The chief recruiting sergeant for al-Qa’eda is not George W. Bush but Frits Bolkestein, the Dutch EU internal market commissioner. Speaking last week on the possibility of Turkey joining the EU — and thus Muslims one day coming to outnumber Christians within it — Mr Bolkestein commented that were this to come to pass ‘the liberation of Vienna in 1683 would have been in vain’. For those unsure of the reference, Vienna was besieged in July 1683 by a force of 200,000 Ottoman Turks. The siege was crushed on 12 September of that year by the joint Polish and Austrian armies, thereby saving Christendom from further incursion by Islam.
As the former trade and industry secretary Nicholas Ridley and the current Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi found out to their cost, he who attempts to make a point in European politics by an allusion to the Nazi era is guaranteed to win rapid condemnation. Yet drag up an ignominious defeat of the Turks back in the 17th century and use it to make a cheap point about the number of Muslims in modern-day Europe and it seems to be acceptable. As we write, Mr Bolkestein is still in his job and seems likely to remain so.
Yet the damage which Mr Bolkestein has inflicted upon relations between Europe and the Islamic world is immense. As he spoke, the EU enlargement commissioner Gunther Verheugen was in Turkey on a study trip before making his decision about whether talks on Turkey’s admission to the EU should start in December. As we have argued in these pages before, it is imperative that these talks do begin and that Turkey in due course be admitted to the club. This is not merely for reasons of free trade: with rapid economic growth and 70 million citizens, Turkey is an important market for Britain besides being our biggest source of electrical goods.
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