Needless to say, the real story is a lot more complicated – and the more one looks at it, the harder it is to escape the conclusion: it’s not all Turkey’s fault.

In the 1990s, Turkey Dreams of Europe

The last decade of the 20th Century was one of turmoil and stagnation for Turkey. While the West celebrated the end of the Cold War and the affirmation of what seemed to be the liberal, democratic end of history, Turkey lived through a veritable “lost decade” of rapid inflation eating away at the country’s stop-and-go economic progress.

Violence erupted in Kurdistan, and the brutal crackdown did much to poison Turkish political debate, which became increasingly poralised. As a direct result of this polarisation, the country underwent another one of its bloodless coups in 1997, trying to find back its footing on a path of convergence with the victors of the Cold War.

It’s in the context of this coup, as well as the desire to put the turbulent 90s behind, that we must read Turkey’s determined courting of Euro-Atlantic integration at the turn of the millennium. As former Iron Curtain satellite states began their vigorous economic growth and rapidly started gravitating around Brussels and the new political order of the European continent, Turkey was caught in limbo, and the country’s political leadership was adamant that this had to be rectified.

In 1999, as the EU planned for a sweeping and ambitious redesign of its security policies and enlargement, Turkey was announced as an accession candidate, to the surprise of international commentators.

Politics, however, was not enough – the country’s economic woes also needed urgent redress. Painful economic reforms were pushed through swiftly, primarily through the adoption of an IMF package which sought to cut inflation. The measure plunged the Turkish economy into a recession during the first two years of the new millennium, but delivered on its promise: whereas the inflation rate stood ad 45% in 2002, it was spectacularly down to only 8% in 2004.

The Rise of the AKP

The political leadership of the time, however, would not stay in power long enough to enjoy the fruits of their reforms. The painful years of economic recession destroyed their popular and electoral legitimacy, and paved the way for the surprising return of Islam to the Turkish political environment.

This primarily took place through the formation of a new party, the AKP, which operated according to a complex and at times innovative vision that cemented democracy, a market economy, support for Euro-Atlantic integration, and conservative Islamic values. This heady mix of ideas succeeded because it intersected perfectly with both domestic and international developments: commitment to democracy and the West shielded the AKP from another army coup, at least for the time being. Support for conventional economic policies guaranteed that the Turkish economy would keep growing, granting the AKP popular legitimacy. The promotion of conservative, religious values allowed it to win over the middle-class voters of Anatolia.

Simultaneously, the AKP’s strategy promised both detente with the Kurds and the introduction on the world stage of a “positive” model for a developed, Islamic country, that could serve as an alternative to both Iranian fundamentalism and radical Jihadi violence. Both these factors greatly warmed Turkish-American relations, and the continued engagement between Turkey and the West made sure that foreign investment kept coming into Turkey, sustaining its rapid economic growth. The American connection, in particular, would prove crucial in the making and breaking of Turkey’s accession process.

The American Connection

Turkey’s role as the guardian of NATO’s south-eastern flank had already won it a reputation as a reliable ally of Washington in the years before the rise of the AKP. When the party completed its meteoric rise to power, it proved a much welcome boon to the American invasion of Iraq as well: Erdogan’s initially friendly and conciliatory attitude towards the Kurds made it much easier for American troops to coordinate with the Kurds living in Northern Iraq. The AKP strategy of linking Muslim conservatism with westernisation also benefited American interests in fostering a narrative of a “positive” path for Islamic countries to coexist with the West.

Bush Jr‘s strategy went beyond this. Claiming that Turkey was simultaneously part of the Muslim and the Western worlds, he saw in it the key to reconciliation and the abandonment of a confrontational narrative based on the concept of the “clash of civilisations”. In this light, the President was a strong supporter of Turkish accession in the European Union.

At a NATO summit held in Istanbul in July 2004, Bush remarked: “America believes that as a European power, Turkey belongs in the European Union. Your membership would also be a crucial advance in relations between the Muslim world and the West, because you are part of both. Including Turkey in the EU would prove that Europe is not the exclusive club of a single religion; it would expose the ‘clash of civilizations’ as a passing myth of history…”.

Europe was, on the whole, very receptive to this message. Sweden, Poland and the United Kingdom immediately endorsed it, with then-Swedish foreign minister Carl Bildt claiming that Turkish accession would give the EU the means to play a crucial role in the eastern Mediterranean and the Black Sea, greatly strengthening the south-eastern periphery of the Union. Not all were so receptive, however. Discordant voices would soon endanger Turkey’s convergence with the West, and when combined with other external factors, they would then proceed to completely torpedo it.

