A human being is a symbolic creature and, to the same extent, an active inventor of otherness. Europe and Turkey, The West and the Balkans, are infinitely exploitable symbols. Any symbol, inherently polysemic and socially construed, is continuously contested and negotiated.

The image of ‘the Turk’ as a ruthless plunderer is still vivid in European collective memory. Although it occasionally still verges on ethnic mythology, it clearly belongs to a past where, along with the plague and famine, this name used to be mentioned in prayers more frequently than that of God itself.

In...