Talking with my flatmate about the swedish presidency of the EU (started 1st of july), we came to talk about Turkey because Sweden is one of the only countries that fully supports the entrance of Turkey in the EU. That will be one of the interesting subjects to follow during the next 6 months together with environment. I realized that the situation is described very differently in Swedish media than in the French ones. That's why I decided to write about it.
I will try to avoid to balance pros and cons, it's not my point. I will leave the judgement to you readers and just refresh your memories about a few facts. Sensitive ones.

- Size: Turkey is 71 millions inhabitants which is almost the same size than Germany and as a part of the EU they would be the 2nd largest country. The political consequence is that Turkey would be the second largest number of MEPs in the European Parliament and demographic projections indicate that Turkey would surpass Germany in the number of seats by 2020.

- Religion: Turkey is a 99% Muslim country where Europe in its early founding was widely Christian and still is.

- Borders: accepting Turkey in EU would give EU a direct border with countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria which are not every day considered as stable parts of the world.

- Human rights: Turkey is not exactly known to be very transparent on human rights. I couldn't find any good reliable source on that in a short time but a friend of mine was in Istanbul a few weeks ago and couldn't access YouTube...

- Cyprus: Turkey still hasn't recognized the Republic of Cyprus, which is a member of the European Union since 2004.

- Kurdistan: tightly linked with the borders point, the sky is not clear blue in this region. The Enlargement Strategy and Main Challenges report 2006 – 2007 noticed that "there is a need for Turkey to address the serious economic and social problems in the South-East and to ensure full enjoyment of rights and freedoms by the Kurdish population". And then froze negotiations on this issue.

A few points are not really subject of discussion for me, for instance Turkey's economy, Turkey's strategic place (having US military bases and being a bridge between Europe and Middle East) or Turkey's military force (the second largest army in NATO). But maybe I have forgotten some, feel free to comment in any case.

You'll find more info on wikipedia, of course. (even if some points are brilliantly avoided).

I am finding myself in a very ambiguous situation here, being french in sweden when Sweden and France have such a different opinion and conception of the situation. (Let me remind you that the candidate Sarkozy in 2007 said

"enlarging Europe with no limit risks destroying European political union, and that I do not accept...I want to say that Europe must give itself borders, that not all countries have a vocation to become members of Europe, beginning with Turkey which has no place inside the European Union"



Picture by turkofil on flickr