Broken Promises

Turkey took its commitment to Euro-Atlantic integration very seriously, at least in the early years of its work towards accession. This is the point where the narrative blaming Turkey entirely for the stall in its progress has to be reassessed: there is no doubt that Ankara was willing to do what it took to secure its EU membership.

The economic reforms have already been cited, and while the AKP benefited from the fallout of the shock-therapy, it never abandoned the IMF package – because, to put it bluntly, it worked wonders. Not only was inflation down to manageable levels, but Turks saw their first consistent improvements in living standards in over a decade. The economy skyrocketed to an annual growth exceeding 7%, and it soon overtook the EU’s poorer Member States both in GDP and in personal incomes, with great benefits to the middle and lower classes.

Political reforms were, if anything, even more ambitious. Turkey abolished the death penalty, established an independent bank regulator, liberalised those sections of the economy that had long been held hostage to local monopolies masquerading as government intervention, and overhauled its institutions to bring them closer to the West. Relations with Greece underwent a dramatically positive reset, and trade between Turkey and EU Member States grew with every passing month.

These momentous economic and political reforms mostly took place between 2002 and 2007, an astonishing rate of convergence towards the EU by any metric. Based on this effort alone, Turkish membership seemed a virtual guarantee.

The first stumbling bloc came not from Turkey itself, but sadly, from the EU. Some Member States were initially enthusiastic about Turkish accession – like Sweden and Poland, but also ironically the United Kingdom, with British leadership at the time eyeing the opportunity to strengthen the West’s ability to protect its Iraqi northern flank.

Germany and Austria, however, under the leadership of new right-wing governments, were determined to halt Turkish accession no matter the cost. Merkel’s plan, in particular, was to offer Ankara a privileged partnership as a consolation prize for failed accession. France and new entrant Cyprus soon joined the opposition, and over time it became socially acceptable in Western European countries to fan the flames of xenophobia against Turkey in exchange for immediate electoral gains.

When it became apparent to Turkish public opinion that its accession would be vetoed, support for a continuing effort of convergence virtually evaporated overnight. And this was only the beginning of Turkey’s new problems.

The Great Recession is doubtlessly the seminal event of contemporary world politics, and it hit Turkey hard, causing its economy to contract by 14% over a single month. This, combined with Erdogan’s sweeping popularity and widespread disappointment with the EU, managed to shield the AKP somewhat from the threat of a coup, and allowed them to build an increasingly Islamic, autocratic and isolationist platform. The relationship with the United States was also soured by the War on Terror, with friendship turning to coldness and then more or less open hostility.

This combination of factors pushed Turkey abruptly and violently away from the Western world. The waters it found itself in held the promise of an autonomous strategy to achieve power politics in the Middle East, but they were also fraught with dangers.

Stuck Between Two Empires

When looking for the breaking point that sent Turkey in a completely different direction, no place works better than 2008. The recession, as well as the end of the EU’s and the USA’s ambitions for eastward expansion, left Turkey in the company of countries like Ukraine and the Caucasian republics, stranded in a grey area of great power competition that saw the West pitted against Russia. This expansive battlefield lacks specific demarcation lines, and the contest is blurry and multi-dimensional, ranging from misinformation and political activism to straight-up economic warfare and military confrontation by proxy.

The Arab Spring further complicates Turkey’s strategic outlook. The influx of refugees fleeing from wars and upheavals dwarfs anything experienced in the rest of Europe, and Russia’s newly established foothold in the Middle East puts Turkey right in the Kremlin’s line of fire.

While Turkey’s economic growth has not stopped, and its continued profitability grants it the trust, patience, and support of international markets, there is no doubt that the economic waters Turkey is navigating are also frightful. On the one hand, the country relies on ties with Western economies to keep growing. On the other, the fractured political reality prevents effective Turkish membership in either the European or the Russian bloc – and going it alone has limits, since Ankara does not possess the muscle to be truly an independent player of its own right.

Turkey bears some responsibility for its slide into authoritarianism, but its current trajectory was greatly influenced by events outside of Ankara’s control. The financial crisis, the American and European retreat from the Middle East, Russian aggression and the fraught state of the world economy have turned the Great Game into a constant source of anxiety for Turkey.

The country is stuck between two empires – the EU and Russia – and has no clear way out. While Erdogan’s actions should not be condoned, we must resist the temptation to lay the blame entirely at Ankara’s door. By degrees, Turkey was pushed into its current limbo – and it will not get out without help. Whether Europe can muster the courage and ambition to develop an appropriate strategy that can draw Turkey back in its orbit, however, remains an open question.

