I don't think it has much to do with Europeans ignoring the issues that surround them. (If I were feeling more argumentative I'd suggest that Europeans, having probably the longest and most detailed history of wars over race and ethnicity within their own boundaries suggests that, if anything, they're going to have a better grip on it than anyone else)
But, instead, I think that it's just that Europe deals with it a completely different kind of way to the way America does, and not necessarily a less valid way. I mean, take your comment about the Turks. Are you talking about Turks from Turkey? Or are you talking about Turks from the former Ottoman Empire? Or are you talking about Turkic turks, in which case are you also talking about Greeks, Armenians, Kazakhstani, etc? Because they mean completely different things, and the meaning is pretty much entirely dependent on the national background you have. Particularly if you don't really mean Turkic turks, because then what you're dealing with wouldn't, I'd think, meet typical descriptions of race. It's a racism that's predicated on nationality, not so much the "race". So too blackness, and your relative ranking with it in Europe depends on the relationship your current country used to have (usually colonial in nature) with the country you claim origin from. And you can claim that origin in a way that is denied many black Americans, simply because slavery was never quite the same kind of issue inside Europe.
And Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe is probably even more weird because Eastern Europe has massive, ongoing issues between groups of people who are basically identical to a casual racial analysis, but who are completely different, and try to kill each other whenever possible. Even the not-so-subtle-and-ongoing generalised dislike of countries like Russia is a much bigger issue than it looks like. Because of things like the fact that Russia is currently dying of AIDS. And is unlikely to get much help with that, because, you know, they're Russians. (Making it a pretty big racial-kind issue that's not really neatly categorisable into "whiteness" and "not-whiteness")
So I think that there are actually sound reasons why Europe lets race as America defines it not play that much of a role in its own discussions of race.
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But, instead, I think that it's just that Europe deals with it a completely different kind of way to the way America does, and not necessarily a less valid way. I mean, take your comment about the Turks. Are you talking about Turks from Turkey? Or are you talking about Turks from the former Ottoman Empire? Or are you talking about Turkic turks, in which case are you also talking about Greeks, Armenians, Kazakhstani, etc? Because they mean completely different things, and the meaning is pretty much entirely dependent on the national background you have. Particularly if you don't really mean Turkic turks, because then what you're dealing with wouldn't, I'd think, meet typical descriptions of race. It's a racism that's predicated on nationality, not so much the "race". So too blackness, and your relative ranking with it in Europe depends on the relationship your current country used to have (usually colonial in nature) with the country you claim origin from. And you can claim that origin in a way that is denied many black Americans, simply because slavery was never quite the same kind of issue inside Europe.
And Eastern Europe. Eastern Europe is probably even more weird because Eastern Europe has massive, ongoing issues between groups of people who are basically identical to a casual racial analysis, but who are completely different, and try to kill each other whenever possible. Even the not-so-subtle-and-ongoing generalised dislike of countries like Russia is a much bigger issue than it looks like. Because of things like the fact that Russia is currently dying of AIDS. And is unlikely to get much help with that, because, you know, they're Russians. (Making it a pretty big racial-kind issue that's not really neatly categorisable into "whiteness" and "not-whiteness")
So I think that there are actually sound reasons why Europe lets race as America defines it not play that much of a role in its own discussions of race.