Turkey voting for Christmas? An alternative view on Turkish accession to the EU

When there are discussions about allowing another country to join the European Union there are always heated discussions and opinions based on underlying prejudice and alarmist rhetoric. Turkey certainly is no exception to this fallacy.

For Eurosceptics the overwhelming consensus is that Turkey must not join the EU. The opinions amongst these Eurosceptics vary from geographical, economic or simple racial/religious paranoia. Maybe I’m hanging around with the wrong kind of people, but the latter is worryingly the most common.

As someone born in Turkey I know there’ll be forum trolls or strokey beardists who will jump on my back and think what a surprise he’s defending Turkey. Let me make my position clear. I was born in Turkey, but I live, breath and will die in Britain. I may be staunchly pro-Britain and absolutely anti-EU however that does not mean I will ride on the racial/religiously-phobic train.

Now let’s have a look at the two most common arguments against Turkey’s accession to the European Union. Firstly; is the alarmist point that Turkey is an Islamic state. Wrong. Turkey is a secular country which is not governed by religion. The peoples of Turkey have fought long and hard to ensure that religion does not hinder the country from being a progressive one. Yes the majority of Turkey’s inhabitants are Muslim, but it does not make the country an Islamic state. Usually I’d tend to agree that this is pandering to petty rhetoric nitpicking, however I’m not so stupid to be blind to the fact that people who use the old Turkey is a Islamic country argument are purposefully trying to tar it with the same brush as Middle Eastern countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq etc.

Turkey is a secular country which does not allow itself to be governed by religion, particularly Islam. For example the government banned a movement which wanted to bring Sharia law into the country and the government also banned the headscarf at universities. So for people to use alarmist headlines like “80 million Muslims head to Britain” shows them to be the phobics that they are. To quote a Greek friend of mine who dislikes ‘all Turks’; “I know the Greeks and the Europeans complain about Turkey joining the EU but let’s be fair, if I had to choose from all the predominantly Muslim countries to be near our country (Greece) or to join the EU I’d have to say Turkey would be my choice.” Let’s remember, beggars can’t be choosers. So when there’s a lone predominantly Muslim inhabited country like Turkey which is as secular and progressive as it is, we shouldn’t beat it down with a stick.

Another argument commonly banded towards being against Turkey joining the EU is on geographical grounds. Turkey, for those people is tectonically challenged. It’s interesting to note that the ones who use this argument never seem to be geography experts, but rather arm-chair commentators. Part of Turkey is in Europe. Full stop, no question about it. Ah not enough of it though they say. So where is it in the European Union constitution that specifies a percentage quota of land that must be tectonically viable? Also have these people not looked at a map? The capital of Cyprus is further away from Brussels than Ankara is. So it’s fine for Cyprus to be tectonically challenged but not Turkey?

Those of you reading this will still probably think I’m for Turkey joining the European Union. I am not. I just rather feel sufficiently strongly about it to want to bring together intelligent arguments and to quosh phobic arguments which simply trivialise the matter. I will present my arguments on why Turkey should not be joining the European Union in an article to be published later on today.