Turkey in Europe?

Is Turkey European? In his commentary published
by Zaman, Immanuel Wallerstein argues that although this
question gets very little attention, it is one of the more
important geopolitical issues of the coming
decades.

Is Turkey European? Will Turkey
be accepted as part of the European Union? This
question, which has been lingering for a good
twenty (if not fifty) years, gets very little
attention outside Turkey and to a much lesser
extent in western Europe. Yet, it is one of the
more important geopolitical issues of the
coming decades.

An intelligent answer to this question has
to start in the sixteenth century, when the
Ottoman Empire was at its peak of glory and
importance under Suleiman the Magnificent. At
that time, the Ottoman Empire seemed to be the
anti-Europe – a Muslim empire expanding
everywhere, including into Christian Europe. It
not only controlled most of what we now think
of as the Arab world, but it was conquering all
of southeastern Europe. This culminated in the
seventeenth century, in the so-called
Türkenjahr, when the Habsburg emperor
successfully resisted the second Ottoman siege
of Vienna, in the very centre of Europe. After
this, the Ottoman Empire began to recede
slowly, until in the nineteenth century, it was
considered the “sick man of Europe”.
Yet, note, it was called the sick man “of
Europe.” 

Click here 
to read the full commentary

on the Zaman website.