Can Turkey come on side?

WHEN Turkish side Fenerbahce took on Newcastle United in the group stage of the UEFA Cup last night, little was made of their right to compete in one of European football's premier club competitions.

Turkey first joined UEFA, European football's governing body, in 1962. The country's champions, Galatasaray, are competing in this season's Champions League, and when Liverpool beat Juventus to win Europe's biggest prize two seasons ago, they did so in Istanbul's Ataturk Stadium. In the world of football, at least, Turkey enjoys a place at Europe's heart.

When it comes to politics, however, things are rather different. Turkey's traditionally problematic relationship with the European Union is arguably the biggest challenge facing the Union's leaders as they look to realign themselves to tackle a world in which the centres of economic and cultural power are shifting.

To some, including the British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, the prospect of Turkey becoming a full EU member is an affirmation of Europe's ability to embrace and manage change; to draw in states and peoples who might otherwise have been seen as a threat to European stability.

But to others, most notably in the core EU countries of France and Germany, Turkish entry is seen as the beginning of the end for Europe, an admission that the values and culture that had previously defined what it meant to be European are no longer a given.

The argument had been a largely theoretical one until the Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, successfully lobbied for the start of accession negotiations last October.

Now it rages in the corridors of Brussels and the coffee shops of Istanbul, intensifying again last week when Orhan Pamuk, an author who had previously been prosecuted for insulting the Turkish nation, was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.

Its outcome is likely to determine both the future development of the European Union and the long-term political prospects of Turkey, a country that occupies a unique geopolitical position at the crossroads between East and West. As yet, it is difficult to be entirely certain which way the coin will fall.

Arguments against granting Turkey formal EU membership, held primarily, although not exclusively, by those on the political right in countries such as France, Austria and Germany, tend to coalesce around three core arguments: namely that the Turkish state is too big, too poor and too Muslim.

The issue of size is a largely practical one. With almost 70 million inhabitants, Turkey is second only to Germany in terms of population and potential political clout. If the country's current rate of growth is maintained, it will be the biggest EU member on accession, bestowing an influence and voting power that does not sit easily with those who continue to cling to the notion of a more federalised Europe.

The poverty problem is equally rudimentary. While Istanbul has grown into a dynamic, modern metropolis, the vast majority of Turkey remains under-developed, with great swathes of the country continuing to survive on subsistence agriculture alone.

Eight million people work on the land in Turkey - more than in the whole of the EU before it admitted ten new member states in 2004 - and their potential impact on the chronically inefficient Common Agricultural Policy is crippling. In addition, the prospect of a wave of Turkish migrants gravitating towards Western Europe causes considerable concern.

Yet the arguments about power and poverty are little more than the political wrangling that would accompany accession talks involving any country currently on the periphery of the Union. When it comes to Turkey, it is the issue of a Muslim identity that really sets the blue touchpaper ablaze.

Former French Prime Minister, Jean-Pierre Raffarin, recently questioned the wisdom of allowing "the river of Islam to enter the river bed of (European) secularism" and, before becoming Pope, Benedict XVI claimed that Turkey should "form a cultural continent with some neighbouring Arab countries instead".

While secularism is enshrined in the Turkish constitution, more than 98 per cent of the country's citizens are practising Muslims and recent EU internal reports expressed concern at systemic discrimination against non-Sunnis. Human rights violations remain rife, the country's Kurdish minority are little more than second-class citizens despite a recent bill finally recognising their language, and Turkey borders Syria, Iraq and Iran, Middle-Eastern nations with which it continues to enjoy close cultural and economic ties.

Chris Morris, a BBC World Affairs correspondent and author of the book, The New Turkey, sees considerable benefits in admitting Turkey to the EU, but even he admits: "Travel down the long straight roads through Anatolia to the Turkish border with Iraq, where long lines of trucks wait patiently to bring their cargoes of cheap diesel across the border from Iraqi Kurdistan, and London or Brussels suddenly seem a world away.

"Or take just a few minutes to step away from the picture-postcard image of Istanbul which the authorities want to promote - into the back streets of Fatih, one of the city's most conservative, religious neighbourhoods - and the traditional ideas of Europe fade rather fast."

Yet the issue of Turkey's Muslim identity strikes at the very heart of the European Union's continued rationale.

If Europe is to be a closed shop, protecting the interests and cultural norms of its members, then Turkish entry is a non-starter. But if Europe is to be a modernising force, drawing volatile regions into a web of mutual trust and reciprocity, Turkey is exactly the type of state its members should be wooing.

In their ham-fisted attempts to promote democracy in Afghanistan and Iraq, Britain and the United States have tried to persuade the Islamic world that its religion need not be a barrier to a secular democracy in which legal and economic freedoms, a right to personal expression and tolerance of minorities are not anathema to an Islamic way of life.

Turkey is that democracy. It is not an ideal model, and its unwillingness to recognise the sovereignty of Cyprus underlines the influence that the country's armed forces continue to exert. But while parts of the Middle East begin to fracture along fundamentalist lines, Turkey continues to be a beacon of stability.

How long that lasts, though, could be down to the EU. Since the opening of accession negotiations, the Turkish government has thrown itself down the path of economic and cultural liberalism, much to the alarm of a significant proportion of the population who yearn for a more overtly Islamic identity.

The more European politicians attempt to play down the likelihood of full Turkish entry, the more Turks lose faith in their government's pro-Western stance. And, as the Turkish majority bridles at a Union that does not want them, so fundamentalist forces in the neighbouring Middle East sense an opportunity to exploit the vacuum.

'I think it comes down to whether you're an optimist or a pessimist about the ability of Western societies to integrate different cultures and faiths," adds Morris. "For now, Europe's ruling politicians have decided that Turkey deserves its chance; but both they and the Turks themselves need to do a lot more to persuade the public that this is a good idea, and that looking outwards in a globalised world is their best bet.

"If the Turks were to be rejected - if they were not allowed to make the decision (on EU entry) for themselves - then the chip on the shoulder would grow a little bit bigger, and more extreme Islamist and nationalist politicians would be quick to take advantage."

Such an incendiary situation would have significant repercussions for the whole of the EU. And while American foreign policy has hardly helped Turkish attempts to halt the growth of radical Islam, it would be Europe's political rulers that were to blame were Turkey to eventually turn its back on the West.