EU’s Multiculturalism Challenge and Turkish Accession

The issue of Turkey’s accession to the EU poses challenges not only to Turkey’s transformation but also the EU’s evolving identity.
 
Just as Turkey’s identity will have to change alongside the accession process, Turkey’s eventual membership will also radically alter the EU’s institutional and international standing. In this sense, it can be said that there is a mutually constitutive relationship between Turkey’s accession to the union and the transformation of the European Union’s identity. This constitutive relationship has ostensibly become important in the context of the EU’s ability to deal with twin challenges of the post-September 11 world: namely, the integration of Muslim communities living in Europe into European societies and the EU’s aspirations to develop friendly and cooperative relationships with the countries located in the Muslim world. This is what is meant by the multiculturalism challenge in European governance.
 
The internal dimension of the EU’s multiculturalism challenge concerns the mechanisms through which people of different cultural, religious, linguistic and ethnic origins live in peace at home. For example, analyzing the status of Muslim people who live European countries, it can be said that an EU-wide consensus is still beyond the horizon. In countries like France, the demand on the Muslim people is to prove their loyalty to the republican norms of the French state and get assimilated into the mainstream French society. All people are equal before the law, irrespective of their differences in ethnic, cultural, religious and linguistic terms. Granting rights to specific groups and enshrining their difference in law would be against the universal claims of the French republic. People are simply allowed to practice their differences individually. That said, whenever people of different cultural groups ask that their differences be recognized by the law, they are deemed as potential threats to society. The idea of a multicultural society is anathema to universal French values.
 
In countries like Great Britain, the Netherlands and Sweden, Muslims are recognized as different communities before the law. They are allowed to practice their differences as groups, rather than individuals. However, there are three particular risks here. One concerns the position of those Muslims who do not want to be treated as members of the Muslim communities and want to be seen as legitimate members of the mainstream societies. The second is about the possibility of achieving unity in diversity while prioritizing difference over unity. The third is closely related with the previous point, in that the more emphasis put on difference, the more likely members of Muslim communities are recruited by radical groups like al-Qaeda.
 
The status of Muslim people who live in EU member countries like Germany is quite different from the models mentioned above. Here the status of Muslim people is more disadvantageous than in the previous two cases. For a long time, Germany took an exclusionary approach to foreigners and tended to ignore their existence. The idea was that these people came to Germany for economic reasons and that they would automatically go back to their countries of origin when their contributions were no longer needed. The German citizenship law, which long relied on the principle of blood, also made it difficult -- if not impossible -- for foreigners to become Germans.
 
The external dimension is about the mechanisms through which the European Union develops cordial and cooperative relations with outside actors so that its efforts abroad are perceived as contributing to global, multicultural governance, as well as the defeat of the “clash of civilizations” thesis.
 
Voices of Muslims in Europe
External multiculturalism does also apply to the EU’s enlargement policies in the sense that aspirant states should be admitted to membership, not because of the security risks of their exclusion from the union, but because of the potential contributions of their accession to the EU’s multicultural identity. The European Union that acts as a truly multicultural foreign policy actor should not view potential members from an instrumental perspective -- in the sense that the ultimate goal of the EU’s policies abroad is defined as protecting the previously defined European norms, values and interests against the dangers that might stem from the targets of the EU’s foreign policies. The EU’s efforts abroad should be perceived as contributing to community building between Europe and its peripheries. Unless the EU turns out to become a multicultural foreign policy actor, its efforts to contribute to the solution of perennial security problems in the Eastern Mediterranean and Northern African regions -- as well as the consolidation of plural representative liberal democracies there -- would remain ineffective.
 
Unless the voices and demands of Muslim people were seriously taken into account in internal governance, it would be difficult, if not impossible, for the EU to reach out to the Muslim world and for its policies to be considered legitimate.  Unless the Muslims who live in Europe feel themselves at home, the EU’s image in the Muslim world will be negative, and this will in turn limit the EU’s ability to successfully implement its transformative policies. The EU’s success in becoming a credible international actor, amid all economic hardships and institutional malaise, seems now to depend on its ability to meet these challenges.
 
Recent years have witnessed that a growing number of Europeans have begun to loudly criticize the idea/principle of multiculturalism in the face of increasing challenges to European society and values posed by immigrants and Muslims. The existence of Muslim people in Europe has, to a significant extent, been securitized. The more Muslims in Europe had been lured to radical Islamist ideologies and the more easily they could operate within liberal societies in Europe, the more people began to see the idea of multiculturalism through negative lenses. Multiculturalism, an idea that was once promulgated as the recipe for societal peace in heterogeneous societies, is now seen by many as shaking the foundations of the EU’s peace project. It should not be forgotten that the project of European integration got off the ground with a view to helping contribute to the emergence of collective identities among diverse Europeans -- so that they no longer would define each other as potential enemies. The goal has been from the very beginning defined as avoiding the danger of exclusive self-other relationships and ending up with inclusive collective belongings. The EU’s integration project aimed at the transformation of the political communities in Europe from their Westphalian characters into post-nation state characters in which people would no longer feel discriminated against, marginalized and alienated.
 
