Saturday, September 03, 2005

Cold Turkey

Turkey may scrap it's 42 year old ambition to join the European Union says Abdullah Gul, the Turkish Foreign Minister, if Turkey is offered anything less than full EU membership according to a report in The Times today.

Let's hope Turkey does walk away. I am yet to be convinced of the benefits of Turkish EU membership. Proving that the European Union is not a "Christian club" is not sufficient justification.

Whilst Angela Merkel, the German opposition leader, is a fierce opponent of Turkish accession, why are there no leading politicians against Turkish membership in the UK? Are they worried about further alienating British Muslims?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

How could you not want to add a poor, inflation driven, coup-ridden Muslim country to an inefficent, ineffectual and corrupt organisation? What could possibly go wrong?

Anonymous said...

Hopefully if Turkey join, it'll push the EU under.
Mark
http://nomatterwhoyouvotefor.myblogsite.com

Aiden Truss said...

Based on their human rights record alone, they shouldn't be allowed to reap the benefits of EU membership.

And there are some benefits believe it or not...
:)

BigRedOne said...

Quite. Although obviously it wasn't their fault that they butchered (allegedly *cough*) over a million Armenians and then over fifty thousand Kurds later last century.

Still, why not let them in if we're going to trade with equally dubious nations noone has ever heard of, like China?

Anyway, there are quite enough Turks here in Germany. It might sound racist, but they're basically chavs with a slightly better dress sense and slightly worse education.

Snafu said...

Astolath, what are the benefits to Europe of allowing them to join the club? Most of the benefits of joining seem to accrue to Turkey and the other more recent new member states.

I would prefer development aid to be directed through commercial enterprises risking their own resources on profitable new ventures than reelying upon Brussels to decide how to best spend millions of Euros in transitional support.

Snafu said...

FBB, Someone said the Turks can only claim to be European because they invaded Constantinople. The "original" Turkey was purely in Asia Minor.

Maybe Israel will be able to join the EU in a decade, it's already in the Eurovision song contest! Only an accident of history has prevented Israel from being closer to continental Europe!