September 19, 2006

Why don’t you just try moving in together

Sir, I found Gideon Rachman’s “Clashing civilisations on the banks of the Bosphorus” (September 19), both interesting and confusing. Though I must confess ignorance about the specifics of the Turkey-Europe issue the fact that when it comes to sensitive issues such as borders knowledge does not guarantee much either I dare to put forward some thoughts that came to my mind.

The first is whether in a world that is globalizing you should still be looking to draw the borders along their natural lines, Bosphorus, cultures and what have you, or whether you might be better off placing those borders on more greyish terrain so as to not exasperate the differences. The second question, more pragmatically, is if instead of marrying why don’t you just move in together and see how it goes. You should never forget that a relation is always a two way street and so even while Europe might like the set up, Turkey might not. Finally, in case of separation, the “I am not good enough for you” has shown itself innumerable times to work much better than any alternative, not only because it is also frequently true.