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  • Turkey waiting for EU

    Boston Herald, MA
    Oct 9 2005

    Turkey waiting for EU
    By Boston Herald editorial staff
    Sunday, October 9, 2005

    Eighteen years after it applied for membership in the European Union,
    Turkey and EU diplomats have begun formal negotiations on the
    application. The talks may take 10 years, but it is important that
    eventually Turkey be admitted.

    The Muslim world is torn by a struggle between the peaceable
    majority and intolerant fundamentalists who seek religious rule under
    a new caliphate eventually embracing the whole world. Nothing would
    go further to convince Muslims that they have nothing to fear and
    everything to gain from modernity and the West in general, and
    secular government in particular, than the recognition of Turkey as a
    full member of Europe.

    Turkey's economy is oriented to the West, it has been a member
    of NATO for more than a half-century, and its government has been
    determinedly secular since 1925, even though it is now led by a party
    that calls itself Islamic.

    Turkey has jumped through hoop after hoop to prove to critics in
    Europe that its values are acceptable. It abolished the death
    penalty, legalized use of the Kurdish language and finally has begun
    to examine whether the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Armenians
    in 1915 and after was the genocide that the rest of the civilized
    world considers it.

    There are more hoops, such as the country's refusal to recognize
    Cyprus, on which it must relent if it wants to join the European
    Union because Cyprus is now a member. But hoops are what negotiations
    are about.

    Europe's fears are more of an obstacle to membership than
    Turkey's policies and values. Many workers in the original Common
    Market member countries fear wage and other competition from the new
    members to the East, and politicians often play to those fears. There
    is a certain irony in this, for hundreds of thousands of German
    workers are Turks recruited to make up labor shortages caused by
    World War II.

    Austria has been devious in trying to block negotiations by
    tying them to the status of Croatia, which it is backing for
    membership. The rest of Europe at least has recognized this is not
    1683, and no conquering Turkish army is knocking at the gates of Vienna.
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