Turkish identity on the road to the EU: basic elements of French and German oppositional discourses

Abstract

Identifying a collectivity consists of producing a series of rational arguments, emotional judgments and aesthetic choices with the purpose of distinguishing that particular collectivity from the others. Each collective identification is, therefore, an exercise in boundary drawing, separating the insiders from the outsiders, ‘us’ from ‘them’ and ‘we’ from ‘the others’. Some recent studies on European identity have shown that Turkey is treated as an ‘other’ in the mental maps of many Europeans. Hence, according to an important cross-country qualitative study on European identity, carried out on behalf of the European Commission, the respondents have drawn a clear line between those countries that they believe form an ‘integral part’ of Europe and those that do not: