Keeping Turkey out of the EU
By Max Feldhake April 15, 2010 at 5:14 pm 
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According to an article from the German newspaper, Der Spiegel, there are approximately 2.8 million ethnic Turks living in Germany. In fact, after Turkey and Iraq, Germany is home to the largest number of ethnic Turks in the world.
It comes as no surprise, according to the BBC, that talks on including Turkey in the European Union moved forward recently as German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the country and met with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Much of the visit focused on the stalled Turkish EU accession process; however Merkel reiterated her belief, shared by many other EU member states, that Turkey should not attain full EU membership.
According to the BBC, Merkel favors a “privileged partnership” between Turkey and the EU, which would entail certain aspects which facially mirror membership, but not actual membership in the EU.
Erdogan rebuked any offers beyond full membership. Erdogan said a “privileged partnership” status does not exist in the EU framework and that, “the rules of the game have changed” since Turkey first entered into accession negations in 2005, according to the BBC.
Merkel and Erdogan seemed to disagree on most issues during the visit, ranging from increased sanctions on Iran to the decades-long division of Cyprus, the northern portion of which was invaded by Turkey in 1974.
Germany is Turkey’s largest trade partner and foreign investor; couple that with the number of Turks living in Germany and one can easily see why these two nations are so inextricably linked.
Some may argue that attempts to block Turkish membership are hypocritical given that so many Eastern European nations with much more fragile economies and perhaps worse social ills were rushed into the EU as soon as the books could be cooked — Poland stands as a good example.
There are major differences between the politically and economically backwards new member states from Eastern Europe and Turkey, however Eastern Europe is already European at its core, it need only be economically and politically changed, but Turkey is fundamentally not European.
Turkey lacks not only the same fundamentals of European culture which are able to bridge the gap between the economically dominant Western states and developing Eastern ones, but it also lacks a clear commitment to the rule of law, human rights, etc.
Turkey is still plagued by institutional problems with its democracy; a military coup, as has occurred many times in the past, is not entirely impossible. Turkey still refuses to come to terms with the Armenian genocide and the continued ethnic tensions with its Kurdish minority. In short, Turkey is in no way ready, and will likely never be, to join the EU.
Furthermore, Erdogan on numerous occasions in the past, according to Der Spiegel, has called for Turks to resist assimilation. These comments, along with the manner in which Turkey approaches the rest of Europe, stand as just more evidence why Turkish membership in the EU would be potentially destabilizing and burdensome.
Reach Max at maximilian.feldhake@asu.edu
Turkey has a longer history of democratically elected goverments than many of the European Unions current member states. It also has been a member of almost all of Europe's political organizations, including the Council of Europe and NATO.
Prime Minister Erdogan has been on record as saying that forced assimilation – exemplified by Australia's stolen generation – is a crime. This is, however, not the same as saying that Turks living in Germany should not “assimilate''. If anything, the whole concept of minority rights rotates around the idea that minorities – ethnic and religious alike – have the right to maintain their own identity and not be assimilated into the majority.
By allowing such a shallow letter reeking of discriminatory mentality to be published, the ASU undermines basic journalistic standards.
Sasboy,
Why won't Turkey recognize the Armenian Genocide?
Why does Turkey imprison its citizens for acknowledging the Aremnian Genocide?
Here is some info on how Muslims visciously murdered over 1,000,000 Armenian Christians:
The Armenian Genocide (Armenian: Հայոց Ցեղասպանություն, translit.: Hayoc’ C’eġaspanowt’yown; Turkish: Ermeni kırımı) – also known as the Armenian Holocaust, the Armenian Massacres and, by Armenians, as the Great Crime (Մեծ Եղեռն, Meç Eġeṙn, Armenian pronunciation: [mɛts jɛˈʁɛrn]) – refers to the deliberate and systematic destruction (genocide) of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I.[1] It was characterized by the use of massacres, and the use of deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of Armenian deaths generally held to have been between one and one and a half million.[2][3][4][5][6] Other ethnic groups were similarly attacked by the Ottoman Empire during this period, including Assyrians and Greeks, and some scholars consider those events to be part of the same policy of extermination.[7][8][9]
It is widely acknowledged to have been one of the first modern genocides,[10][11][12] as scholars point to the systematic, organized manner in which the killings were carried out to eliminate the Armenians,[13] and it is the second most-studied case of genocide after the Holocaust.[14] The word genocide[15] was coined in order to describe these events.[16]
The starting date of the genocide is conventionally held to be April 24, 1915, the day that Ottoman authorities arrested some 250 Armenian intellectuals and community leaders in Constantinople. Thereafter, the Ottoman military uprooted Armenians from their homes and forced them to march for hundreds of miles, depriving them of food and water, to the desert of what is now Syria. Massacres were indiscriminate of age or gender, with rape and other sexual abuse commonplace.
In July 1974 Turkey invaded Cyprus. History did not begin, however, in July 1974. The unified Cyprus had been suppressing its Turkish minority for several years. The government of Archbishop Makarios had been slowly stripping Turkish Cypriots of their basic rights and had even started creating incentives for ethnic Turks to leave the island.
In the summer of 1974 the military dictatorship in Athens engineered a military coup that violently overthrew the government of Makarios and replaced it with a terrorist leader Nikos Sampson. The new government went on the rampage, massacring and murdering Turkish Cypriots and isolating entire swathes of the Turkish populated areas of the island. Repeated requests by the democratic Turkish government to the world to rescue the Turkish Cypriots fell on deaf ears, and this was what precipitated the Turkish invasion.
In 2004 the Turkish government and Turkish Cypriot people supported a UN backed referandum that could have reunited the island were it not for the rejection by the Greek Cypriot side. This makes the accusations of “intransigence'' on the part of the Greek side almost amusing.
The European Union has failed to take a collective stance opposing the US led aggression against Iraq, a sovereign state that had no weapons of mass destruction. In fact, many of the EU's leading states actively participated and supported the Iraq invasion, and now we are even hearing of some shocking human rights abuses being carried out by British soldiers in Iraq, while the EU remains largely silent. In this light, the EU's moral authority to criticize Turkey's invasion of Cyprus, which in any case the majority of Turkish Cypriots welcomed as a protection against Greek massacres, is eroded.
Discriminating against an EU candidate country's bid on the basis of perceived cultural differences smacks of intolerance and bigotry. An organization that discriminates on the basis of cultural/religious issues forfeits the right to pretend it supports human rights as the right to be protected from discrimination on the basis of race/religion/ethnicity is a basic human right.
The above article is discriminatory, and those of advocate exclusion on the basis of race and religion need not try to pretend they support human rights.
Sasboy,
Thank you for the helpful response. In it you mention prejudice based on cultural or religious difference. Facts on the ground suggest Islam practices this more than any religion in man's history. How else does one explain the fact that Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Algeria, Afghanistan and Somalia do not allow one single non-Muslim citizen? (All of these countries were once 100% non-Muslim as Mohammed was born long after, for instance, Afghanistan was principally a Buddhist sancturary, and Saudi Arabia was home to Zoroastrians, Christians and Jews.)
Here is an article which clearly identifies how Islam and Islamic countries all practice discrimination based on religion.
http://www.unitedstatesaction.com/blog/imm-arti…
Sasboy,
Here is another article on the subject of Islamic prejudice. I think you'll find it interesting and I'll be interested in your thoughts.
Your friend,
Arafat
http://eye-on-the-world.blogspot.com/2010/03/wh…