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During the 90’s, the newborn Ukrainian state was somewhat affected by an Habsburg nostalgia, mostly in its westernmost part that largely coincided with former eastern Galicia. Exactly one hundred years before, in 1895, one of the last Austrian Archdukes was born in present-day Croatia: Wilhelm Franz of Habsburg-Lorraine. His father, Charles-Stephen, was committed to reform the House’s view of the very concept of “nation”.

At the turn of the century

A multiethnic empire, Austria-Hungary was struggling to maintain its control over Slavic populations. On the southern border, Serbian designs on unifying  Jugoslavia led to mounting tensions between the Empire and Belgrade. The contention became potentially explosive after 1908, when Bosnia was annexed to the Habsburg domains and the house of Karadjordevic, adverse to Austria, usurped the Serbian throne. It was in fact the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, by the hand of a Serbian-Bosnian terrorist that brought these two countries, and the World, at war.

North of the Balkans, on the other side of the Hungarian plains and the Carpathian mountains, the border with Russia was certainly problematic as well. Poland and Ukraine were divided, some people living under the rule of Wien, some others under the Tsar. The Polish nation was a largely recognized and ancient entity, once a leader of East Europe alongside Lithuania in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, one of the biggest countries in late medieval and modern era. However, the Commonwealth was partitioned three times during the XVIII century and ceased to exist in 1795, ending in the Polish lands being divided between these empires and Prussia.

Ukraine was, instead, not yet recognized as a nation: Russia called its Ukrainian speaking population “Malorussians”, literally little Russians, and conducted russification policies to eradicate their language. Moreover, Austria named those Ukrainians living in eastern Galicia “Ruthenians”, from the Latin term for Russians.

Although the Tsars and the Habsburgs feared Polish and Ukrainian desires for union, both knew that, if war came, these national aspirations could be turned against each other. That’s why Charles-Stephen decided to act in a revolutionary way for an Austrian Archduke. He became the first Habsburg not only to recognize the concept of nation as essential to the stability of a country, but to embrace a well-defined nationality himself. He dedicated his life to the creation of a Polish branch of the Habsburg dynasty, with his final goal being the creation of a new Kingdom of Poland. The territories of this new country should have been carved from the Russian Empire and unified with Galicia, under the rule of an Habsburg ruler.

Revolutionary Archdukes

Charles-Stephen knew that to succeed a lot would have to be sacrificed. First of all he moved from Pola, on the Adriatic coast, to the Polish city of Żywiec. Located in the Duchy of Teschen, part of Austrian Silesia, Żywiec was not that far from the Galician border and Krakow itself. Its population was largely Polish, but the Habsburgs ruled that land since 1653, making it the oldest possession in which the two coexisted. When his children grew up to marriage age, Archduke Charles-Stephen managed to connect his House with high Polish nobles. Two of his daughters and one of his sons, Charles-Albert, paved the way to an Habsburg-Polish lineage, but in doing so they had to renounce to their imperial and royal status, making it impossible for them and their heirs to claim Wien and Budapest crowns. Both Charles and his family became fluent in Polish language, studied Polish literature and decided to define themselves as Polish.

It was an absolute novelty for an Habsburg archduke to embrace a defined nationality. During the XIX century the Empire tried to crush any nationalistic aspiration but visibly failed in doing so. To Charles-Stephen, the conviction that nation states were stronger than non-national ones came from the incredible rise of the German Empire. The only way for the Austro-Hungarian Empire to survive and expand was to recognize its constituent nations, giving them some autonomy, but still under an Habsburg rule.

While Charles-Stephen was busy building the foundation of a new Polish Kingdom, his son Wilhelm travelled to Galicia and got acquainted with another nation: Ukraine. Day after day, the young prince made his father plan his own, and started dreaming of an Ukrainian Kingdom with him as its monarch. The creation of both Poland and Ukraine would have certainly created problems in defining their borders in Eastern Galicia, where the majority of the population was Ukrainian, but the aristocracy was Polish. Nevertheless, when Austro-Hungarian and German troops advanced in the western territories of the Russian Empire during World War One, Charles-Stephen and Wilhelm golas of redrawing the map of Europe came close to reality.

The fight for independence in the interwar period

The reason why no Habsburg Poland or Habsburg Ukraine were created was the rivalry between Berlin and Wien over the newly acquired territories – and the Central Powers losing of the war didn’t help. Germany was the strongman of the alliance and tried to gain control of both Polish and Ukrainian territories: Poles should have served as cannon fodder on the western front while Ukraine was meant to provide wheat for the army. Although Wilhelm reached popularity in Habsburg-occupied Ukraine and Charles-Stephen came close to a Polish throne, the Germans got the upper hand.

