Excellent, then we can assume that they have a contigency that understand Eastern European political institutions and how they work, both above the surface and below.

There’s no need for asinine excuses about incompatible political cultures. Interfacing between diverse political cultures is the technocrats job, after all.

What I read into that complaint is that they’re afraid that admitting Turkey will upset the balance of powers within the Union. Which it will. That’s not a reason to oppose it however. And if the Union is to fragile to survive Turkey’s admittance, then the Union needs to be torn down and rebuilt anyway.

The technocrats are from all Europe, so the place is secondary.

DSW

If the technocrats in Brussels can’t work with Eastern Europe politically, then fire them and move the capital elsewhere.

I’ve been told there are those in the corridors of power in Brussels who genuinely think that the biggest mistake Europe ever made was letting Greece in. The reason has something to do with the “political culture” there — a vague phrase if there ever was one — which stems not from the Roman tradition, but from the Byzantine. A more learned person that I would be able to say specifically what this means in terms of relations between the secular state, the church and the military.

In other words, the problem isn’t Turkey per se, nor Islam, but the political culture of the East in general — which is not properly European. So goes the thinking. It’s worth pointing out that the military still has a tremenous role in Turkish politics; it’s brought down several governments in recent decades, and there was even speculation that the military might intervene to prevent Erdogan from taking power. (Importantly, it didn’t. The Turkish parliament has also passed a bill reducing the power of the military, although this has yet to be implemented.)

The final consideration is geo-political. Successfully bringing Turkey into the European fold could — and I think there’s a good chance it would, provided the counter-reaction didn’t kill the process — bring about a democratic, secularized Islam that could be a model for the rest of the Muslim world. Perhaps even, to small degree, it would be something akin to the “Islamic Reformation” that all the talking heads were going on about after 9/11.

Recent academic simulations have predicted that as many as 3m-4m people will migrate from central to western Europe in the 25 years after enlargement, about 1% of the present EU population. Roughly half of those will be workers. There will be a first surge of migrants for two or three years, then a falling away (see chart). Based on past trends, at least half the migrants will head for Germany.

Those who think the rate of migration will be higher point to German unification, when over 7% of the population moved from east to west in ten years, despite a huge flow of subsidies from west to east. Those who think it will be lower cite the EU’s experience with Spain and Portugal, which joined in 1986. There was no big outflow then: rather the opposite, as strong growth at home attracted Spaniards and Portuguese back from other countries. But when they joined, Spain and Portugal had living standards much closer to the EU average than the countries of central Europe do now. Spanish purchasing power was about two-thirds of the EU average. For Poland, the biggest country in central Europe, the figure is about 40%.

That said, the accession states seem to be quickly becoming countries of net immigration, as this Eurostat report suggests; Hungary, Slovenia, Slovakia, and the Czech Republic are already net receivers of immigrants.

The problem with Turkey joining the European Union is that its population, unlike that of the acceding states, is growing quite rapidly through natural increase, but that Turkish living standards on average are lower than those of any of the applicant states save Romania and Bulgaria. Worse, there are severe east/west gradients, such that eastern Turkey could probably be described as Third World. It makes sense to assume that, upon entering the European Union and assuming that migration is freed, you could see a massive migration into richer European countries.

This isn’t a bad thing, if it’s properly managed; the problem is that it won’t be, given rising paranoia all around about Muslims, even if they are Europeans.

What Turkey needs is a nice decade of rapid, job-creating economic growth, something to bring it up to the 40% mark, say.

If I could be sure that forced marriages, honour killings and calls for imposition of sharia wouldn’t follow on the heels of these newcomers, I’d be much less exercised by the prospect of Turkish EU membership. I suspect that the issue really is racial for a sizable number of Europeans, though.

I think the sheer size and poverty of Turkey poses serious obstacles to that nation’s being comfortably digested by the EU. The religion issue also can’t be waved away; I’m no fan of anti-islamic bigotry, but I’ve done my share of living in places where believing muslims had the upper hand, and it isn’t an experience I’m eager to repeat. Cosmopolitans dwelling in Istanbul are by no means representative of the great mass of Turkey’s population.

Now that may not be a reason not to admit Turkey to the EU. But it explains rather well why this issue will always be one of political salience in Germany (and it’s not just right of the center parties).

I would even bring Turkey in ahead of the other EU candidates (sorry Bulgaria) since I think we need its young population. Inject some life and energy into a balding Europe, something unfortunately the Eastern countries cannot do.

And note, it is not only China and India who are flourishing: Turkey’s favourable demographics seem to mean that she is in the midst of a full ‘growth renaissance’.