However, an increasing number of Muslims who live in Europe have been affiliated with radical ideologies and violence. Thus, the idea of multiculturalism has come under attack. The people who masterminded the terrorist attacks in the United States on Sept. 11, 2001, in London in July 2007 and in Spain in 2004 were second generation Muslims in Europe. Though many were born in Europe and received a European education, they found in radical Islamist ideologies a shelter to escape from their sense of isolation and discrimination.
 
That explains why it is now urgent for the EU to find ways to successfully cope with difference. For multiculturalism to remain a legitimate project, it needs to prove its usefulness in efforts dealing with differences. Unless Europeans can achieve this, the fear of Islamophobia will fester. In order for Europeans not to fear the possibility of their continent being renamed “Eurabia,” they have to soon find a solution to the challenges of multiculturalism.
 
The challenge ahead seems to be how to reconcile the existence of different cultural groups with the secular and universal principles of citizenship in Europe. Put another way, the challenge is how to strike a balance between integration and diversity, the forces of unification and the forces of difference. A relevant question in this context concerns the limits of multiculturalism. Is it possible that EU members develop an umbrella identity under which people of different backgrounds feel at home? Is it possible to conjure up a specific polity where people feel themselves as both members of the same group and different?
 
In addition, suspicions of the EU’s ability to offer its integration model to the world as an alternative way of contributing to global governance have increased, as it has steadily become clear that the EU itself is still far from becoming a truly multicultural actor. How can the European Union compete with other global powers, such as the United States and China, in helping shape the rules and norms of the 21st century, if it has not yet coped with the challenge of multiculturalism at home?
 
Multicultural governance’s challenges
The external dimension of the EU’s multicultural governance becomes more important as one comes closer to the EU’s peripheries, particularly the Northern African and Eastern Mediterranean regions. The EU’s dealings with the countries located in such places will be very much impacted by the EU’s success in integrating Muslims in Europe into mainstream European societies. The EU would not be able to help contribute to the principle of “unity in diversity” abroad, as the same principle continues to sit on shaky grounds at home. On the other hand, the success of the EU to develop cooperative relations with the countries in its peripheries will impact the EU’s security at home. Unless the EU can act as a credible transformative actor in its neighborhood, those regions will continue to remain as places that suffer from lack of good governance, organized crime, corruption, pollution, poverty and underdevelopment.
 
This will in turn result in more people immigrating to European societies. The more people migrate to Europe, the more Europeans will define immigration as a security issue, particularly in the context of societal norms and values. As immigration becomes a security issue, the ability of the EU to deal with the twin challenges of multicultural governance at home and abroad will decrease.
 
In this context, it can be argued that there is a close relationship between the lack of multicultural governance at home and the lack of multicultural governance abroad. They feed each other. Besides, the way the EU achieves multicultural governance at home and how it can contribute to the same goal abroad are very much related to each other.
 
Turkey enters the picture here. Its prospective membership might have a great impact on the EU’s ability to deal with the challenges of multicultural governance at home and abroad. However, Turkey’s possible contribution in this regard is not a given, but depends on the fulfillment of three conditions.
 
The first concerns Turkey’s national identity at home. Whether Turkey turns out to be a multicultural polity might help shape the EU’s identity in the same way. The way the so-called Kurdish problem is solved is the greatest challenge facing Turkey in this regard.
 
Secondly, Turkey’s approach toward the EU accession process is also important. What kind of logic Turkey employs in this context bears relevance to the EU’s emerging international identity. What is important here is that Turkey’s approach toward the EU should be built on the logic of identity, in the sense that Turkey tries to transform the EU into a truly multicultural polity just as Turkey’s adoption of European norms emanates from its perception of those norms as legitimate and appropriate. Turkey’s logic should be based on the assumption that the prospects of Turkish membership would skyrocket if the EU turned out to become a multicultural polity. Here, Turkey’s goal should be to help Europeanize Islam rather than Islamize Europe. Turkish leaders should encourage the Turkish and Muslim people who live EU countries to integrate into their host societies. Rather than living in their ghettos or closed-in communities, the Euro-Turks should strive to become part of their host societies. Looking from this perspective, Turkish leaders should view the Euro-Turks as leverage in Turkey’s relations with the European Union. The more these people are integrated into mainstream EU societies, and the more they prove that Islam and European norms are not contradictory, the faster Turkey’s accession to the EU would be.
 
Lastly, Turkish foreign policy understanding and behavior, particularly pertaining to the Middle East, should help the EU form cordial relations with the countries in the Muslim world. Turkey should not follow a uni-dimensional foreign policy because it is multi-identity actor.
 
Even though Turkey’s accession depends on various factors, the most important of which is Turkey’s ability to fulfill the Copenhagen criteria, the extent to which both the EU and Turkey value multiculturalism as a principle of governance internally and externally will be decisive in this context. The more they value this, the easier Turkey’s accession to the EU will be.