The Turkish mirror

The point of the belongship of Turkey to the European Union raises a debate around the nature of the European Union. It is the European identity which is now at stake. The debate around Turkey is more than a debate around Turkey. It raises radical questions. It is the revelatory of the current uncertainties around the construction of the Eu. Europe as a project: what is Eu? The answer to the question cannot limit itself to the Treaty to establish a constitution for Eu. This Europe as a project is not really defined. The relative emptiness of this category is considered as a risk for EU: the considerable weight of Turkey, its economic potential, its demographic dynamism, its religious characteristics could be too important weight? A society still largely dominated by lslam could be a part of the Eu or would she weight to heavily on an Europe mainly influenced by the legacy of Rom, Athens and Jerusalem…Has Turkey its pIace in Europe? The question is not new, even if the question is raising today new polemics. The history of the relations between Turkey and Europe should beremembered in order to better remind the role and pIace of Christianity in our world. Because of its economical and demographic weight, a possible candidature of Turkey to join the EU would be a qualitative jump compared with the previous enlargement in may 2004 : (10 new. countries for a global amount of population of 75 millions of people). Turkey alone has 70 millions of people and is, from an economical point view, far behind the 10 new members of the Eu.There is also the question of the Human’s rights, in the core of the question of the belongship of this country to the Eu. It has justified for a long time the postponement of this candidature. But there are recent progress Turkey entered since some years into a political modernization process that brought it closer to the liberal democracies. The constitutional reforms constitute the strongest signal of it. Far from all these arguments, the debate about the entry of Turkey in the EU became a topic of domestic policy in the states of the Eu. This debate is dominated by the fact that Turkey is culturally a muslim country. By the way, this debate underestimates the religious diversity of Turkey and the presence of the islam in Europe. The question of Turkey raises the question of the borders, the power, the values and the project of the EU. Turkey is a mirror where reflects itself the uncertainty of Europeans on the sense that they want to give to this original construction, that is called “European Union”.Turkey: mirror of our contradictions or or uncertainties?Whatever are the answers that one gives to these questions, it is conformity with the principles and to the genius of the union that this debate is led in a democratic way, that after a public debate which should be as open as possible.