relations with the EC was progressively constrained. The community had been relatively neutral in its approach to the two NATO allies in the early post-World War II years, but following Greek entry into the EU, its foreign policy decisions became progressively biased in Greece’s favor.

Following the end of military rule and the reestablishment of parliamentary democracy in Turkey in November 1983, the Turkish political elite and the business community expressed a desire to renew and deepen relations with the EC, culminating with the Özal government’s 1987 application for full membership in the community. For the vast majority of the Turks, full membership was a natural and inevitable step in the process that had started with the Ankara Agreement. Full membership would represent the final step or the climax in Turkey’s progression toward becoming a secular, Western-oriented state, an ideal explicitly espoused since the inception of the republic. The expectation on the part of the Turkish elite was that a smooth transition to full membership would help to consolidate the ongoing processes of both economic liberalization and institutional democratization. Europe’s reaction to Turkey’s application, however, was lukewarm. The application was delayed for a considerable period and subsequently rejected on the grounds that Turkey failed to meet the required economic and democratic criteria. The community, however, was prepared to extend economic relations with Turkey without explicitly rejecting the possibility of full membership in some distant future. Hence, the customs union issue became the focal point in the development of relations between Turkey and the community—which became the EU in 1993—during the course of the 1990s.

The possibility of a customs union raised radically different expectations in Turkey and the EU. From the EU perspective, a customs union would be the final step in the direction of developing strong economic relations, based on free trade, with an important country on the southeastern periphery. It would be a closing stage in the process that had been initiated with the Ankara Agreement some thirty years before, when the EU itself was essentially a customs union agreement with an arrangement involving free mobility of labor among a core group of founding states. Clearly, the community’s vision of developing strong economic ties with Turkey fell considerably short of full membership. In many ways the customs union arrangement, from the community point of view, was not fundamentally different, in scope or in principle, from a number of free trade agreements concluded with other nonmember states in the Mediterranean basin.

From the Turkish side, however, the political logic underlying the signing of the customs union agreement dominated over the economic logic. The overriding belief of the elite as well as the average citizen, with the exception of a minority of an Islamist persuasion, was that full membership in the EU was not only desirable but inevitable. The customs union agreement, therefore, constituted the first and necessary step in a transitional period on the path to full EU membership. There was no shadow of doubt concerning the eventual possibility of Turkey becoming a full member, while the majority of people recognized that the timing of entry was uncertain and that the transitional period would be comparatively long and painful. Hence, the economic content of the customs union agreement, itself, did not generate significant controversy in Turkey, given the expectation that the benefits associated with full membership would overcome, in time, any possible short-term adjustment costs.

It became obvious after a while that there existed no such inevitable link between the customs union, a process that effectively started in January 1996, and full membership. The absence of the link became strikingly clear during the Luxembourg summit of December 1997, which in many ways proved to be a critical turning point in Turkey’s relations with Europe. In retrospect, the Luxembourg summit is significant because, for the first time, there was a clear recognition that there was nothing inevitable about Turkey’s claims to full EU membership. This in turn led to a generalized sense of isolationism, not present at any other stage in Turkish history during the post-World War II period.

The disappointment of the Luxembourg summit had another interesting ramification, namely, an attempt to reevaluate the economic basis of the arrangement, which had seemed so attractive and desirable only a few years previously. Clearly, the customs union agreement has important positive dimensions. It had helped to accelerate the process of trade liberalization in Turkey and facilitated Turkish industry’s becoming more competitive by subjecting Turkish manufacturers to the rigors of a large and demanding European market. Furthermore, the customs union agreement also raised the pace of domestic economic reforms concerning competition and regulation policy and consumer protection. Considering that the EU is Turkey’s natural trading partner, with about 50 percent of Turkish exports directed toward the EU, further expansion of trade is likely to be mutually beneficial for both parties. It is also interesting to note that the pessimistic scenario concerning the possible destruction of a number of key industries in Turkey as a result of competition from European firms has not materialized. In fact, it would be true to say that the customs union had resulted neither in major benefits (i.e., the expected levels of foreign direct investment have not been realized) nor in significant losses. The expected positive affects, in any case, are of a long-term nature.

