Visions of a Union: Europe Struggles to Define Its Identity
By Elaine Sciolino, New York Times, December 15, 2002, COPENHAGEN, Dec. 13 - In redrawing the map of Europe, the 15 men whose countries represent Europe's most important and exclusive club tore down one border and built another.

They formally invited 10 new members, most with dysfunctional economies, to join their European Union by 2004, thereby expanding eastward into territories whose economic and political development was long stunted by Communism. They also rejected Turkey's demand that its candidacy be given more urgency, erecting a wall that is sure to be seen by the mostly Muslim country of 67 million people -- and by the rest of the Muslim world -- as a division between the Christian West and the Islamic East. The Europeans turned down a plea by Turkey to set a date for starting talks on its eventual admission.

The front page of the Turkish newspaper Hurriyet was illustrated with da Vinci's "Last Supper," with the question, "Will the E.U., like Christ's last supper, be purely for Christians or will there be a Muslim at the table?"

European politicians wave away talk of a clash of religions or of blocking Turkey to control immigration and insist that their decision was based on standards of democracy and human rights, and on controlling immigration and terrorism.

With the decisions here, the European Union has given itself the thankless task of defining Europe, a task that has baffled scholars and politicians for centuries.

"Geographical Europe," wrote Norman Davies in "Europe: A History," "has always had to compete with notions of Europe as a cultural community, and in the absence of common political structures, European civilization could only be determined by cultural criteria."

Jean Monnet, the visionary advocate not just of economic union but of an eventual United States of Europe, took the extreme position in the immediate years after World War II, writing, "Europe has never existed; one has genuinely to create Europe."

His way of doing so was to bring together that part of geographical Europe that was democratic into a common unit by knitting its economies together. The aim was that politics would follow.

Now, the European Union is embarked on the task of adapting that vision to a very different political landscape. Even as it struggles to create political, economic, social and even military institutions to serve its current members, it has been challenged by events to enlarge itself and face the question of what other societies might fit in.

At the meeting this week, there was never any doubt that Poland would be welcomed. Turkey, by contrast, stood knocking at the door but will have to wait two more years for the European Union's leaders to decide whether to set a date for talks regarding its candidacy to begin.

Is it that Turkey's human rights record and democratic institutions do not measure up to Western standards, while those of Eastern European democracies do?

Or is it fear that the bridge to trade with the Muslim world would be a two-way conduit that could also bring terrorists from countries like Iraq and Afghanistan into Europe?

Whatever the true political reason, the choices being made have stirred some rethinking in Europe.

François Heisbourg, the director of the Paris-based Fondation pour la Recherche Statégique, says there are two sides to the debate on how Europe is defined: "The first vision is one in which Europe is defined in terms of geography and religion. The second vision is about shared values and a sense of shared history." He added, "While Turkey doesn't fit into the first, it can fit into the second."

There are limits to pure geography. Last week's invitations were extended to Cyprus, the Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia. But Albania and the countries that make up the former Yugoslavia were left out, presumably because of their economic and political instability.

During the cold war, Turkey seemed a special case. Valued for its strategic location and its military, it joined NATO in 1952. Entry into Europe's economic club was supposed to be the logical next step, even though only a sliver of its territory lies in geographical Europe.

These days, though, common values have assumed more importance. In 1993 the European Union's leaders developed a "criteria" for membership: a candidate state must be judged to follow democratic principles and fully respect human rights, and must be well on its way to meeting certain economic and institutional standards before it can begin talks to join. These are the criteria invoked to slow down Turkey's bid.

Turks can argue that their cultural interchange with Europe goes back centuries, but Europe does not choose to remember the fact. In fact, Turkey was the very definition of the anti-Europe, the vast Muslim empire that at one point sent its armies of conquest as far into Europe as Vienna.

Turkey insists it changed its ways in the 20th century, when modernizers made it into a republic whose division of mosque and state has always been enforced.

And its military usefulness is no small bargaining point. Turkey has a bigger army than any European Union member, and a military budget that is behind only those of Britain, France, Germany and Italy. All of those arguments seemed to resonate in Europe until Communism fell and Islamic terrorism became a threat. Then Turkey found itself at the end of a long line of new candidates. One reason is that many Europeans feel that expansion is out of control, with 10 new members joining at once.

Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, the former French president who is spearheading a project to draft a constitution for the European Union, may have done the Turks a favor when he said that Turkey was "not a European country" and that inviting it in would mean "the end of Europe." If nothing else, the remark framed the debate in a stark way and forced people to stake out positions.

Even the most global of symbols, this year's Miss World, Azra Akin, a Turkish citizen who grew up in Denmark, has weighed in on Turkey's side. Ms. Akin, a 21-year-old model, certainly thinks Turkey is part of Europe. Last week she issued a plea to the European Union. "Turkish people look up to Europe," she said. "Certainly, when compared to some Eastern European countries, Turkey is quite a sophisticated and developed country."