<i>&gt; Historically, Istanbul was always part of &quot;The Orient&quot; - it&#x27;s where Europe ended.</i><p>That is factually wrong in so many ways.<p>To start with, the archipelagos and coasts between today-Greece and today-Turkey shared a common history right about the time &quot;western civilization&quot; is commonly supposed to be born.<p>Then the Roman Empire happened and Constantinople became central to the whole enterprise, in many ways more Roman than Rome, to the point of surviving almost unscathed the fall of its Western counterpart in a myriad of tribal wars. In the meantime, one guy born in today-Turkey went on to become St. Paul and basically rewrite the Christian gospel as he saw fit.<p>Istanbul &quot;left Europe&quot; only when the Ottoman conquest happened; and the Ottomans themselves quickly rebranded Constantinople as their capital, openly stating that they were the true heirs of the fallen Roman Empire. Even at this time, with the follow-up of crusading and so on, Venetian ships were busy building cultural and economic bridges between today-Turkey and today-Italy. Despite the friction of Islam and Christianity, Mediterranean traders went along better than either side ever did with their barbarous Northern counterparts.<p>The fracture that Islamization brought never quite healed, and you can argue about Turkey being &quot;different&quot; from mainland Europe ever since the Ottomans; but you simply cannot say that it&#x27;s &quot;always&quot; been like that, there is just no factual basis for that statement.<p>Regarding the views of this or that population about Turkey, they are not unique. Someone was busy this morning on HN arguing that the French don&#x27;t think the UK belongs in Europe. I know plenty of Swedish people who don&#x27;t think Finland is Europe, let alone Russia. Personally, the low level of civility demonstrated at various points by several politicians in Hungary, Poland and so on, could very well mean they are not Europeans either. That is not the point. You build the future by looking ahead, not by looking back.