"Straight Road to Europe
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."
More:Straight Road to Europe - Comment - Times Online