A balanced treatment would need to emphasize that the customs union contains a number of shortcomings, especially if one takes into account the fact that the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which are broadly at the same level of development as Turkey, obtained better deals from the EU over an exceptionally short time. ¹⁵ Although some observers suggest that a customs union is the deepest form of integration possible in the absence of full membership, it is also true that it falls significantly short of full membership. The major benefits associated with membership, such as access to social and regional funds, the Common Agricultural Policy, and free mobility of labor, are totally absent. Moreover, the financial aid package promised to Turkey during both the pre-customs union phase and the implementation phase, from the beginning of 1996 onward, has not materialized, primarily due to the Greek veto. The CEECs, in contrast, have benefited enormously during their critical transition period from large inflows of aid under the structural assistance Phare program. ¹⁶ The customs union agreement is open to criticism on the grounds that it applies only to manufactured goods and not to agricultural products, which are extremely important to the Turkish economy. Turkey has also been subjected to strong antidumping regulation, as have other nonmember countries, and could not counteract this process effectively, considering that it was not represented in any of the key EU decision-making institutions. Perhaps the most serious criticism that can be leveled against the customs union is that it involves a loss of sovereignty over trade policy for Turkey, due to the fact that Turkey must implement common EU tariffs and other restrictions against imports from third parties. In the Turkish case, this had a particularly negative effect in one key export industry—textiles and clothing—by limiting the ability of Turkish industry to obtain cheap imports from non-EU countries.

Perhaps, in retrospect, from a purely economic point of view, it would have been much more sensible for Turkey to sign a free-trade agreement with Europe rather than the more restrictive customs union agreement—something along the lines of the Norwegian model, for example. This has been the pattern for many North African countries with whom the EU has been developing free-trade agreements as part of its Barcelona initiative—these also require, as in the Turkish case, significant regulatory reform in the domestic sphere. Such agreements have an advantage, however, in that they leave the countries concerned free to develop trade agreements with other parts of the world without any need to apply common EU trade policies toward third parties. What is obvious, however, is that the customs union process in the Turkish context has not been dictated purely or even primarily by economic considerations. The political logic, involving the expectation of full membership, constituted the dominant thinking in the signing and implementation of the agreement. In Heinz Kramer’s words, the customs union arrangement involved “reduced sovereignty without full participation,” falling considerably behind expectations held by Turkey since the initial Ankara Agreement. ¹⁷

A Comparatively Unfavorable International Context and the Dilemmas of Democratic Consolidation in Turkey

The EC/EU exercised a positive influence over the process of democratization in Turkey, at least until the mid-1990s. The Turkish elites’ unambiguous faith in the inevitability of full EU membership plus the EU’s insistence on democracy and human rights as fundamental prerequisites for entry provided a strong external anchor for Turkish democracy and helped to check the proliferation of antidemocratic tendencies. This has been important as Turkish democracy in the post-World War II period has proved to be unstable and subject to periodic breakdowns, leading to military interventions. In striking contrast to the experiences of key South American countries such as Brazil, Argentina, and Chile, countries with broadly similar levels of economic development, periods of military rule in Turkey have been relatively brief and have been accompanied by reasonably smooth transitions back to democracy. The difference may be explained, in part, by the peculiarities of the Turkish military elite, the nature of the domestic political process, and the degree of institutionalization of representative democracy itself. Undoubtedly, however, external pressures associated with the EU linkage have also been a variable of considerable significance in limiting the duration and intensity of military rule in Turkey.

