Thursday, October 28, 2004

Is Turkey ready for the EU?

The talks about the joining of turkey to the European Union has gone into the second round and they didn't lose momentum. In fact, they even built momentum in the last few days. Famous politicians, writers, artists and other stars have commented the attempt to include a partly-islamic country into the European Union.

I want to demonstrate the problem via the discussion in Germany. The socialist party hopes to get Turkey into the EU, because they believe that it would set an example to the rest of the world. What kind of example should that be, you ask?
Well, they want to demonstrate that there is no difference between an islamic-secular country and the western world and they want to show that we can live together peacefully. They hope to get access to the Middle East and disolve the resentments of the Mullahs and Theocracies.

Then there is the conservative party, the CDU, which doesn't want them to join. In the wake of the anti-Turkey voices of the conservatives swims the liberal party FDP. And once the liberals have made the choice out of the right reasons.
Turkey, they reason, is still not ready to join up, because they still violate human rights, aren't truly secular, because they still prevent the ancient rule of patriachic nations. The administration of Erdogan does nothing to prevent abuse of women by their husbands and they still torture their prisoners if necessary.
Those violations of human rights are no small things and should alone stop the integration until they are solved sufficiently.

So, my opinion is clearly towards more talks, but no integration until we have a truly democratic turkey with safe civil liberties.

Commentary: smg.max@gmx.net

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