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12/11/06

TimesOnline: Straight Road to Europe - Turkey does not deserve the punishment the EU contemplates


For the complete report in the Times Online click on this link

Straight Road to Turkey - Turkey does not deserve the punishment the EU contemplates

For 43 years, Turkey has been knocking at the European Union’s door. Despite being the guardian of Nato’s southern flank, firmly aligned with the West throughout the Cold War, it has watched other states with dictatorial pasts and fragile economies — Spain, Portugal and Greece, and Eastern Europe’s new democracies — push past it in the queue for admission. It has listened to European statesmen extol enlargement, correctly, for expanding the community of stable, prosperous democracies and establishing the EU as a confident, outward-looking player on the global stage. It has worked hard to deprive them of reasons for keeping Turkey’s application on hold, not just through internal reforms but by endorsing, and persuading Turkish Cypriots to agree to, a United Nations plan that would have ended the division of Cyprus if the Greek Cypriots had not then stubbornly rejected reunification.

t is true that Turkey is legally obliged to open its markets to all EU members, without exception. But the Union is also morally obliged to reciprocate, as it promised it would, by simultaneously ending the trade and travel embargoes on the Turkish Cypriot part of Cyprus. The Greek- Cypriot Government has blocked that, too — and insists it will continue to whatever Turkey does. Far from pressing Cyprus to see reason, the EU has laid all the blame for this absurd dispute on Turkey — and has stubbornly carried on doing so even after last week’s politically brave offer by Ankara to make a unilateral first move towards compromise. Comment EU-Digest: this deplorable course of events is politically motivated behaviour of some of the EU member states which seems to cater to sentiments within their local electorate.

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