Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2008-01-17-Speech-4-115"
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"en.20080117.15.4-115"2
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"Mr President, I appreciate your courtesy. I am glad to be able to speak on this report because it seems to me that the European Union, in its treatment of Turkey, is making a generational, a possibly epical mistake.
It now seems very clear that we are never going to admit Turkey to full membership. It is clear from the majorities in this House; it is clear from the promises of referendums in Austria and France, where there are majorities of 70% and 80% respectively against membership.
Had we said initially to Ankara that this was the case and we were going to work out some kind of alternative, we might have been able to go ahead in amity and partnership. Instead we are stringing the Turks along, imposing tens of thousands of pages of the
on them, making them grovel about Armenia, about Cyprus, about the treatment of their minorities and then, possibly 10 or even 15 years from now, after all of this, we will flick two fingers at them. In so doing, we risk creating the very thing we purport to fear: an Islamist state.
Turkey is more of a democracy than the European Union. It changed its government peaceably. I wish we would have the courage to consult our own people.
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