EU Enlargement - Analysis about magazine and newspaper articles [5A]
M. Livon - from The Economist - Special Report: Turkey and the EU - Article1: "Why Europe must say yes to Turkey"

TITLE: “Why Europe must say yes to Turkey”


SOURCE: “The Economist”, an English weekly magazine concerning international economy an policy, on 18th September 2004


TOPIC DISCUSSED: the article is about the possible entry of Turkey into EU and analyse pros and cons.


CONTENT: the article is an analysis of the pros and cons about a possible future entry of Turkey into EU and starts with an overview of the problem.

It lists all the possible reasons for Turkey’s exclusion from EU: the country is very 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 strong reforms in order to satisfy the “Copenhagen criteria” and to join the EU.

Moreover the article goes on focusing the attention on every single problem. The first is that Turkey is so large and if it enters it will become the biggest member with the heaviest voting weight and as a result this would certainly influence European decisions. From the journalist's point of view 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 connected to its poverty and because of it a large part of EU’s loans would be allotted to Turkey. 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 sufficiently European to join the Union. A further problem is its religion: Turkey is Muslim. The real issue is not Islamism (as a matter of fact EU respects religious freedom and 12m European citizens are Muslim), it is European fear for Islamic fundamentalism and one must not forget Islam is a regular power, where religion is the lawmaker; it seems therefore incompatible with a secular democracy like Europe’s. But Turkish government is doing a lot of reforms in order to join the Union and most of them are introduced to protect human rights.

The article ends with the journalist’s considerations: the obstacles of Turkey’s entry can be solved and a possibility for Turkey to join the EU must be given; it is always possible to turn back. Europe is called to take a very difficult decision: if Turkey becomes part of EU, ithis would imply an improvement for all other Muslim countries that could be elicete to mke a step forward in the develop their democracies, but if EU will refuse Turkish, the decision could be interpreted as a shutting to Muslim world.


PROBLEM RAISED: the article suggests a reflection on Turkey’s entry. It analyses the problems connected with turkey's possible joining and demonstrates that most of these problems are only prejudices and underlines the important steps of Erdogan’s government in order to reach EU’s criteria to join the Union.


PERSONAL COMMENT: I think the article shows a high level ofcompetence both for what rregards information and effective communicative organization of information. From the critical point-of-view it provides awareness of the multifaceted aspects of the decision to take. 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 siounds rather objective, considering its pros and cons.

Teacher: The work is satisfactory.