At last, a European politician and Member of the European Parliament who isn't interested in kowtowing to the Turks and granting all their demands. From Expatica, with thanks to Anthony:
AMSTERDAM — A Dutch MEP has accused Turkey of being locked in a "power play" over its bid to join the European Union.After a working visit to the Turkish capital Ankara, Dutch Christian Democrat MEP Camiel Eurlings said Turkey is too inflexible towards the European Union and is reluctant to make concessions. "The Turks are pushing and pressuring on all sides," he said.
Eurlings said additional demands should be imposed on Turkey prior to the start of official negotiations over its accession to the EU. He also said Turkey must meet current demands in terms of human rights and religious freedom.
"Turkey can only become a part of Europe if it is as free as the rest of Europe. That is not the case now," he said.
Wow.
Hope springs eternal.
Since turkey needs a unanimous vote from extant members for EU accession, hope abounds that there will be at least 1 dissenting country - if not Greece then at least Netherlands? Too much to hope for?
We're lucky that Cyprus joined when it did. They won't let them in.
The Turks have bent over backwards to get themselves excluded from the EU - Europe should accommodate them.
http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=26&story_id=14766&name=Muslims+must+integrate%2C+saysGerman+conservative+leader
Muslims must integrate, says German conservative leader
Turkey must be barred from joining the European Union due to its "culture" and Muslims in Germany have to make far bigger efforts to integrate, Bavarian Premier Edmund Stoiber told opposition conservatives on Tuesday.
"An out-of-Europe nation like Turkey with its different history and diffent cultural traditions will not fit into Europe," said Stoiber in a speech to a Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party congress.
Stoiber, who was narrowly defeated by Social Democratic Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder in Germany's 2002 general election, said he backed a rejectionist stance to Turkish EU membership outlined by CDU chief Angela on Monday.
Stoiber also had blunt words for the estimated 3.4 million Moslems living in Germany of whom ethnic Turks comprise about 2.5 million.
"Our nation demands from immigrants the will to integrate," he said, adding that the chief problem today was a lack of will by the second and third generation born in German to do this.
Those living in Germany have to learn the language, accept German values and send their children to German schools, he said.
There was no space in Germany for "preachers of hate" or the oppression of women, Stoiber said.
"To those who do not want to accept this, all we can say is 'you picked the wrong country'," he said to applause.
" if not Greece then at least Netherlands? Too much to hope for?"
Yes, too much to hope for, unfortunately.
Eurlings may sound critical, but he's as much for Turkish admission as the next MP.
Besides he's an idiot who thinks that the ME roadmap is a good thing.
I don't expect it to happen, but it would be nice if, for a start at one of those accession conferences, the EU demanded that Turkey finally acknowledge perpetrating the Armenian genocide. Turkey will never deal honestly on the questions of religious freedom until it is forced to acknowledge its own past transgressions.
In 1914 half the population of Constantinople was non-Muslim. Now it must be down to about 5%, and Turkey itself (not the Ottoman Empire), which in 1914 had a population that was more than 25% non-Muslim, is now 99% Muslim. What do those figures mean? What must have happened to the Armenians, the Greeks, the Jews, the Levantines, for their populations to disappear? Killing of the first, mass expulsion (and some killing) of the second, the Jews too tiny and powerless a group to worry about, though plans were afoot by some Turks to deport the Jews of Tel Aviv, a city just barely settled, and to reserve for them the fate of "the Armenians." As for the Levantines, that is Europeans of indeterminate nationality, who had lived in Constantinople as traders, dragomans, hoteliers, and so on, they disappeared as well.
Or think of Alexandria, circa 1925, where Cavafy and Ungaretti were both born. Leaving aside the exoticism and sickening couleur locale of Durrell's Quartet, surely Alexandria was a place far more interesting, with its varied population, than it is now, after Nasser ran out of town the Greeks, the Italians, the Jews, the Armenians -- all the varied populations that made the city interesting.
Little by little, every Muslim country that had once had a thriving Christian or Jewish presence has managed, even in this past century, to whittle away at that presence. Having driven all the Jews out of Baghdad -- where in 1920 they made up 1/3 of the population, and massacred in 1933 the Assyrian Christians and just recently having started up again (against Assyrians and the few remaining Mandeans), Iraqi Muslims seem determined to totally remove the non-Muslim presence in their midst -- the remnants of the original inhabitants of Mesopotamia when the Arabs first appeared to islamize the land, and subjugate the indigenous non-Muslims.
Turkey is now ending, step by step, the Kemalist constraints on Islam. It is not a good bet. One would not wish to risk the survival of a non-Muslim Europe on the good sense, or stable secularism, of the Turkish population. Every recent sign from Turkey shows the reverse -- a return to Islam or, if you will, a "reversion" to the pre-Kemalist attitudes.
Here's the URL of an "independent" lobby group pushing for Turkey's membership:
www.independentcommissiononturkey.org
This commission is also actively supported by the American "open society" activist George Soros and his Open Society Institute. Does any of you have a clue why they want Turkey to be accepted, asap? This is a sincere question.
Now if only the U.N. was forced to make its membership based on Democracies and Nationas that respect human rights.
Dictators and thugs get support from the Arab Countries and whimps like France supply Arms to these Nations while claiming to denounce illegal wars and aggression by foreign Nations.
Lets see if I got this right,France opposed the Iraq invasion even though the U.N.'s resolutions
caused this condition where Saddam mocked the U.N. and saw them as idle threats,France took the moral highground and vetoed the Security counsil vote.
Now we see France unilaterally attacked the Ivory Coast without any U.N. approval or backing by other Nations,hmmmm,so France can "suck and blow" at the same time.
Incredible but true folks,only the U.N. could
be so hypocritical,Rhwanda and Darfur are just
another reason why BUSH is right to prevent Nations from becoming a threat. The leftists that
think dis-arming works would make you believe that if the Police had their weapons taken away
the crime-rate would go down.
Ala-sux:
I'm sure you were being ironic about the French taking the moral high ground. Pretending to the moral high ground is more like it, given their involvement in Saddam's oil-for-food gambit.
I hope I live to be old enough to see the day when the coin drops and people realize that Saddam was able to systematically starve Iraqis (doubtless the populations he didn't like), rebuilding his coffers, keep idle scientists on the payroll, buy the ingredients for chemical and bio warefare, and wage a PR campaign against the sanctions, all with the help of three of the five Security Council members (France, China and Russia) who so vehemently opposed the invasion.