Euro-Turks in the contemporary European imaginary.

• Author: Taras, Raymond
• Position: Essay

The case for the resilience of Turkophobia rests on the impact of two factors: deep structures of antipathy anchored by history and religion, exemplified by Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont in 1095 reducing Muslims to "base and bastard Turks"; and the circulation of modern stereotypes based on superficial, anodyne, and even anecdotally negative images. (1) By definition, deep structures change glacially, but the shelf life of stereotypes is fickle and typically short. As such, this article examines stereotypes and their offshoots--the social distance separating insider and outsider groups reinforced by superficial impressions of one another.

Social distance can serve as a proxy for other processes: marginalization, ghettoization, exclusion, discrimination, and fear. While not synonymous with these terms, neither can social distance be easily separated from them. Accordingly, I employ the concept as an umbrella term for these phenomena and apply this conceptualization to assay a set of questions about the status of Euro-Turks in European receiving societies. As a result, certain questions arise: Do national perceptions of Muslim immigrants differ from one European receiving society to another? How has the acceptance of immigrants differed from country to country and between Muslim migrant communities, especially Turkish communities? Is there evidence that they are perceived more critically than other Muslim communities, thereby suggesting a perseverance of Turkophobia? Do Euro-Turks themselves feel marginalized and targeted by discrimination? In turn, have Euro-Turks developed a robust sense of identity to the extent that they now perceive other European Muslim groups as outsiders? (2)

Anti-Turkish attitudes may be nested in Islamophobia, though they can also evoke ethnic essentialism. This distinction requires elaboration. Because approximately 98% of the Turkish population is Muslim, it is plausible that Turkophobia reflects religious differences. Islamophobia, however--and Turkophobia as well--typically involves fears of and antipathy towards Muslims that go beyond "mere" religion and invoke cultural sensibilities. Olivier Roy, a French specialist on Islam, has argued that, "Religions are more and more disconnected from the cultures in which they have been embedded." As a result, he has proposed decoupling religion from culture and ethnicity. What follows is that we should "deal with religions as 'mere' religions, not as the expressions of cultures or ethnic groups." (3)

For Roy, then, Turkophobia sensu stricto would involve an explicitly religious bias against Turks. In turn, inferring from this statement, anti-Turkish attitudes would represent the targeting of Turks primarily in terms of ethnicity and culture. This distinction is difficult to sustain empirically, and decoupling religion from culture--and culture from race (4)--can prove futile exercises. Thus, Euro-Turks have a strong sense of identity and refer more often to their Turkishness than to Islam, as the data presented below indicate. Nevertheless, it would be premature to conclude that Turkish identity is self-standing and has no religious component.

Some studies about the status of Muslims in Europe--including Turks--offer reassuring news. Europeans do not generally dislike Muslims, and primarily object to the fanatical elements among them. Another argument indicates that although antipathy towards Islam has a long history, it is not as severe as it used to be. Positing a deep structural divide--a civilizational clash--raises the question for many Europeans of whether Islamic civilization was ever well disposed towards quintessentially "European" values, such as freedom of thought, tolerance, religious pluralism, and gender equality. We might also be comforted by reports highlighting that Islamophobic attitudes, though having spread, are confined to supporters of disreputable rightwing extremist movements removed from mainstream politics. A further suggestion is that, although anti-Muslim attitudes have become commonplace, they have little bearing on domestic or European politics, let alone global politics.

Such a study of Islamophobia should also include an assessment of whether Europeans' fears of and possible animosity towards Muslims originates in a perceived security dilemma stemming from expanding Muslim communities at home. Concerns about the radicalization of Muslim groups reacting against profiling, surveillance, and harassment in receiving societies--and against certain Western countries' military interventions in Muslim-majority countries factor into securitization of Muslim migrants. Though significant, this assessment is not considered in this article. (5) The focus instead is on cross-national differences in perceptions of Muslim groups in Europe, with special attention being given to the largest community, Euro-Turks. The empirics are based on relevant survey research employing differing conceptual frameworks.

National Differences in Attitudes towards Muslims

European societies have varying responses to immigration, the phenomenon by which the Muslim population of Europe has expanded rapidly over the past half-century. Survey research indicates, for example, that ceteris paribus ethnically diverse societies oppose immigration more than homogeneous societies, largely because they object to greater ethnically-based economic competition. Therefore, diversity in a society does not invariably lead to welcoming attitudes.

European countries have also been evenly split on the issue of religious diversity. Of twenty European Union (EU) member-states surveyed, the majority of respondents in France favored religious diversity, but those in Poland and Greece were more likely to support religious homogeneity. By contrast, most of the countries surveyed endorsed cultural homogeneity. Respondents in eastern (the Czech Republic and Poland) and southern (primarily Greece, but also Portugal) Europe were especially firm about maintaining cultural homogeneity. (6)

Normative fault lines in Europe are apparent in other survey results as well. Country wealth of migrants also differentiates European public attitudes towards immigration. Results of the European Social Survey (ESS) carried out in 2002 indicated that "people coming from wealthy countries are more warmly welcomed than those coming from poor countries," although the degree of support varied from 43% in Portugal to 79% in Sweden. Correspondingly, there was a sweeping decrease in support when immigrants came from countries that were poorer than the receiving society. The continuum once again extended from Portugal (at just 39% support) to Sweden (at 87%). Swedes proved to be an anomaly, approving of in-migration of poorer Europeans more frequently than of richer Europeans. (7)

The ESS survey noted that the characteristic most valued by European respondents was a willingness to adapt to the way of life in the new society. The next important had to do with practicality, evaluating if immigrants had the work skills needed in the country. By contrast, one of the least important qualities was immigration from Christian countries. (8) Again, significant differences were found across European nations: citizens in Germany and Sweden attached particular importance to immigrants' disposition to adapt to the way of life in their countries. A sense of civic--perhaps even civilizational pride--may have shaped respondents' attitudes in these states. An unkinder alternative explanation is that normative and moral smugness might have swayed German and Swedish respondents to expect outsiders to adapt to their "prized" way of life.

Another cleavage worth noting is the dissonance between citizens' expressed attitudes towards immigrants and elite-driven policies. Survey respondents in two predominantly Catholic societies, Italy and Spain, paid little importance to the religious background (Christian or otherwise) of immigrants. In terms of government policy, however, Italy has established a generous quota for Filipino migrants, who are mostly Roman Catholics; prospective immigrants from Albania, Morocco, and Tunisia, on the...