The Myths about Turkey

Apr 1st, 2011 | By Serkan Bulut

Myth I: Tur­key will proof to be a Tro­jan horse !

The fam­ous story of the Greeks’ cap­ture of the city of Troy using the decoy of a wooden horse in which sol­diers were hid­den is a well-known one. It cre­ates a power­ful his­tor­ical image in mind and this is why it is pop­u­lar when it comes to describ­ing the Turk­ish bid to the EU.

Tur­key: Tro­jan horse of the Islam?

There are two aspects of this myth. On the one side are the people who believe that Tur­key will be the Tro­jan Horse of the Islam in Europe and that through Turk­ish EU mem­ber­ship, Europe will be Islam­ized, mean­ing that Europe will become a “Muslim” con­tin­ent. This group envi­sions a reli­gious dom­in­a­tion of Europe by Turks; a pro­cess which will turn Europe into Eura­bia. Through con­ver­sion and high birthrates this groups believes that Muslims will finally over­run Europe. Of course this argu­ment has its con­nec­tions with argu­ments against Muslim immig­rants of dif­fer­ent ori­gins, other than Turk­ish, as well. Artic­u­lat­ing the already “high” num­ber of Muslim immig­rants in Europe, adding the incom­ing 70+ mil­lion Turk­ish Muslims, this argu­ment paints a dooms­day scen­ario for sec­u­lar Europe. From this per­spect­ive Tur­key is not or “no longer” a sec­u­lar coun­try and its “Islamic” nature is the dag­ger that aims at the heart of Europe. Just like in any other myth this claim lacks a solid base of evid­ence; mere rehash­ing of his­tor­ical fears and pro­duc­tion of a new gen­er­a­tion of phobias.

I’m not say­ing that integ­ra­tion of a coun­try with a large pop­u­la­tion will be a prob­lem free pro­cess but the prob­lems will not be of a reli­gious nature. Turks have always had ambi­tions for the future. Whether real­istic or unreal­istic, rational or irra­tional they have always thought that they are destined to do great things. How­ever, a reli­gious dom­in­a­tion of Europe is not part of the Turk­ish agenda. This goes espe­cially when it con­cerns the youth.

Tur­key: Tro­jan Horse of the U.S.?

The other aspect of this myth is the one that sees Tur­key as a Tro­jan horse of the US in the EU. This group is skep­tical of Eng­lish policies as well and tends to see Tur­key as a second Eng­land in the EU. There are sev­eral assump­tions behind such a the­ory that cre­ates this myth and as these assump­tions are flawed: the whole the­ory is misguided.

First of all, claim­ing that Tur­key will be an agent of the US within the EU implies that the EU and the US are exper­i­en­cing sig­ni­fic­ant clashes of interest and that Tur­key will join Eng­land in under­min­ing the EU against the US. When was the last biggest clash of interest/policy between the EU and the US since the fall of Soviet Union? It was the war in Iraq and there was no sig­ni­fic­ant dif­fer­ence between the Franco-German atti­tude towards the war and Amer­ican policies, and the Turk­ish. In fact, Turk­ish oppos­i­tion to the war severely dam­aged the rela­tions with the US which took years to nor­mal­ize, while many European states con­trib­uted to the war efforts.

Secondly, Eng­lish and Turk­ish ideas about integ­ra­tion and deep­en­ing of the Union are com­pletely dif­fer­ent. Bri­tain prefers to limit its integ­ra­tion to con­tin­ental Europe. Tur­key, how­ever, in fact des­per­ately wants to integ­rate itself into Europe and turn itself and the EU as a viable actor in global polit­ics and a counter-balance of the US, espe­cially in the Middle East.

All in all, the argu­ment that Tur­key will be the Tro­jan horse of the US in the EU is prob­lem­atic from the very assump­tions it lays its found­a­tion on. It assumes a ten­sion between the two sides of the Atlantic which is neither inher­ent nor char­ac­ter­istic of this rela­tion­ship. And it falls into the trap of com­par­ing Bri­tain which holds a “spe­cial” rela­tion­ship with the US to Tur­key, a coun­try that strives to find a new refined role in its regional polit­ics and sees the EU as an import­ant plat­form to real­ize that wish.

via The Myths about Turkey: Part I – European Student Think Tank.