Second, the new Turkish state was seeking an organic presence in the European state system.21 Admission to the League of Nations stood as a way station to such organic presence. Since Briand’s proposed European Union would form under the League framework, it added yet another layer of obstacles to Turkish admission to the European states system.
On the ideational aspect of European integration, the record available does to suggest that the Turkish leadership or public could relate to the most prominent initiative in this regard as much. Although Coudenhove-Kalergi’s idea on Turkey and its place in Pan-Europe had turned around radically from the 1920s to the 1930s, it is not possible to find a trace of his influence among the most ardent pro-European intellectuals of the time in Turkey. This lack of awareness and appreciation of Coudenhove-Kalergi’s Paneuropa continues to date. It may reflect a general failure to articulate European Union as an ideal beyond its economic and political dimensions.22
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21 Georges-Henri Soutou, “Was there a European Order in the Twentieth Century? From the Concert of Europe to the End of the Cold War, Contemporary European History 9 (3), (August 2000): pp. 337-338.
22 See Cengiz Aktar, “Olmayan Avrupa Düşüncesi Üzerine,” (on the non-existence of an idea of Europe) in Modernleşme ve Batıcılık, Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düşünce (Modernization and Westernism: Political Thought in Modern Turkey), Vol. 3, (ed.) Uygur Kocabaşoğlu, (İstanbul: İletişim Yayınevi, 2002), 269-274.
