MARIA ANTONIA DI CASOLA

La vocazione europea della Turchia

N. 194

Summary — European culture has many difficulties in accepting the Turkish world as belonging to Europe. A stereotyped expression in the Italian language has served, across the centuries, to underline the negative connotations of the word " Turk ". Shaping a new Europe does not, however, necessarily mean assimilating the Turkish experience to European phenomena like that of the Enlightenment or the Renaissance. Rather, it means giving Europe a new identity, especially in a time when paradoxically — as Ralph Dahrendorf has recently put it — Europe itself still lacks the institutional requirements it makes of its members. Few peoples like the Turks have shown, throughout their millennial history, such a determination to westernize or to develop in ways compatible with Western civilization. The constitutional experience of Tanzimat is there to prove the extraordinary work undertaken to modify the complex and diverse pattern of the Turkish State tradition. Thus " revolution " was always to be associated with " westernization ", even in the religious field, all the way up to the final creation of the secular Republic of Ataturk (and its stringent corollary making it illegal to exploit religious beliefs for political gain). Long a strong pillar of the Western defence system during the Cold War era, Turkey has had its geopolitical importance reinforced by the profound changes on thepost-Cold War international scene, while at the same time long-standing issues concerning its identity and role have also sharpened. The idea of Turkey’s belonging to NATO no longer has the same meaning in terms of security, and its interest in Bosnia, Azerbaijan and the Kurdish area of Iraq may somewhat differ from those of the Atlantic alliance, while the latter still remains for Turkey the institutional channel of access to the European Union. The edge given by the presence of a similar language is an important tool of the Turkish policy towards the turcophone populations of Caucasus and Central Asia, where Ankara could even compete with Moscow and Khomeinist Iran in playing an important geopolitical role. In this new context, Turkey looks like an ultra-regional country whose military alliance with Israel has further strengthened the strategic dimension. The advantages for Turkey of being part of the new Europe would consist not only in the finalization of its long-pursued European vocation but also in its coming to terms with its current contraddictions (Islamic roots within a secular State / different ethnic groups within a centralized State). The benefits for the new Europe of binding itself closely to a country of such political and strategical relevance would be just as great.