The Turkish train crash MELANCHOLY is Istanbul's defining characteristic, writes Orhan Pamuk, Turkey's Nobel prize-winning novelist. And melancholy has now descended on the country's relationship with Europe. “Almost everyone I know has lost heart,” says Soli Ozel, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bilgi University who wants Turkey to join the European Union.
... It was always going to be difficult to get Turkey into the EU. On top of complications arising from its poverty, its mostly Muslim culture and its mistreatment of the Kurds, it would be the largest member, with the most votes in the Council of Ministers and the most seats in the European Parliament. Even so, the accession talks have been unnecessarily fraught.
... All this suggests that the quarrel is to do as much with the Europeans as with the Turks. In 2005 European political leaders agreed to negotiate Turkish accession in good faith, but it is not clear that all are doing so. Unwilling to admit that they want to keep Turkey out, France, Austria and Cyprus are making demands that seem designed to induce the Turks to walk away.
... For the EU, a rejection of Turkish membership would represent a huge lost opportunity. Europe's foreign policy, and its hopes of global significance, would suffer a catastrophic loss of credibility if it were seen to be blackballing a moderate Muslim country that has NATO's second-largest army. The EU's reputation in the Muslim world, which is watching the membership talks with Turkey closely, would sink, perhaps even below America's. Economist