The positive role played by the EU is particularly evident in relation to the latest military intervention in Turkey, during the early 1980s. The EU proved to be an extremely active and vocal source of criticism of the military regime at a time when the United States, far more concerned with strategic and geopolitical objectives, was a relatively passive and indifferent actor. The constant pressure exerted by the EU during the period was clearly an influence of crucial significance, encouraging a relatively early transition to democracy over a period of three years. While this is an issue that clearly requires a separate analysis, one may nevertheless conjecture that in the absence of direct and vocal EU pressure, the military regime would have installed itself and institutionalized its rule for a longer period before returning to democratic rule, albeit in limited form. A remarkably short period of military rule, by postwar Latin American standards, would have been inconceivable if a powerful external anchor in the form of constant EU pressure had not been present. It is also highly probable that the Greek factor influenced the underlying perceptions of the Turkish military elite. As a member of the EC since 1981, Greece was able to influence EC and then EU decisions in a number of key, long-standing foreign policy issues. The result was that a Turkish prolongation of the transitional regime would have generated greater costs than benefits. ¹⁸

The positive, softening influence exercised by the EU on Turkish democracy always rested on the implicit and yet confident assumption underlying Turkey’s relations with Europe that sooner or later full membership in the community was inevitable. By the 1990s, however, there was growing realization that the inevitability of full membership was a misunderstanding or misconception of the community’s position. The period extending from the signing of the customs union agreement to the disappointments of the Luxembourg summit in December 1997 helped to portray to the Turkish public that the EU’s real intention was to develop a deepening of economic relations with Turkey, with no explicit promise of full membership. Once the notion of inevitability had disappeared, relations with Europe, for the first time during the post-World War II period, became a destabilizing factor in the process of democratic consolidation in Turkey. For the 80 percent of the Turkish population desiring a closer union with the Western world, the EU appeared to deny full membership for Turkey for the same reasons it granted membership to the Southern and Eastern European countries.

What was crucial in the profound transformation of the Southern European democracies in the 1970s and the 1980s was, as argued earlier, the mix of conditions and incentives provided by the EU. In the Turkish case, however, the conditions existed but similar incentives were not forthcoming. The EU has been vocal in its criticisms of the human rights performance of Turkey. At the Luxembourg summit a number of explicitly political conditions were specified for Turkey. These included an improvement in minority rights, involving the position of the Kurdish population in the southeastern part of Turkey, an improvement in bilateral relations with Greece, and the resolution of the Cyprus issue. The incentives for improvement available for the Southern European countries in the past and for the CEECs in the mid- and late 1990s, however, were largely absent. The benefits associated with the customs union represent only a weak set of benefits compared with the benefits made available to the CEECs during the transition phase to full membership as well as after the achievement of full membership itself. The fact that Turkey has been offered no specific timetable for eventual entry into the EU has also reduced the incentives for improvement, leading to a relaxation on the democratization front. One ought to recognize that the entrepreneurial elites in Turkey (as in many other emerging democracies) conceive democracy mainly in functional or instrumental terms rather than as a fundamental, overriding objective in its own right. The establishment of democratic rights and civil liberties, in other words, makes sense as an intermediate goal, the ultimate goal being defined as becoming part of the more advanced and civilized Western world.

The direction of causation implicit in the minds of many Turkish businessmen is perhaps the following. The achievement of democracy and civil rights is important in terms of securing full membership of the EU. This, in turn, would be instrumental in generating a greater degree of economic security, a stable environment for investment, and hence, higher rates of economic growth. The cycle would be completed by improved economic performance contributing to further liberalization of the political regime. An acceptance of this hypothetical scenario does not mean that businessmen are insensitive to human rights or the promotion of civil rights. The central point is that they are not single-mindedly concerned about democratic participation and human rights as ultimate objectives in their own right. These objectives make sense in the context of a broader package, in which access to economic benefits are of vital and overriding significance.

Any conception of political conditionality implies that specific incentives need to be attached to any package of reform involving difficult conditions, so that over time the returns from implementing the package outweigh the costs of adjustment. The comparative evidence suggests that the incentives available to Southern and Eastern European countries exceeded by a significant margin the transitional costs of implementing the necessary measures of adjustment. In Turkey, however, the reverse has been the case. The conditions imposed have been harsh, but the incentives that would elicit the desired response from the political or business elites have not been forthcoming. It is also interesting to note that studies of democratization in Eastern Europe reveal that, in spite of the fact that formal institutions of democracy have by and large been established in these countries, significant deficiencies continue to characterize these societies in terms of substantive democracy, notably in terms of discrimination against ethnic groups and the rights of minorities. ¹⁹ The different treatment of Turkey’s membership in the EU can be meaningfully explained only by the cultural logic of European identity, whereby some countries, in spite of their economic and human rights performances, are regarded as part of the natural European family while others are not.

