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  • Time to talk to Turkey

    EU enlargement

    Time to talk to Turkey

    Leader
    Friday September 30, 2005
    The Guardian

    Turkey has already waited more than 40 years to join the European
    mainstream, but there are still a few more tense days left before there can
    be certainty that its ambition will eventually be realised.

    The hope is that last-minute hitches will be resolved by EU foreign
    ministers on Sunday, allowing the accession talks to begin the following
    day, as promised. Since the rules require such big decisions to be agreed by
    all 25 member states, Austria alone has been able to block this one,
    demanding that instead of negotiating full membership like every other
    country seeking to join the club, Turkey should be offered only a "special
    partnership". Ankara rejects such an approach as discriminatory. So, to
    their credit, does everyone else, including the governments of France, the
    Netherlands and Germany, despite the strong anti-Turkish feeling that played
    a big role in the paralysing rejection of the EU constitution this summer.

    Austrian opposition to Turkish membership is a toxic blend of historical
    prejudice and contemporary fear, of Ottoman janissaries at the gates of
    Vienna, of Habsburg nostalgia, and Muslim gastarbeiter flooding in from
    deepest Anatolia. Wolfgang Schüssel, the conservative chancellor, does not
    say openly that the EU is a Christian club, but has signalled that he will
    only back the talks if there is a parallel launch of accession negotiations
    with neighbouring - and Catholic - Croatia. That process has rightly been on
    hold because of Zagreb's failure to cooperate with the UN war crimes
    tribunal. If as expected, prosecutors report cooperation has improved, then
    it can resume.

    Next Monday should be a big day, but even a positive result is unlikely to
    end rancour over double standards. Turkey, once plagued by military coups,
    torture and hyper-inflation, has met the EU's criteria for membership -
    democracy, the rule of law, human rights, protection of minorities, a market
    economy and the capacity to manage competition. Even if implementation of
    new laws has been patchy in Kurdish areas the very prospect of EU membership
    has been a powerful spur to unprecedented reform. More will take place and
    the country will become richer in the 10 or more years it will take to
    complete the negotiations. Outstanding issues over Cyprus should not block
    them. It is to be hoped too that calls on Turkey to recognise the Armenian
    genocide of 1915 will at least promote a more mature attitude to the
    country's past. But Turkey's secular Muslim democracy has demonstrated that
    it is ready to join a tolerant, multicultural Europe. Let the final deal be
    done and the talks commence.

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/leaders/story/0,3604,1581325,00.html
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