After years of jiving around the issue of Turkey’s membership in the EU, Turkish Foreign Minister Ali Babacan got to the core of the reason why Ankara has yet to join the bloc. Speaking to reporters over the weekend at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Babacan warned the European Union not to become a “club of Christians.”

Turkey’s membership in the European Union has been a source of controversy among member states for years, and membership talks between Turkey and the EU have consistently bogged down, largely as a result of EU heavyweights France and Germany staunchly opposing full Turkish membership in the Union. French President Nicolas Sarkozy has been especially vocal, unabashedly stating that the Muslim country does not belong in Europe.

“If the EU finds itself as a club of Christians,” warned Babacan on Saturday, “it is against the very soul of the EU.” Agence France Presse reported that the Turkish foreign minister “regretted that the issue of religion had apparently become a factor in the debate on Turkey’s accession.”

Babacan’s belief that Turkey’s religious composition is keeping it from being accepted into the European Christian club is correct. But his assertion that Christianity as a unifying factor in Europe goes “against the very soul of the EU” is seriously flawed. The Catholic Church has been Europe’s single greatest constant, and the most powerful and defining force inside European politics, since Emperor Justinian restored the Vatican to the heart of Europe in a.d. 554.

You can read about this history in Germany and the Holy Roman Empire.

Informed by this history, the Trumpet has explained for years that religion is the crux of the debate surrounding Turkey’s membership in the EU, and that Muslim Turkey will never be integrated into Christian Europe.