High Quality
Open the downloaded document, and select print from the file menu (PDF reader required).
THE TURKS AND EUROPE : UNINVITED GUESTS OR SHARERS OF ACOMMON DESTİNY?
Selim DeringilBoğaziçi University History Department.W
hen M. Valerie Giscard D’Estaing made his now famous statement about the Turkshistorical and cultural unsuitability for membership in the EU he inadvertantly did thiscountry a service. By provoking the “argument from history” , M.D’Estaing was merelyvoicing a feeling that many people in Europe and some in Turkey actually share. A Britishhistorian recently wrote: “When in 1544 Francis I of France allowed the Turkish fleet towinter at Toulon, he was not merely giving assistance to the enemies of Christ (and more tothe point, of Emperor Charles V) .He was dissolving a centuries old antagonism. He wasallowing Asia into Europe”.
This certainly puts M.D’Estaing’s statement into perspective. Itlooks as if “Asia” advances into Europe in the shape of the Ottoman armies or navies. Wehave thus a sort of “transportable Asia” . In a similar vein when, in 1791, the British PrimeMinister William Pitt, during the Ottoman-Russian war of 1791, proposed sending Britishtroops to help the Sultan against the Czar, he was reprimanded by Edmund Burke , who toldhim, “What have these worse than savages to do with the powers of Europe, but to spreadwar, devastation and pestilence among them?”.
Yet in the Crimean War , some sixty five
1
Anthony Pagden, “Europe: Conceptualizing a Continent”,
The Idea of Europe. From Antiquity to the European Union.
Cambridge UP 2002. p46.
2
Ibid . p 47.
1
years later, the “spreaders of pestilence” were to be supported in the very same theater against the “European” Russians. Particularly in the matter of Anglo-Turkish relations , thereis a feeling of being inevitably bound together even if this is not to the liking of either party.As put by an emminent Cambidge don in 1876: “Unfortunately for the peace of mankind, ithas happened that the Turk is placed in a position where it is impossible to ignore him, andalmost impossible to endure him”. (Deringil)This paper is an attempt to do two things. First, to put the Turkish/Ottomanrelationship with Europe in a historical perspective, in a sense to respond to M. D’Estaing’sargument from history ; second to make some very speculative and tentative remarks on howthese might tie-in with Turkey’s present relations with the EU.
The Historical / Geographic Perspective
In the maps of Europe and the Mediterranean dating from the seventeeth to thenineteenth century one often sees the legend, “Turkey in Europe” and “Turkey in Asia”. Thisgives rise to the question: was the Ottoman Empire/Turkey
in
Europe but not
of
Europe. ? In asimilar vein, on either side of the Bosphorous bridge if you look to your right just as youleave the span of the bridge, you will see the signs, “Welcome to Europe” and “Welcome toAsia”. What will happen if Turkey ever actually joins the EU? Are we going to take down thesign “Welcome to Asia”? Or are we going to move the sign (signs?) “Welcome to Europe” tothe customs post in Habur , Cilvegözü etc ?The geographical frontiers of Europe have always been indeterminate and arbitrary. Onehistorical geographer actually notes that the very term, the “Continent of Europe” is amisnomer, because according to the most recent, i.e 19th century recognized definition of 2
“continent” it should be a mass of land surrounded by seas: “The notion of a ‘continent’ wasformed in that [Mediterranean] civilization but does not fit its own self-description as the‘continent of Europe’ ” .
Thus, the presently accepted eastern geographical boundary of Europe , as stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals and the Bosphorous, is purely arbitrary.Even in the historical imaginary of a very learned historian like Anthony Pagden, who setsout to prove that , “Europe, which will fashion itself for generations in opposition to Asia, hasalways owed to Asia its historical roots”, does not hesitate to make the following statement onthe same page, “ The fact that the undeniably Christian adherents of Greek Orthodoxy hadlong been under Ottoman rule, and thus fully absorbed into Asia, remained an additionalreminder of the alien origin of Christianity”.
Once again Asia advances into Europe in the shape of the Janissaries.
The Renaissance and After or “the Argument from History”.
When we speak of “Turkish-European relations” it is not quite accurate to assume that wespeaking of two separate and irreconcilable entities. The world of the Mediterranean was aworld of shared vocabularies. Through war, commerce, intermarriage, architectural design,the intermingling of cuisine, and myriad other ways this “zone of civilization” to use aToynbean term, has shared much of its destiny. It is no coincidence that almost all of themaritime terminology of the Ottoman Empire and Turkey is either Italian or Greek. FernandBraudel, was to note this in his famous work on the Medirerranean when he described thescene where an Ottoman admiral visited the village of his birth in Corsica in his flagship. Onecan imagine that the village must have been quite relieved to learn that his purpose was just afamily visit ! (Braudel)We see a similar case in the adventures of Simon Reis, anEnglish (or Dutch) renegade, who taught the Janissaries in Algiers to sail ocean going shipsand took them on raiding parties on the west coast of Ireland and Iceland. (Matar)
3
J.G.A Pocock, “Some Europes in their History”.
In The Idea of Europe
. P 57.
4
Anthony Pagden, “Europe: Conceptualizing a Continent”. Pp 35.
3
Add a Comment
snicolaouleft a comment
ninjapirate007left a comment