Culture poses hurdle in EU talks
On Oct. 3, the European Union overcame the reservations of member state Austria and began formal talks for Ankara's entry. Issues of human rights, economics and security will be dissected in extensive talks before Turkey is admitted, but a senior official in Brussels who asked not to be identified by name predicted equally sticky problems of what he called "the orange juice versus champagne variety."
In other words, a lot will depend on how far both sides are prepared to go to fit a country that is rediscovering its Islamic roots into an institution whose 25 member states are historically and culturally Christian but emphatically secular. Turkey is officially secular, but has undergone an Islamic revival that has led to the election of a religious-oriented government under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The European Union rejected Vatican pressure to include even a reference to Europe's Christian roots in the preamble of the draft constitution. Even so, the Christian culture inevitably dominates the union. For example, a regulation requires heavy trucks to stay off European highways on weekends, which in Europe is understood to mean Saturday and Sunday. In Turkey, weekend means Friday and Saturday, and the one-day difference has economic implications. Europe's so-called "integralists" in Brussels -- those who see the European Union as a movement whose mission is ultimately to meld its members into one political, economic and cultural system -- have more reservations about Turkey's entry than do "Euro-skeptics," including many in Britain who want to limit the European Union's role to close cooperation, with minimum loss of sovereignty and national identity. A conglomeration of individual states with strong economic and political ties clearly would be an easier fit for Ankara, eliminating some of the cultural and religious stumbling blocks. Despite the problems, the senior EU official cited above said the consensus in Brussels is that Turkey's application eventually will be successful, but the process could take more than the predicted decade. "Once the negotiations begin, they tend to take on a momentum of their own and are hard to stop," the official said.
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