Turkey EU Member? ‘No Prospect’

“I see only one possibility for Turkey being granted full membership to the E.U.,” the retired professor from Princeton University said, “That one possibility is, if present demographic trends continue, the E.U. becomes a Muslim state.”

When asked about Turkey’s strategic alternatives other than Europe, the professor replied,

“More than a thousand years ago, Turks were still in Central Asia. They were poised between two great civilizations: China and Islam. They made the Western choice. They moved West, they became powerful and then the leading part of Islamic civilization.

“In nineteenth century, they found themselves again between two civilizations: Islam and Europe. Again they made a Western choice, and moved in spirit and in institutions in the direction of Europe.

“Now I think they face a third choice, between East and West, and the Atlantic will be dividing line.”

Prof. Lewis described the Turkish-American alliance as “an alliance that can survive upheavals”. He also stated that he would be ‘very surprized’ if a note for deploymen to send Turkish troops to Iraq comes back to the floor of the parliament.

He presumes that the first reaction among Iraqis, should Turkish troops come, would be one of “astonishment”.

“The Iraqi reaction depends very much on what parts of Iraq and in what circumstances Turkish troops would be sent.”

Prof. Lewis blames ‘Europeanization’, rather than its Arab or Islamic past, for the emergence of the Baath regime in Iraq.

“The Baath dates from the period of Nazi influence through French occupied Syria and it’s modeled on the Nazi and fascist parties.”

According to Prof. Lewis, Turkey and Iran represent ‘alternative futures’ in the Middle East with ‘different diagnosis and remedies’ about the decline of Islamic civilization, which, according to him, started with the second Ottoman defeat in Vienna in late seventeenth century.

“The Turkish prescription is and has for a long time been: ‘Because of a lack of modernization we have fallen behind the modern world’. Therefore, the remedy was to modernize, to catch up with the modern world… The Iranian message is the opposite. They say the problem is too much modernization.”