well unfortunatly aaaarh i am not turkish, and i live in the UK, however i will relocate to turkey next year sometime. Which Turkish school were you educated in and where?
quote:
Do you think that Turkey will ever be allowed into the union especially since it is 99 percent muslim and with its huge population.
yes, if the EU can accept cyprus, a nation with extreme difficulties politcally into the union, and it can accept bulgaria and romania into the union despite economic conditions which are in some aspects worse than turkey, then turkey must surely be allowed in eventually.
the muslim population is actually becomming a positive aspect in terms of membership due to many leaders around europe wishing to make a message to the muslim world that the west is not anti-muslim.
However Turkey is not a country that will back down to every whim of the EU, it is an extremely proud nation and there are some grounds of argument from the EU which Turkey will never accept:
1. Armenian Genocide, Europe wishes turkey to accept the genocide as fact, and while the EU critises Turkeys free speech laws, they are putting a bill through parliament which will make it illegal in france to deny the genocide with punishment of 1 year in jail and a 45,000 euro fine! this vote takes place on thursday morning so lets wait and see. Anyway the point is they are purly allegations, turkey believes ethnic tension occured where thousands were killed on either side of an incident sparked by armenian massacres of turks, whereby the majority of the international community believes genocide did occur and a large armenian lobby is aiming to discredit turkey for whatever reason. If accepting the armenian genocide as a stipulation of accession arose then Turkey would refuse and remain outside of the EU.
2.Another ground of argument is the Cyprus issue, greeks began to massacre turks in northern cyprus during the 70s and the turkish army invaded and created the turkish republic of northern cyprus with democratically elected leaders. They are the only nation who recognises Northern Cyprus, and it is ridiculous to me that Cyprus was allowed to join the EU as a whole entity when problems cleary exist. If demands made against turkey included any backing down over the cyprus issue then i believe turkey would not join the EU.
on a different note, turkeys economy grows stronger all the time, it would clearly benefit from EU status, in my opinion it would create a much more diverse europe and break the christian aristocracy currently in control of Europe, and perhaps break the hegemony of the French-German dominance of the EU.
On a historical note Turkey is destined for the EU, its center has been working towards European integration since the end of ww1 and the formation of a secular and modern state aimed solely towards politcal union with europe, it has met many needs for european accession and continues to meet critera, Turkey is historically and geographically connected to europe, the western half of istanbul lies in Europe along with a large area containing prosperoud cities such as edirne and tekirdağ, the ottoman empire was always considered a major european player and reached as far as vienna and poland in the west, and crimea in the north.
One more thing Turkey has in its favour is politcal support, especially from the UK and Germany, blair and merkel are highly keen to see Turkey enter the EU,
i do hope oneday Turkey joins, allowing transfers of workers, business and students...i really believe turkey has a lot to offer Europe, culturally and academically and should be a nation more people learn more about.
'it's better to have your ministers inside the tent pissing out than outside, pissing in'
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