Rejection of Turkey by the European Union would provoke a backlash in the wider Muslim world and increase the risk of a “clash of civilisations”, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan was quoted as saying on Friday.
However, in an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Erdogan also said he was confident EU leaders would agree at a summit in December to open long-delayed entry talks with Turkey.
“Turkey can no longer be kept waiting at the doorstep... If the EU does not want to be viewed as a union of geography or as a Christian club they have to give us a date,” he was quoted as saying.
“(If rejected), my people’s ... attitude toward the West will change ... (And the wider Muslim world) will say the West is not ready to integrate with people who do not share the same faith with them.”
Financial markets are watching closely Turkey’s efforts to reform its economy and political system ahead of the December decision. The European Commission is due to publish a report in October which will form the basis of the leaders’ verdict.
Erdogan’s government has won praise from the EU for a recent flurry of human rights reforms, though some member states remain wary of admitting a relatively poor country of 70 million people whose eastern borders extend to Iraq and Iran.
If the EU does launch talks with Turkey, Erdogan said, the Muslim world “will see that the clash of civilisations is not a reality but that harmony of civilisations is a possibility”.
The idea of a “clash of civilisations” was promoted in a book by US academic Samuel Huntingdon. British Prime Minister Tony Blair, on a lightning visit to Ankara on Monday, stressed the importance of admitting Turkey as a way of easing tensions between the West and the Muslim world.
Turkey’s NATO ally the United States also strongly backs Turkish membership of the EU.