EU Enlargement - Analysis about magazine and newspaper articles [5A]
A. Nigro - From The Economist - Special Report - Article 2 - The Impossibility of Saying No
Title: The impossibility of saying no.
Source: The Economist, a British weekly magazine, September 18th 2004
Topic: Turkey and its possible entry into the EU.
Content: the opinionist, as in the previous article, analyzes Turkey discussing also the reactions of many European governments to its possible entry into EU. He organizes the article into four sections.
The first one presents Turkey as a heterogeneous nation because it shows some contradictions: for example, Ankara and Istanbul are both in Turkey but they are very different.
The former has a flourishing democracy, a stable government and economy and its biggest city was a cradle of Christianity. The second country, on the contrary, is far poorer and is Muslim. Turkey’s government is also committed to improve its conditions but the European commissioners are not favourable anyway. Afterwards the journalist analyses Turkey from a historical point of view. In fact he underlines Turkey was the second country to sign a European association agreement that meant generally a prelude to membership. So Turkey wanted to enter EU already in 1963 but it never had the real possibility to enter, until 1999.
In the second part of the article the opinionist documents the process that brought Turkey to the present conditions and how Turkey is trying to conform to the Copenhagen criteria (“Good marks and bad”). The changes are, however, not enough for many people since, in spite of all, the economy is unstable and human rights should be better protected. If the first and second sections deal with Turkey's efforts to reach its aims, the third and last paragraphs focused more on the reactions of the European government and on the reasons of their disagreement. The opinionist draws on the four key questions of the previous article: Turkey’s size, its poverty, its position and its religion. If he provides a solution to the first three, religion and the Islam question is the biggest problem and it is difficult to overcome it. It could be better saying yes to Turkey to avoid a possible hostility by the entire Islam world. Despite it, there are a lot of people against Turkish membership. They worry about migrations from Turkey and about cost. Also M.S. are not in favour of Turkey’s entry. Greece and most of the ten new countries are supporting Turkey whereas the existing EU 15 are worried about its possible entry. Finally the journalist concludes the article showing the point of view of Turkey about its possible entry.
Problems raised: the journalist tries to provide a solution to the questions posed but some remain unsolved. In fact the biggest problems are on the one hand the conflicting realities in the state (Ankara and Istanbul), on the other the effort of improving itself and the discouraging results.
Moreover, the opinionist underlines the effect of a “no” to Turkey that could interest also the entire Islam, not only Turkey.
Personal comment: the opinionist argues his thesis in an excellent way, but he analyses not only the pros but also the cons of Turkey’s entry. It allows to have a global vision of the problem and to make up a personal own point of view.