Madeleine Bunting: Let Turkey Join EU

She writes in The Guardian:

The application to the EU is characterised by two ironies, neither of which is lost on Turks. Firstly, although Turkey pioneered secularism in the Muslim world, discussion in the EU of Turkey's application to join has focused on its 97% Muslim population. Secondly, although Turkey has finally resolved its decades-old identity crisis as to whether it is European or Asian - the majorities in favour of EU accession are substantial - Europe has now plunged into an identity crisis.

Much of the opposition to Turkish EU membership pivots on these ironies and the questions they prompt: is Europe a geographical or a cultural entity, and how do you define the boundaries of either? Nilufer Gole, a Turkish academic working in France, warns of the grave dangers of a narcissistic European Union obsessed by these questions of identity rather than motivated by the sense of project (initially, Franco-German peace) that gave birth to the EU and has sustained it. It's the project - of peace, of economic growth, of democracy and human rights - that appeals to Turkey, not indeterminate questions of identity.

An EU project that carved out a distinctive European engagement with Islam in which Turkey was a key partner would trounce Samuel Huntingdon's specious and self-fulfilling theory of a "clash of civilisations". Naked self-interest - those pipelines and pensions - will help drive this project forward. But I'm aware that many would attribute my enthusiasm to that intoxicating Istanbul effect of a city prickling with minarets above a sparkling blue sea.