A Study on the Conflict and Harmony of Islamic Religious-Cultural Factors in the Process of Turkey's Negotiation for His EU Integration

In October, 2005 Turkey has started a wide range of negotiation with EU for her full membership in Luxembourg, where Turkey's candidacy was rejected in 1997. We expect however a long way to fulfill Turkey's goals to be integrated to Europe. Because all critical decisions on Turkey have been taken after every kind of difficult process since the Helsinki Summit in 1999, when Turkey's EU candidacy was accepted. In spite of negative approaches initiated certain countries as France and Belgium against Turkey's efforts to be EU member, Turkey has implemented political reforms with incredible speed within five years. Things that were not expected by the Europeans to be achieved in 20 years, were accomplished in only five years. Now many experts agree that Turkey has much more possibility to be a full member of EU after 2012. Accordingly the government of Turkey(AKP) exerts her bet efforts to fulfill 35 standard articles which EU suggested for Turkey as the basic guidelines and conditions for full membership negotiation. Of course, such four sensitive political-historical issues as ���Armenian genocide in 1905, ���rights of minority Kurdish communities in Turkey, ���peace agreement of with Greece for Cyprus status, ���tolerance to Greek Patriarchal renovation in Istanbul, are main subjects for negotiation processes with EU. But the matter of cultural differences between Turkey and EU is also a pivotal factor for the future of Turkey with EU. How a 99%Muslim country can be integrated to Christian EU community? How to harmonize some Islamic religious obligations or rituals which might violate the value of EU or its standards? The 5 times daily prayers,one month long fasting, cruelty to animal and insanitary matters on sacrifice festival during the Eid-al Adha, honor killings, women circumcision, hijab prohibition in the public sectors and many others are some of critical issues to be discussed. As for EU too, the debate about Turkey's EU membership clearly demonstrates that Europe is once again at one of critical deciding moments. At this point the EU should decide: Is it going to stay as "an institution of ols Europe" or is it going to progress to a better,more advanced stage with Turkey?(Laciner 2005:13). In this regard, this articles is designed to study on the conflict and harmony of Islamic Religious-Cultural factors in the process of Turkey's negotiation for his EU Integration mainly based on anthropological intensive interviews. Surprisingly, Turkey has successfully solved the religious and cultural differences in many fields through comprehensive reinterpretation of Islamic tradition and obligations. Furthermore Turkey showed great possibilities to other Muslim countries like Morocco an Tunisia in Mediterranean to be member of EU in the future