How Europeans adopted Anatolia and created Turkey

The Republic of Turkey was founded in 1923. In the first 20 years of its existence, the political leadership of the republic embarked on a process of nation building in Anatolia and at the same time changed the face of Turkish society, stamping on it a particular brand of secular modernity. This article tries to find out what were the common characteristics of the small band of men who made up the leadership of the republic and to what extent their shared background and experience can help explain the course they charted for Turkey after its creation. One of the conclusions is that Turkey, although located geographically for more than 90 in Asia, is in fact a creation of Europeans, who shaped the country after their own image.

Introduction

Turkey is about to start accession negotiations with the European Union. The question of whether Turkey qualified as a European country in terms of history and culture, was put on the European agenda by conservative European politicians in the mid-1990s and seemed to have been solved in Turkey s favour at the Helsinki summit of 1999, but it was hotly debated again throughout 2004. At the same time, a parallel debate developed among those who accepted Turkey s European credentials in principle (or felt they had to accept them). This was the debate about Turkey s state of preparedness and the degree to which the country fulfilled the so-called Copenhagen Criteria , which stipulated that candidates for membership of the EU should have a stable democracy, the rule of law, respect for human rights and a functioning market economy. In the end, as we know, the attempts of the fundamentalist opposition to Turkey s candidature on the part of people like former Eurocommissioner Bolkestein, German CDU/CSU leaders Merkel and Stoiber or ex-president Giscard d Estaing failed. Turkey s progress towards fulfilment of the Copenhagen Criteria was deemed sufficient by the European Commission, and on 17 December 2004 the momentous decision to start the accession process was taken unanimously at the summit in The Hague.Interest in the question of Turkey s candidature has meant that an extraordinary number of studies, reports, papers have appeared, analysing the current situation and drawing scenarios for the future. The authors of this Focus have not intended to add to this, or to investigate the chequered history of Turkish-European relations since the signing of the accession treaty in 1963.