Turkey - EU

patzer117

Suff wrote:

No it doesn;t. Turkey is an islamic country yes but the goverment does not allow any religion to effects it's politics, they are a non-religoius goverment.

Secular is the word you are looking for. Backward is my word. It is forbidden to criticise the Turkish government in Turkey, along with any state institutions. Which is a blatant breach of freedom of speech.

Ok, apart from historical and cultural reasons, both of which are valid, Turkey is a country of 70 million odd people (cia.gov) 70% of which are farmers. This would result in oh, a good 50 million farmers coming into the ol' EU and screwing over our already pitiful Common Agricultural Policy, and taking out irish farmers and many western farmers because the EU simply could not afford another 50 million to support. Turkey would also need an unprecedented amount of development in the east of the country which is economically backward, and hasn't experienced much economic success due to the lack of investment in Kurdish regions.

And hell they don't recognise Cyprus as a legitimate country, which poses a problem what with Cyprus being a member of the EU and all.

Suff

patzer117 wrote:

Secular is the word you are looking for. Backward is my word.

Why backward?

patzer117

patzer117 wrote:

Turkey is a country of 70 million odd people

They can't ALL be odd, surely?

growler

patzer117 wrote:

Secular is the word you are looking for. Backward is my word. It is forbidden to criticise the Turkish government in Turkey, along with any state institutions. Which is a blatant breach of freedom of speech.

.

its ironic that most of the laws that clash with our European / Anglo / American sense of free speech were designed to prevent any non secular bodies wielding power in Turkey. Ok , they have gone way over the top in their dealings with the kurds , but historically it's not as though none of the current EU countries ever tried to discriminate on a minority / religion in the last few centuries.

I think the problem is really one of timing and motivations, if you wander around Istanbul you could be forgiven for thinking you're in any European capital , you have all the shops and brands you'd get anywhere else, you don't see any more islamic dress than you would in Berlin, London or Vienna, there are pubs, short skirts , scam artists etc, all is asa we would expect it to be. But when you leave the wealthy city centres behind you find a lot of poverty, more islamic influences on people's lives and therefore a different life view than we are familiar with havig lived in a Christian culture.

I suspect that the rich. powerful and political elite would love to see Turkey integrated and for these classes it wouldn't be a huge leap, but for the other X% the transition from being Turkish to European would require a fundamental shift in attitudes. The necessary legal changes the are prerequisite for EU entry would also open the doors to a political challenge from an fundamentalist Islamic party, this is a concern that any Turks I've spoken to about the EU raise.

Regardless of the political rhetoric I think this is purely about economics, the EU cannot absorb Turkey's poor nor can it afford to finance Turkey's development to a level where it meets EU standards, nor would current members to the west ( UK, Ireland, France) find it politically acceptable to burden their taxpayers with the bills for Turkeys development. Long term the EU would like to have a buffer zone with the middle east and a land border with a significant oil exporter but I think the timescales would need to be in decades for the necessary groundwork to be completed.