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Athens: An EU stretched too far

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  • Athens: An EU stretched too far

    Kathimerini, Greece
    Oct 1 2005

    An EU stretched too far
    By Petros Papaconstantinou

    The looming collapse of Turkey's EU talks before they have even
    started confirms that, for European governments, Ankara's refusal to
    recognize Cyprus was merely a pretext used to revise their
    wrongheaded strategy. Vienna is once again halting the Sultan at the
    gates of Europe - a role that Athens and Nicosia could not afford to
    play. But the loose-tongued Austrians do not speak only for
    themselves. The recent setback in the European Parliament and French
    calls for a `clearly controlled' application process for Turkey
    indicate the change of mood.

    For how can one explain the shift of big states which - after
    pressuring Athens for years to lift its Turkey veto - have now, at
    the 11th hour, unearthed the problem of Cyprus, the Kurdish issue,
    the Armenian killings, even the cases of torture in Turkey's
    psychiatric clinics. In Turkish eyes, that can only be a sign of
    growing reluctance to let Ankara hop on the EU train.

    What the expanding alliance of Turkey-skeptics fail to see is that
    the rushed expansion of the bloc was a blunder of mammoth
    proportions. Enlargement was decided in the wake of German
    reunification as Berlin reckoned that its unmatched economic leverage
    would turn the former socialist countries of Eastern Europe into
    satellites. Britain wanted the same thing for different reasons.
    Eastward enlargement, it was believed, would put European plans for
    political and military emancipation from the US on the back burner
    and take the dismantling of Europe's social state a step further.

    In the end, it was London, not Berlin, who smiled. In this context,
    the clamor over Turkish membership has catapulted onto center stage
    the concerns over Europe's geographical stretch, which threatens to
    unravel its social and political cohesion.
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