Cyprus-Forum.com

[MrH]

Please read this and Judge for yourself what will be the outcome of the Cyprus Probelm!

Forget the EU

Wednesday, October 13, 2010
by RICHARD REID

Turks whose hope is pinned on European Union membership should start giving it up as a naive dream.

Turkey’s EU candidacy may have been tractable two generations ago, when Anatolian guest workers were the muscle of the German economic miracle and a welcome labor commodity in other European countries.

But today that welcome has frozen into alienation and resentment, especially but not only in Germany. Ethnic politics and hate speech are taking hold across the continent, with no end in sight. Look at Sweden, where the far-right, anti-immigrant Swedish Democrat party has just been voted into parliament. And at Holland, in whose parliament a hate-mongering party will probably now control the swing votes.

Hope as one might, there’s no sign whatever the EU will stop “concocting excuses,” as the New York Times put it, to keep Turkey out.

News spiked in Germany recently when a book by a prominent central banker, author, and politician said Turks tended to live off the state, avoiding integration and failing to learn German. The book’s title was “Germany Does Away with Itself.” Its publication set off ripples of reaction that forced the author, Thilo Sarrazin, out of his positions in the Bundesbank and the Social Democratic Party. The criticism leveled at him was a mix of sincere outrage and political correctness. After his bank and party exits Sarrazin became a sought-after public speaker and minor celebrity. He continued to say, in effect, that Turkish immigrants had denatured Germany. Clearly he was ventriloquizing the feelings of a large fraction, perhaps a majority, of the German public. As to the German government, Angela Merkel’s feelings about Turkey’s EU entry are well-known.

Mesut Özil notwithstanding, Germany will turn Turkey down if Ankara’s membership bid ever comes to a vote.

In France, the other motor country of the EU, there emerged a back-story reminder of the European mind-set – not in the main story of the Sarkozy government’s expulsion of the Roma, but in the secondary focus on their country of origin, Romania – a European Union member state. And from that a question arose: how bleak did conditions in Romania have to be to be to drive the Roma to the squalid shanty-camps in France? More to the point: Can Romania’s quality of life and its general socio-economic levels be good enough to compare favorably with Turkey’s, or to have jumped it into union membership four years ago as Turkey was jumping through EU qualification hoops?

The answer is no, and most of it is in the facts and numbers. Turkey’s gross domestic product, per capita income, and foreign direct investment levels are higher than Romania’s. Turkey is bracketed these days with Brazil and the other BRIC countries, among the world’s main developing economies. Romania is nowhere to be seen on such ranking tables. And Turkey is not regularly rocked by the kind of Mafia-reminiscent government corruption charges that the EU itself lays at Bucharest’s doorstep.

It’s not that Romania doesn’t deserve to be in the European Union. It’s that Romania’s membership shows that the playing field for EU admission has never been level.

No doubt Turkey has benefited from its efforts to conform to EU standards. The process has had its uses. No doubt EU courts and councils have helped bring fairness to Turkish legal norms. Neither of these probabilities dispel the fact that for Turkey the admission process will always be a delaying game. Turkey may be more objectively qualified, as it has been when compared to either Romania or its neighbor Bulgaria, or in fact other more prominent EU states that are unsafe for investment. That will not matter.

The door will stay shut for a reason as obvious as the absence of the emperor’s clothes. The European Union is a Christian club. Valery Giscard d’ Estaing made as much amply clear when he drafted the EU constitution. Exclusion on religious grounds may seem a strange inversion for a continent as irreligious as Europe, but the reasons for prejudice are infinitely pliable. In all of this there may be a lesson for Muslims, whose own exclusiveness can be just as wrong-headed.

In any case, Europe’s closed door may be irrelevant to Turkey’s general prospects. At the moment the country’s global image is one of rude health. Admiring eyebrows are being raised in the capitals that count. Turkey is no longer a minor player. Its momentum should before long carry it to a point where Europeans will be the suitors. And then Turkey can ask them to wait.

[Get Real!]

Sorry, no can do...

[boomerang]

you are a member of the oic...stick with them they will take you places...

[paliometoxo]

in romania or the other eu countries you speak of do families burry their daughters in the garden still like turkey does, do these eu countries threaten when they dont get their way and try implement their ways on every country they have a minority and demand more rights then they are willing to give any minority in their own country.

you tcs can forget partition in cyprus a stupid dream, and eu. no one wants turkey in, they would see what they would try and do in the eu. it would be disaster

[MrH]

Looking forward to The "Republic of Turkey and Northern Cyprus" - Turkey's NEW Constitution update - You may have heard something about it in the News!

[paliometoxo]

turkey did that in 1983 but the rest of the world ignored it. as they will continue to do and have stated there will be NO trnc.... keep dream mr H

[EPSILON]

Looking forward to The "Republic of Turkey and Northern Cyprus" - Turkey's NEW Constitution update - You may have heard something about it in the News!

In such a case the full name will be ended to be "Republic of Turkey / Northern Cyprus/Iran and other mules.

Even mind viagra has an end one day

[shahmaran]

Looking forward to The "Republic of Turkey and Northern Cyprus" - Turkey's NEW Constitution update - You may have heard something about it in the News!

In such a case the full name will be ended to be "Republic of Turkey / Northern Cyprus/Iran and other mules.

Even mind viagra has an end one day

No it does not.

What are you going to do, just get fed up and all rush in here?!

American morons did not recognize China for 40 years.

Cuba is still not recognized, what do you think that means to Cubans?

I tell you what, FUCK ALL!

People don't just stop living if they are not recognized.

[Oracle]

[Oracle]