Turkey is a country that has been particularly affected by authoritarian patterns of identity politics. Turkish democracy during the 1990s has been confronted with two basic challenges, which Turkey has not been able to handle adequately. The first concerns the rise of political Islam. This rise, specifically in the Turkish context, is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon, which has been widely explored and documented elsewhere. ²⁰ What is important in the present context is that political Islam poses a fundamental threat to the secular character of the republic. Since secularism is a precondition for any successful democracy, political Islam, with its authoritarian, majoritarian conception of democracy, is incompatible, in its existing form, with the process of democratic consolidation. The Islamist Welfare Party, which represents only about 20 percent of the population, exploited the weak and fragmented nature of the party system in Turkey and emerged as the principal partner in a coalition government in summer 1996. The formation of a government with political Islam as its dominant constituency created one of the most acute political crises in the history of the Turkish Republic. The formation of the coalition government brought the two most organized elements of Turkish society, namely the military and the Islamists, into direct confrontation. Although no direct military intervention has taken place, the military as a key organized element of the Kemalist elite was indirectly responsible for the collapse of the coalition government in June 1997 and the subsequent closure of the Welfare Party via a decision of the Constitutional Court in early 1998. ²¹

The second major dilemma faced by Turkish democracy, with significant repercussions for the external world, concerns the issue of minority rights—the Kurdish problem in the southeastern part of the country. The approach of the Kemalist political elite, including the military, to the Kurdish problem is that any discussion of minority rights comes into fundamental conflict with the country’s territorial integrity and, therefore, poses a serious threat to national unity. Hence, any discussion of cultural rights or cultural autonomy is out of the question. The logic of this argument is based on the fact that there is an obsession on the part of the elite, which may not be justified given the present level of economic development and political integration in Turkey, concerning the possibility of territorial disintegration. This perspective has historical roots dating back to Turkey’s War of Independence during the 1920s, when the boundaries of contemporary Turkey were salvaged with great difficulty from the imperial powers following the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Clearly, a rational or subtle solution to these fundamental conflicts over identity would be to try to incorporate and resolve the demands of religious or ethnic groups within the existing democratic system. Intermediate solutions could be found by softening the demands of such groups without jeopardizing the secular character or the territorial integrity of the nation-state. These subtle or democratic solutions are difficult to engineer in a milieu where an unfavorable external environment and geopolitical exclusion leads to a revival of nationalism with an emphasis on a variety of “threats” to the basic character and integrity of the state. This scenario naturally redirects our attention to the negative role performed by the EU in the most recent epoch. The multiple deficiencies of Turkish democracy, involving, among others, treatment of minority rights, freedom of expression, and civilian control over the military, cannot be attributed to the EU per se. What is significant for our purposes is that a more sensitive approach to Turkey, in line with the approach adopted toward the CEECs, would have created an environment in which subtle domestic solutions to serious identity conflicts could be accomplished in a relatively smooth manner.

Turkey’s recent sense of geopolitical isolationism has been compounded by the increasing focus of the United States on human rights and minority issues, very much in line with the EU position. ²² This shift may be explained, in part, by a genuine concern on the part of policy makers with democracy and human rights issues worldwide. A major part of the reason for the policy shift, however, appears to be the fact that Turkey is not fully conforming to U.S. policies in the region and is acting somewhat independently in line with its national interests. Recent Turkish attempts to reestablish closer economic ties with Iran and Iraq, for example, represent an approach that is clearly not in conformity with U.S. policies. Similarly, the recent rapprochement, involving development of close military and economic ties, with another important regional power, Israel, is a trend that does not seem to be strongly favored by the United States. ²³

The central point in the present context is that a sense of isolationism, rejection, and disappointment, coupled with geopolitical exclusion and a constant sense of threat to national unity, do not provide an environment conducive to the flourishing of democracy. It is not surprising, therefore, that the military has reestablished itself as a key actor in Turkish politics.

