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  • Keeping Turkey out of Europe

    Keeping Turkey out of Europe
    More than 22 years after it first applied, Turkey's entry to the EU is
    still blocked by human rights concerns - and subtle prejudice


    David Cronin
    guardian.co.uk,
    Wednesday 6 January 2010 13.00 GMT

    Istanbul is haunted by a unique type of melancholy, Orhan Pamuk writes
    in his wondrous book on Turkey's largest city. Known as hüzün, "the
    black mood shared by millions of people together" is particularly
    dense on cold winter mornings "when the sun suddenly falls on the
    Bosphorus and the faint vapour almost rises from the surface".

    Many Turks must be overcome by a comparable weariness (this one not
    mitigated by beautiful scenery) when they hear of their country's
    never-ending quest for membership of the European Union. More than 22
    years after Turkey first applied to join, the prospect of its EU entry
    seems as remote as ever, even if formal accession talks began in 2005.

    With progress in those negotiations already sluggish, primarily
    because of unresolved questions over the future of Cyprus, there is
    now a new hurdle to be overcome. Bulgaria has indicated it will block
    Turkey's membership unless compensation is paid for the expulsion of
    Thracians by Ottoman forces in the early 20th century.

    It is only right that Turkey should be required to improve its human
    rights record in order to join the union. The aforementioned Pamuk is
    among those to have fallen victim to its restrictions on free speech;
    the Nobel laureate was prosecuted over a 2005 interview in which he
    discussed the genocide perpetrated by Ottoman forces against 1.5m
    Armenians nine decades earlier. While charges against him were
    eventually erased on a technicality and while important gestures of
    friendship towards Armenia have been made by the present Turkish
    leadership, the Ankara authorities continue to muffle voices of
    dissent. This has been illustrated by a ruling from the Turkish
    constitutional court last month, banning the Kurdish Democratic
    Society party.

    Such curbs on expression, however, have nothing to do with the
    antipathy directed at Turkey by Nicolas Sarkozy in France and Angela
    Merkel in Germany. Rather, their opposition to Turkey's bid for EU
    membership is explained by what a columnist in the Turkish newspaper
    Hürriyet accurately described as "basic facts not pronounced openly"
    on Monday. "Turkey is a Muslim country," Mehmet Ali Birand wrote. "And
    Europe is not ready yet to accept a Muslim country in the EU."

    This anti-Turkish bias is tantamount to racism. Even though the EU
    institutions officially claim to cherish diversity, there is a tacit
    agreement among some of their most powerful leaders that the union
    must remain predominantly Christian. Herman Van Rompuy, the EU's new
    president, is one of the few to have voiced this desire in a public
    forum (and that was long before his recent elevation in status). "The
    universal values which are in force in Europe, and which are also
    fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigour with the entry of
    a large Islamic country such as Turkey," he told a meeting at the
    Belgian parliament in 2004.

    As a Christian myself (albeit not a devout one), I am not sure what
    teachings of the poor Nazarene that Van Rompuy professes to follow
    provide a justification for slamming the door on adherents to another
    faith. If a golf club adopted a similar policy of exclusion, there is
    a strong likelihood it would be sued for breaching equality laws. The
    EU is nominally a club of democracies; why is it allowed to
    discriminate on religious grounds?
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