What is to become of Turkey in Europe? European identity and Turkey’s EU accession

Perceptions (Turkey) Autumn 2004, pages 59-72

Angelos Giannakopoulos *

The essay deals exclusively with the question of how Turkey’s potential accession to the EU might determine how a European identity evolved. Following this, two disparate views of perceiving and defining a European identity are compared and analysed: a  maximalistic’ and a ‘dialogistic’. These represent opposing ways of understanding political community: the maximalistic definition represents an ‘ethical cultural community’ and the dialogistic a ‘universal community of citizens’. European identity is then conceived as an open process and is brought into relation to the democratic process. Also investigated is which understanding of European identity is implied, by the draft for a European constitution. The thesis of the article is, that Turkey’ future accession to the EU cannot be judged on the basis of a ‘historical-cultural’ argument but rather on the basis of whether or not a shared European political culture and its main elements have been realised.

* Dr. Angelos Giannakopoulos, Konstanz University, Faculty of History and Sociology, Department of Sociology, Germany. Co-ordinator of the international research project ‘European Integration and Cultural Patterns of Thought and Perception. Cultural Aspects of the EU-Enlargement Process on the Basis of the Relations between the EU and Turkey’, supported by the ‘Volkswagen Foundation’ in which researchers from the Universities of Tübingen, Oxford, Galatasaray, Athens and Cyprus participate.

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