Concluding Observations

This essay has attempted to bring a fresh perspective to the Turkey-EU debate by investigating the issue from a comparative historical perspective through the lens of European identity. What is striking in the present historical context is the rapidity and smoothness of the process whereby countries of Central and Eastern Europe, with relatively backward economic structures and obvious deficiencies in their democratic systems, have been assimilated into the basic fabric of the EC and, more recently, the EU. Turkey, by contrast, with an economic structure similar to the advanced CEECs and with a democratic tradition of significantly longer duration, has experienced marginalization in its relations with the EU. The paradox may be due, in part, to the irony of history or to mistimed transitions. Although representative democracy has been the norm in Turkey during the postwar period, the two most difficult and problematic phases of Turkish democracy have coincided with the two major waves of enlargement of the EC/EU. Turkish democracy experienced a collapse in the late 1970s, precisely at the time when the other countries of the Southern European periphery cast off their authoritarian pasts and accomplished a transition to democracy in their quest for full EC membership. Similarly, in the 1990s, the Eastern European countries emerged from their authoritarian communist past and swiftly accomplished the required economic reforms and democratization in line with the incentives provided by the EU. At the same time, Turkish democracy was again experiencing problems, this time of a very different kind, relating to the rise of political Islam and conflicts over the positions of ethnic minorities.

Ironies of history or mistimed transitions are only peripheral explanations for the different fates of Eastern Europe and Turkey. More fundamental factors, namely, geosecurity conditions and deeper cultural factors, have been at work. In simple terms, the dichotomy may be explained by the fact that the stabilization of Eastern Europe appeared to be much more important than that of Turkey for the immediate security of the western part of the continent. More significantly, however, a close cultural affinity between the countries of Western and Central Europe also proved to be of decisive influence. The recent eastern enlargement process reveals that the EU is ultimately a cultural project with fairly definite boundaries on its eastern border. By similar logic, the marginalization of Turkey may be explained by the fact that Turkey is strategically not equally important from a European point of view. Furthermore, Turkey is seen not as part of the broader European family or civilizational nexus but as an important nonmember with which relations primarily of an economic nature need to be developed.

The EU’s relative lack of interest in Turkey also illustrates the fact that, at this stage of its evolution, it is not willing to take an active and direct global role in areas of conflict, such as the Middle East, where it also has important strategic interests in terms of the stability of energy supplies. Except in the areas within its immediate neighborhood, such as Eastern Europe, the EU is largely willing to delegate responsibilities to the United States, thereby withdrawing from an active global role concerning out-of-area conflicts.

A mix of conditions and incentives has been instrumental in the consolidation of democracies in Southern Europe. A similar process is likely to take place in much of Eastern Europe during the coming decade. In the Turkish case, however, the conditions have been binding while similar incentives have been lacking. This, in turn, is likely to exercise a negative influence with respect to the process of democratic deepening in Turkey. This is not to argue in a simplistic fashion that in the absence of EU membership the democratic regime is likely to collapse in Turkey. The issue is far more subtle. What is more likely to happen is a relaxation of effort with respect to improving the quality of democracy as opposed to a total reversal into authoritarianism. The latter is extremely unlikely given the current level of development and maturity of the Turkish political system and the broader international context in which it exists. The rational strategy for democratic politicians in Turkey is to continue to develop close economic and political ties with the EU. The linkages to the EU are important not only from an economic point of view but also in terms of democratic deepening. One ought to recognize, however, that this will prove to be more difficult than in the past, considering that full integration with Europe no longer appears to be a feasible option. In fact, the fundamental challenge for Turkey is not primarily economic. The country has been growing quite rapidly in recent years. Given Turkey’s dynamic private sector and geographical position, rapid growth is likely to continue. The real challenge is whether relatively high economic growth will be compatible with a genuinely advanced form of democracy, with realization of full civil rights and liberties. In this respect, continuation of an organic link with Europe will be of crucial significance.