The essay deals exclusively with the question of how Turkey’s potentialaccession to the EU might determine how a European identity evolved. Followingthis, two disparate views of perceiving and defining a European identity arecompared and analysed: a ‘maximalistic’ and a ‘dialogistic’. These representopposing ways of understanding political community: the maximalistic definitionrepresents an ‘ethical cultural community’ and the dialogistic a ‘universalcommunity of citizens’. European identity is then conceived as an open process andis brought into relation to the democratic process. Also investigated is whichunderstanding of European identity is implied, by the draft for a Europeanconstitution. The thesis of the article is, that Turkey’ future accession to the EUcannot be judged on the basis of a ‘historical-cultural’ argument but rather on thebasis of whether or not a shared European political culture and its main elementshave been realised