Membership of Turkey to the EU

Membership of Turkey in the European Union Recently the newspapers have been filled with news about countries which wanted to join the European Union. In may 2004 Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia have joined. The European Union now consists of 25 member states. Before the accession was granted to the new member states there had been a lot of discussions whether to accept these countries or not. After having them given accession to the EU the same discussion were brought up again. This time it concerns Turkey. The EU is going to have the next expansion in 2007, with Bulgaria and Romania likely to join at that date. Croatia is also an official candidate, and is likely to join within a similar timescale. Turkey is the only other official candidate, though with a less definitive estimate for a date of accession. There are many arguments in favour of this proposal but also many against. In this essay I am going to discuss these arguments in order to try and find a solution to this problem. I would like to start with the positive effects that the accession of Turkey would have. Turkey is a mainly Muslim country and having it within the EU might make it easier for Muslim people in Europe to integrate. The countries which are now in the EU could get more familiar with this culture and enrich their own with some aspects of it. Also Turkey could function as a bridge between Europe and other Muslim countries. Through Turkey Europe would be able to contribute to the stability in the Middle East. Turkey has already formally applied to join the European Community on April 14 1987 and it took 12 years until it was officially as a candidate for membership on 10 December 1999 by the European Council on the Helsinki summit. This shows that Turkey has been standing in line for quite some time already. The government has also started to adapt certain clauses in the Turkish legislation to make them coherent with the guidelines set by the European Union. Human Rights are a big issue at the moment. However, Turkey is clearly trying to show that they are very interested in cooperation with other countries within the EU. There are also some negatives points to mention. Economically it is a high investment for the European Union to integrate Turkey. Turkey would need a lot of financial support in order to stabilise their economy. It is only then that Turkey can be of any use to the European Union. Money is also needed to raise the country to a European standard of living; many people in Turkey are illiterate and not very highly educated and there is a big gap between rich and poor. This investment might be a very big problem since the EU has very recently already invested a lot in the other new member states accepted in may 2004. Seen the situation economically the accession of Turkey would mean a weakened position of the European Union worldwide. Human Rights also play a big role in the question of whether to accept Turkey or not. At the moment the Turkish Human Rights do in many ways not correspond with the European Human Rights. This is also a cultural problem. What to a German is a gross violation of Human Rights might be something normal for a Turk. Even geographical only a small part of Western Turkey belongs to Europe. The rest is more considered to belong to the Middle East. I believe that at the moment the problems are too complex to have Turkey joining the EU. Especially the cultural problem is something that can’t be resolved within a short period of time. It has taken centuries to develop this culture and I don’t think that an entire mentality in the people’s head can be changed just because a government changes some clauses in their legislation. To actually reach most people that live within the country and change their minds takes more time than the time it takes to change a clause. Cultural problems could also be based on religion. In Turkey most people are Muslim. This shouldn’t be a problem of course. However, in Turkey religion plays a much bigger role in society and people are more fanatic in practising it than in the present European countries. This and the fact that it concerns a different religion than the one most common in the present European states might result in problems. At the moment this topic is very sensitive, but it should be made discussable because I believe that this is a very important point to which should be paid a lot of attention. To conclude with, based on cultural issues I don’t believe Turkey should enter the European Union yet.