Re: Welcoming an Asian Muslim country into the European Union is the natural way forward?!
Branding Turkey as an "Asian country" is a revisionist viewpoint... Remember that, for the past hundred years, European scholars and historians dubbed Turkey "the Sick Man of Europe" --not the sick man of Asia!! Clue:
Decline
The breakup of the state gained impetus with the Russo-Turkish Wars in the 18th cent. Egypt was only temporarily lost to Napoleon's army, but the Greek War of Independence and its sequels, the Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29 (see Adrianople, Treaty of), and the war with Muhammad Ali of Egypt resulted in the loss of Greece and Egypt, the protectorate of Russia over Moldavia and Walachia, and the semi-independence of Serbia. Drastic reforms were introduced in the late 18th and early 19th cent. by Selim III and Mahmud II, but they came too late. By the 19th cent. Turkey was known as the Sick Man of Europe.
[...]
infoplease.com
As for Prez Bush and US officials urging the EU to adjoin Turkey, I'm afraid it's all hypocritical posturing... US officials are well aware that the shortest way to kill an idea in Europe is to spin it as an "American idea". Hence the US's routine calls for Europe to grant Turkey EU-membership is actually counterproductive --and Bush knows it. As I said several years ago, the US interest is quite the opposite, that is, it's to keep Turkey isolated and surrounded by foes locally with the US (thru NATO) and Israel as its only "remote" friends....
If European policymakers were smart people, they would have yielded to Christian conservatives on the issue of Christianity: they should have inserted a rider on Europe's Christian heritage into the EU constitution AND AT THE SAME TIME granted Turkey EU-membership!!! After all, the two points are not mutually exclusive. Then it would have been much, much easier for the EU to deny Morocco, Algeria and other Muslim countries their bid to EU membership: EU officials could tell them, "Look, we just can't bring you in, you're not European... It's not that we're Islamophobic --hey, we DID welcome Turkey after all-- but we deem you unfit....
Well, luckily for US policymakers, EU officials are not that smart!!
Gus |
