Turkey and the Eternal Question of Being, or Becoming, European

Abstract

A transformation is taking place in much of today’s Europe through a process that may be described as ‘complex socialization’. This process, which arguably began in the western half of Europe soon after 1945 and which, with the demise of the continent’s Cold War divisions, is now percolating into its former Communist eastern half, is associated with the transfer, adoption and entrenchment of shared democratic norms between the states and across the societies of the region. It is generally assumed that the multiplicity of overlapping international organizations that has characterized post-1945 Europe functions as a powerful agency of this process.