The source is "The Economist", authoritative weekly newspaper focusing on international politics and business news and opinion, on 18th September 2004.
The topic discussed in the article is TURKEY'S ENTRY into EU. It analyses the pros and cons with specific attention to cons and advancing a possible solution.
Just from the title the journalist expresses his opinion about the problem. He is in favour of the enlargement to Turkey. The article is made up of three sequences. The titles are:
- The EU faces a momentous decision
- Risk and reward
- Islamophobia.
The article is an analysis of the pros and cons about a possible entry of Turkey into EU. It starts with an overview of the problem.
It lists all the possible reasons for Turkey’s exclusion from EU: the country is too large, poor, not all of it is in Europe, it is Muslim and it does not respect human rights. But in the last years Turkey, with Erdogan’s government, started a process of very strong reforms in order to satisfy the “Copenhagen criteria” and to join the European Union.
In addition to this the article goes on focusing the attention on every single problem. The first is that Turkey is too large and if it enters it will become the member with the heaviest voting weight. It follows that it would certainly influence European decisions. In the journalist's opinion this would not represent a problem since in his opinion the real problem is that EU is made up of small countries. The second problem is strictly connected to its poverty . In addition to all this, Turkey is not entirely in Europe, but the Union does not establish precise physical boundaries. In 1963 it said that Turkey was satisfactorily European to join the Union. An other important problem is its religion: Turkey is Muslim. The real issue is that in Turkey law and religion become the same thingh. So the issue is not Islamism ,as a matter of fact EU respects religious freedom and 12m European citizens are Muslim.
The article ends with the considerations of the journalist: the problem of Turkey’s entry can be resolved and a possibility for Turkey to join the EU must be given; it is always possible to turn back. Europe has to take a very difficult decision: if Turkey becomes part of EU, this would imply an progress for the other Muslim countries that could be elicited to make a step forward in the development of their democracies, but if EU will refuse Turkish, the decision could be interpreted as a shutting to Muslim world.
The article produces a reflection on Turkey’s entry. It analyses the problems connected with Turkey's joining. The article demonstrates that most of these problems are only prejudices.< br > In order to provide a personal comment I can say that the article shows a very high level of competence both for what regards information and effective communicative organization of information. Right from the title, the article shows one possible solution but in spite of all this, it analyses all the problems in a way that sounds rather objective, considering its pros and cons.