DAMNED IF THEY DO, DAMNED IF THEY DON’T
By Dan Hannan

The Telegraph, UK
May 3 2007

The poor Turks are damned either way. If they ban the symbols of
Muslim devotion, they’re fascists; if they allow them, they’re
fundamentalists.

Once again, we see Europe’s politicians determined, in Gladstone’s
unhappy phrase, "to turn the Turk, bag and baggage, out of Europe."

They will seize on any development – even an abstruse row about
the presidential nominee’s wife’s headscarf – as an excuse to defer
Turkey’s application for EU membership.

One day we are told that Ankara needs to do more for its Kurds,
the next that it is being obstreperous over Cyprus, the next that it
should grovel about the 1915 Armenian massacres.

Not all these objections are baseless, but it is striking to see how
differently Turkey is being treated from other members. No one asks
the Belgians to face up to what they did in the Congo, or the French
to apologise for Algeria.

Ankara is especially aggrieved about Cyprus, and with reason:
Turkish Cypriots voted to accept the EU’s reunification deal, but
have since been isolated; Greek Cypriots voted to reject it, but have
been embraced.

Some Turkosceptic arguments are plain silly. Last month, MEPs hectored
Ankara about getting more women into politics – this despite the fact
that Turkey elected its first female head of government 14 years ago,
while 18 out of the 27 EU members have never been led by a woman.

The trouble is that Brussels won’t come clean about its real objection
which is, quite simply, that there are too many Turks.

Under the reheated EU constitution, voting weights are to be determined
by population. Turkey is already larger than every state except
Germany; and, while Europe is shrinking, Turkey is teeming.

EU leaders are determined not to hand the leadership of their Continent
to an assertive, patriotic Muslim nation: they know it would mean an
end to Euro-federalism.

France and Austria have promised referendums on Turkish accession
and, since opinion polls suggest "No" votes of 70 and 80 per cent
respectively, that would seem to be that. But no one wants to say so.

And so the charade continues, with EU leaders crossing their fingers
behind their backs and canting about eventual membership, while
reformist Turks pretend to believe them so as to be able to carry
out a measure of domestic liberalisation under the guise of preparing
for membership. It would have been one thing to say "No" at the outset.

How much worse to string Turks along for perhaps another ten years,
imposing humiliating foreign policy climbdowns on them, making them
restructure their legal system, forcing 10,000 pages of EU rules on
them and then – then – flicking two fingers at them.

The EU risks creating the thing it purports to fear: a snarling,
alienated Muslim population on its doorstep.

Turks have traditionally been our strongest allies in the region.

They guarded Europe’s flank for 90 years, first against Bolshevism
and now against Islamism. They deserve better than this.

Daniel Hannan is a Conservative MEP for South East England

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