• by Joaquin Roy
• Monday, September 19, 2011
• Inter Press Service

The apparently eternal problem of Turkey's entry into the European Union seems even further from resolution. Ten years ago 70 percent of the population wanted to join the EU; today barely a quarter do, while fifty percent actively oppose the idea. This has become the largest obstacle, writes Joaquin Roy, ''Jean Monnet'' professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami.

The apparently eternal problem of Turkey's entry into the European Union seems even further from resolution. Ten years ago 70 percent of the population wanted to join the EU; today barely a quarter do, while fifty percent actively oppose the idea. This has become the largest obstacle, writes Joaquin Roy, ''Jean Monnet'' professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami.

In this analysis, Roy writes that the real obstacle to Turkey's membership in the EU is not religion but numbers: there are just "too many" Turks, 74 million to be precise. Turkey would be the largest member of the EU in area and would threaten the demographic preeminence of Germany, which has a population of 81 million. Turkey's entry would also mean the addition of a language or family of languages spoken by over 200 million people in countries that stretch all the way to China.

But Turkey's main liability is the persistence of a standoff between two irreconcilable elements which are locked in a competition that barely shows signs of resolution even now: civilian power versus the military. What is curious about this antagonism is that most Turkish government officials are inflexible in their commitment to maintaining the separation of religion and the state. This is a pillar of the code introduced by Kemal Ataturk in 1922 as a central element of the country's modernisation. It is the military's understanding that its mission is to defend this separation that led it to interfere in politics in the first place - a practice that puts Brussels on edge.

(*) Joaquin Roy, 'Jean Monnet'' professor and Director of the European Union Centre of the University of Miami.

© Inter Press Service (2011) — All Rights Reserved. Original source: Inter Press Service

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