Sofia Echo, Bulgaria
Jan 7 2010

Is Turkey’s EU bid blocked by prejudice?

Thu, Jan 07 2010 11:39 CET by Gabriel Hershman

David Cronin, writing in the Guardian, says that Turkey’s longstanding
bid to join the European Union seems further away than ever in the
wake of human rights concerns, what he calls "subtle anti-Islamic
prejudice" and Bulgaria’s recent threat to block its neighbour’s entry
unless Ankara pays compensation for its expulsion of Thracians in the
early 20th century.

Cronin agress that Turkey’s record of suppression of dissent merits a
rebuke. He cites the prosecution of Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk who
gave an interview in 2005 in which he discussed the genocide
perpetrated by Ottoman forces against 1.5 million Armenians nine
decades earlier.

The article maintains that that darker forces may be at work in
Turkey’s difficulty in entering the EU club. Cronin refers to the
stance of both French president Nicolas Sarkozy and German chancellor
Angela Merkel and claims that their views represent a hidden
prejudice.

"This anti-Turkish bias is tantamount to racism. Even though the EU
institutions officially claim to cherish diversity, there is a tacit
agreement among some of their most powerful leaders that the union
must remain predominantly Christian."

He notes comments made by the EU’s new president Herman Van Rompuy,
albeit before he assumed his current high office, when he said, in
2004, that "the universal values which are in force in Europe, and
which are also fundamental values of Christianity, will lose vigour
with the entry of a large Islamic country such as Turkey".

Cronin concludes his piece by wondering whether this attitude should
be tolerated. "The EU is nominally a club of democracies; why is it
allowed to discriminate on religious grounds?"

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