Supposedly, the fight was over Turkey being too big, or too poor, or too full of possible migrants. It wasn't about Muslims joining what former EC head Jacques Delors once called a “Christian club.”
Neither was it about whether Turkey was a European-type nation or more of an Asian-ish, wrong-side-of-the-Mediterranean kind of country. Not that they're not lovely people, of course. Fine peasants, we're sure, but we won't have them in our home. You do understand...
When we seek an explanation for the existence of young, educated, middle-class suicide bombers, humiliation fits the bill. An Associated Press interview with a suicide bomber — he changed his mind when he saw a mother and two children in a café — suggests that bombers are driven “not by poverty or ignorance, but by a lethal mix of nationalism, zealotry and humiliation.”
Turkey had already declared that it would give up on Europe if it were rebuffed this time. The fact is, it would have been utterly humiliated.
I do suspect that Mallick goes a bit too far in presuming that the membership issue may be the "last best hope" for peace between Christian- and Muslim-based societies. But that overstatement only offsets the lack of attention generally given to Turkey's situation on this side of the Atlantic. There can be little denial that the current borders of the EU are also the borders of a cultural divide which has potential negative effects on both sides - and that bridging that divide would be an important step.
Give the article a read.
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