journal of european integration history revue d'histoire de l ...

Introduction 9
strengthening the anti-Communist world when the deep animosities that it created
within the Six worked in the opposite direction. Further research should assess
whether the modest results for the Germans – both in terms of changing the EEC’s
behaviour towards Spain and in terms of Spanish help in isolating the GDR – were
worth the risk of increasing intra-EEC divisions on fundamental issues.
Today, many observers in the European Union remain uneasy about Turkey’s
bid for membership. This is largely because of a fundamental issue – Turkey’s
weak democratic credentials and human rights record. Without entering into a discussion
of the nature of Turkish democracy, Ziya Önis presents an interesting
working hypothesis. Had Turkey not been so insistent on full membership, its relations
with the Community “would have evolved in a fairly straight-forward and
non-problematic manner”. This hypothesis gives paramount importance to the preferred
institutional option pursued by individual governments with respect to the
Community. In all the countries represented in this volume there was a fundamental
debate about this matter, and part of the success or failure of these countries’ stories,
in their relations with the Community, relate in one way or another to the kind
of institutional option chosen. Until 1974 Turkish political elites felt “no fundamental
discrepancy” between their expectations and the actual progress made – in
line with the 1963 association agreement reached between Turkey and the EEC – in
relation to the Community. It was both the Turkish intervention in Cyprus in July
1974 and concerns regarding the rapid opening of the domestic market which
caused what effectively was Turkey’s self-exclusion from the path leading to the
Community. The military take-over of September 1980 and the “limitations” or
“restrictive nature” of Turkish democracy ever since led in turn to a policy of active
exclusion by the European Community itself. The Community’s Mediterranean enlargement
of the 1980s and the process of enlargement towards the East a decade
later have increased the sense both of isolation and unfair treatment felt by the
Turkish political elite in their relations with the European Union. The six analyses
in this volume are part of an attempt to produce a set of reliable studies of the individual
experiences of nations and their particular interest or disinterest in EC membership.
The next stage, a result of being able to draw on such a rich repository of
detailed historical accounts, will make it markedly easier to obtain a more balanced
comparative perspective. Other peripherals are still missing from the overall picture
and much more needs to be done concerning the countries analysed here. Nonetheless,
this volume constitutes an important step in the right direction. I am convinced
that the 13 th issue of the JEIH will become a reference work, due both to the quality
of each individual article and to the coherence of the collection as a whole.
Fernando Guiaro
Jean Monnet Professor of History
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Barcelona