"Unworthy of Turkey
Lessons from Iran’s Easter parade of British hostages.
By Barbara Lerner
Should Turkey join the European Union? Western opinion is sharply divided on this question; Turkish opinion is increasingly so. In 2002, I argued that Turkey’s political history more than justified its admission to Europe’s premier political club. Despite the stubborn Western habit of ignoring it, history records the fact that the Turkish republic has been a free, independent, secular, and mainly democratic state ever since Ataturk created it out of the ashes of the Ottoman empire in 1923. Great Britain aside, that’s a record very few European states can even approach. Rethinking the question five years on, I still think the EU should say yes to Turkey, but developments in postmodern Europe — illustrated, most recently, by the responses of Britain and the EU to Iran’s brazen Easter parade of British hostages — convince me that Turkey should say a polite but firm no to the EU. "
More:Barbara Lerner on Turkey & European Union on National Review Online
