Blowing Their Best Chance.(European Union membership)

Europeans often complain that America's strategy in the war on terror is one-dimensional. It's all military might with little effort to engage the Islamic world in a constructive way. They point out that unless we help Muslim countries prosper, all the F-16s and Predators in the world won't stop the flow of terror. It's a valid criticism, but the single biggest push that could shift events in this direction lies not in America's hands but Europe's. And it is about to blow it.

In December, the European Union is likely once again to dissemble, delay and deceive Turkey about its prospects for membership. Ever since December 1999, when the EU announced that Turkey was a candidate to join, becoming part of Europe has been Turkey's national obsession. Despite the worst economic recession in a generation, despite divided and weak governments, despite a recent battle with its Kurdish minority, Turkey has undergone large-scale economic liberalization and passed three sets of path-breaking constitutional reforms along lines suggested by the European Commission. The last set, approved in August 2002, abolished the death penalty, gave linguistic and educational rights to the Kurdish minority and expanded the rule of law and political and press freedoms. "All the things that Turkey has been unwilling to do for decades it enacted in one day last August," says Soli Ozel, a Turkish political scientist.

And what has been Europe's reaction to these historic measures? It found fault with all of them. The European Commission put out a dismissive report pointing out that there are yet more reforms to be done--which the Turks have always admitted and to which the new government has committed itself. Key national governments--chiefly Germany and France--have waged a whisper campaign against Turkey on constantly shifting grounds. For instance, until last month Europeans warned that if the Turkish military intervened to ban the Justice and Development Party--for fear of its Islamist past--this would prove the country was not really democratic. Now that the military has endorsed the party's victory in elections two weeks ago, Europeans say, "we can't take into Europe a government run by Islamists."

Valery Giscard d'Estaing, the insufferably arrogant former French president entrusted with envisioning the future of Europe, did not bother to whisper. He announced in an interview with Le ...