"A test for Turkey
By SHLOMO AVINERI
The decision of the European Union to start negotiations on Turkey's accession in October 2005 is an enormous achievement both for the European Union and for Turkey under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
For the EU, it signified the ability of European leader's to overcome centuries'-old prejudices, strengthened after 9/11 by an undifferentiated stigmatization of Islam as identified with fundamentalism, if not terrorism. The decision suggests that Turkey will be judged like any other candidate by a set of universal benchmarks, the so-called Copenhagen criteria. "
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