When the war came to an end, Eastern Europe was a total mess: Poland and Ukraine were struggling to define their borders, fighting each other in Galicia. At the same time they feared a Soviet aggression (that actually happened). While the Poles succeeded in preserving their independence and established a quite vast country, most Ukrainians ended up living as part of the USSR, suffering under communist rule. The Treaty of Riga in March 1921 defined the soviet-polish border until World War 2, and caused the first relocation of Ukrainians and Poles among the Galician frontier.

Despite this lackluster result, the very fact that a semi-independent Ukraine existed between 1918 and 1921 meant much to nationalists in the homeland and abroad. While the latter resorted to guerrilla until the defeat by soviet forces, those who expatriated found support under German and Austrian protection. Instead, the Allies didn’t consider the Ukrainian nationality to be fit for self-determination and didn’t support its cause for independence, Ukrainian nationalists cooperated mostly with right-wing revanchist groups of the former German Empire and the Habsburgs. Archduke Wilhelm, or Vasyl Vyshyvani as he began to name himself during his stay in Ukraine in 1918, was one of those committed conspirers for independence, and identified himself as Ukrainian. In the meantime, Charles-Stepehen and his son Charles-Albert pledged allegiance to the Polish Republic, recognized themselves as Poles, and kept on living in Żywiec.

All the attempts to overthrow Soviet rule over Ukraine in the interwar period failed. Nonetheless, the dream of a free country never faded, and seemed to gain new strength with the rise of national-socialism. Wilhelm was formlery known ad a constitutional-monarchist, a democrat and socialist – to the point of being nicknamed “The Red Prince” when he protected Ukrainian partisans who acted against his own Empire during WWI occupation. Surprisingly, he partially embraced Hitler’s ideology, while probably not understanding it to the full, especially considering the contradiction of him identifying himself as Ukrainian but being racially German. On the other hand, he appreciated the nationalistic and anti-soviet principles of national-socialism. Anyway, after realizing that the Third Reich had no intention to free Ukraine as an independent and friendly country, numerous nationalists tuned to arms against both German occupation forces and the Red Army, fighting at the same time against Ukrainian communists and nazi collaborationists.

World War II, Soviet oppression and finally freedom

After the war began, Wilhelm became even more critic of national-socialist Germany. The Polish branch of his family suffered terribly from the occupation, for Charles-Albert refused to identify himself as racially German during the census in Silesia. His insistence in calling himself Polish, alongside with the fact that he actually fought in the ranks of the Polish army during the 1939 invasion, provoked the Gestapo’s reaction, resulting in imprisonment and torture. Its family estates in Żywiec were seized and his wife, a Swedish aristocrat, didn’t follow his consort fate only because of the Gestapo’s unwillingness to prosecute her, even though she was herself staunchly Polish.

In Wien, while receiving news both from his sister-in-law and Ukraine, Wilhelm started cooperating with the French intelligence in signaling potential objectives for Allied airstrikes. He also worked with Ukrainian expats and western secret services to reach his long-standing goal of Ukrainian independence. Unfortunately, the fate of Easter Europe was to be decided somewhere else, among high profile politicians and military officials. In 1947, Wilhelm was arrested by the Russian counter-intelligence in the Soviet-occupied area of Wien he was living in, and died in prison the next year. Charles-Albert and his family fled the communist regime in Poland and expatriated to Sweden.

After the collapse of Soviet Union, new nations gained independence and old ones regained their lost freedom. The Baltic countries came back onthe maps, while Ukraine and Belorussia found their own new place. Poland went back to democratic life. Wilhelm and Charles-Stephen dreams partially became true: no monarchies were founded and the Habsburgs never regained a central role in European geopolitics, but both Poland and Ukraine are now officially recognized, although Russia is trying to destabilize the region once again.

Nonetheless, the concept of identifying both as a nation and as something greater still lives to this day through a revolutionary institution: the European Union. To be clear, such a concept was not an Habsburg exclusive, but the life of those late Archdukes can be an example of the commitment some people have been willing to carry out for a better Continent – a general idea far more similar to the one of the European founding fathers than some of us may be ready to accept when talking about monarchies and the Habsburg Empire.

As of today, Poland is one of the most staunch supporters of Ukrainian EU membership bid, and their historical Habsburg ties are not unrelevant: some time after the aforementioned protest in Cracow where demonstrators recreated a symbolical Galicia, a group of Ukrainians in Kiev celebrated the 170th birthday of Franz-Joseph. This partial wiennese legacy contributes to an ideal separation from the East, from Russia, and to strenghten the European feeling. The EU motto is “United in diversity”: to reject existing differences is crazy, but not to recognize a shared past and to embrace a common future is foolish.

If you liked this article you may also like The Great Union: How Romania Achieved National Unification or The Bulldozer Revolution: When the Serbians ousted Milošević.

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