Gonzaga Debate Institute 2010 Pointer/Gordon/Watts/Samuels Turkey Neg

Turkey Won’t Accede EU-30 Years

Public opinion appears to be helping rapprochement efforts. Polls show 70 percent of Russians to have a positive view of Turkey, a ratio that the influx of Russian tourists into Turkey (2.8 million last year) is likely to bolster. In Turkey, meanwhile, recent Pew Research Center polls show that the replacement of George Bush by Barack Obama has had a negligible impact on anti-Americanism in the country. And while polls still show a majority of Turks supporting the country's struggling European Union accession process, few Turks believe Europe will ever let them in. A prominent advisor to Vladimir Putin, Sergei Markov shares that opinion. "Turkey won't get into the EU for another 30 years," he said in February, adding that Russia, Kazakhstan, Belarus and Turkey should form an economic union parallel to the EU. It's a suggestion that raises polite smiles in Ankara. The architect of Turkey's new multilateral foreign policy, Ahmet Davutoglu may appear more at home in the Middle East, but he insists European Union accession remains Turkey's "number one priority."

Turkey in EU Bad: Racism (1/2)

1) Turkey is too different from the EU- kills EU unity

Parker 02 (Randall, Professor of Economics at East Carolina University, Should Turkey Join The European Union?, ParaPundit, http://www.parapundit.com/archives/000790.html)

Woollacott mentions the growth of the imam hatip schools in Turkey as a means that the Islamists have used to expand their ranks. They apparently seek to teach a new generation of Turks to be fundamentalist Muslims. This brings up an important question: Is there a higher percentage of Turkish school children attending Islamist schools than was the case 10 or 20 years ago? Is that percentage rising or falling? Will the AKP government increase funding for Islamist schools? Will the desire to achieve EU membership cause the military to hold back from blocking this move? There is a very basic question that should be asked: Is the Islamist influence in Turkey growing or declining? A follow-up question: If Turkey joins the EU will the Islamist influence be more likely to grow or decline? Many in the pro-membership camp assume that EU membership will increase the power of the secular faction in Turkey. But it is by no means obvious that Turkey's membership in the EU will help ensure the secularization of Turkish government and society. If EU demands for greater religious freedom translate into greater latitude for the Islamists to get control of cultural and education institutions it is quite possible that EU membership will have the opposite effect. A Turkey outside of the EU is a Turkey whose military will be free to stomp down on the Islamists when Islamist influence begins to grow too strong. A Turkey inside the EU will be one whose historical protector of its secular character - the Turkish military - will no longer be able to perform that function. Jonny Dymond finds young Turks in Istanbul cafes who doubt Turkey's suitability for EU membership. It is not the grand clash of civilisations that disturbs, said Verda, it is that being Muslim means you embrace change more slowly, that you are culturally different. 'Muslims have a lot of traditions; they are not leaving their traditions, they are keeping them. A lot of my Muslim friends, despite being highly educated, think that they are not suitable for the EU. 'The reason is that they are Muslim, they have their own culture, their own lifestyle, and it is too hard to change it.' Istanbul, said Verda, is different - not really Turkey at all, the cosmopolitan city has a history of European civilisation and intermingling of cultures. All the same, she says, it is not Europe either. 'It's like the combination of East and West together - one day you feel you are very European, very modern, the next you wake up and find out that you are from the Middle East.' The EU is demanding greater civilian control over the Turkish military. The EU has so far refused to start membership talks with Turkey until the government meets minimum requirements on human rights and democracy. But Mr Erdogan argued that tougher standards were being applied to Ankara than to other nations vying to join the EU. Although Turkey has passed laws banning the death penalty and granting more rights to its Kurdish minority, the EU has noted shortcomings in human rights, including restrictions on freedom of expression, the torture of prisoners and insufficient civilian control over its military. Is that wise? The one institution that is most loved and respected by the Turkish people is their military. The Turkish military has protected the secular state and Turkey would be nowhere near ready to join the EU in the first place if the Turkish military hadn't played its role of constitutional protector for about 80 years. If Islamism grows as a force in Turkey and Turkey is admitted to the EU then what will the EU be able to do to stop the growth of a religious state within its borders? German opposition leader Edmund Stoiber predicts EU membership for Turkey will destroy the political union. “Membership for Turkey would spell the end of political union in Europe. We do not have that kind of integrative strength,” Herr Stoiber, the Christian Democratic opposition leader, said. “We want a proper political union, not just a free trade zone, yet that is what we would end up with if we let in Turkey.”Germany and France agreed a “conditional rendezvous clause”, allowing the start of entry talks with Turkey in July 2005, providing Ankara satisfied the EU that it had met standards on minority rights, judicial and prison reform, institutional democracy and market economics. “If you set 2005 as a possible date for talks, as Chancellor Schröder has done, then you will not be able to hold up the process,” Herr Stoiber said yesterday. When he talks about a political union versus a free trade zone he's making an important point: In order to achieve a political union one needs a lot of common values. The EU already faces enormous obstacles brought about lack of a common language, differences in historical experiences and differences in cultures between the existing EU members. There are large differences in living standards, levels of corruption, and the strength of civil society among the EU members. The addition of Turkey as a member would make the differences even greater and the number of issues on which a consensus can be formed would be reduced. Dr. John Casey, a fellow of Gonville & Caius, Cambridge, believes that there are cultural differences that make Turkey incompatible with the EU. The Turkish question is a much more acute version of a problem that could in the long run bring to nought the dreams of those who seek "ever closer union" in Europe itself. How can there be a European "state" - how can there be a common sense of allegiance among citizens of the EU - where there is no common language, where there is such cultural diversity, and where the political and legal traditions of at least one important European country - the United Kingdom - differ so radically from those of many of the others? Yet the European idealists can point to two great facts to oppose the sceptics. Almost all of Europe has a Christian inheritance, which means that the great majority of us, whether believers or not, are profoundly shaped by up to two millennia of Christian culture. You can only think this does not matter profoundly if you fail to see how culture overwhelmingly makes us what we are, and does help give us a sense of European identity despite the manifold differences. John O'Farrell says the Europeans really need to figure out what they want to accomplish.

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