Recognizing one\u2019s role in the Holocaust, has been one of the prerequisites for Eastern European countries to join the European Project, and after decades of silence, all of them did. However, it seems extremely unlikely that Turkey will ever be persuaded to do the same when it comes to the Armenian Genocide. Too many generations of Turks have been indoctrinated with the paranoid idea that the Genocide is a lie invented by foreign powers to smear Turkey\u2019s \u2018good name\u2019.<\/p>\n
![\"turkish](\"http:\/\/www.ourcontinent.eu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/07\/Armenian-Genocide.jpg\")
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Population \u2013 Turkey has a population of almost 80 million people. If it would join the EU, it would be the second largest member state, after Germany. Turkey would also automatically be allocated the second largest number of seats in the European parliament. EU-founders like France and Italy, with much larger economies than Turkey, would be pushed to the side-lines of an imbalanced Turco-German Europe. Moreover, Turkey\u2019s population is projected to surpass Germany\u2019s in size in the coming decades. This would make a country, which many Europeans do not consider European to begin with, the most influential force in Brussels.<\/p>\n
Culture \u2013 This brings us to the final and most controversial reason for not supporting Turkish membership of the EU; namely culture. It is questionable, to say the least, to state that Turkey is a European country. Looking at its history, religion, language, customs and values, Turkey is more aligned with the Islamic World than with Europe. Archaic, premodern elements remain widespread, despite attempts at forced modernization and secularism. Even geographically, only a small part of Turkey lies on the European continent, and this part was mainly inhabited by Greeks until they were expelled in the 20th century.<\/p>\n
Therefore, for all intents and purposes, Turkey is not part of Europe, and is not perceived as such by most Europeans. On the contrary, Turkey has always been seen as the \u2018other\u2019, the \u2018outsider\u2019, the Islamic country to the East. For the sake of support for the European project, it would therefore be disastrous to allow a Turkish membership of the EU.<\/p>\n
Conclusion \u2013 To recap: Turkey is controlled by an authoritarian, Islamist government, occupies part of EU territory, is involved in a decades-long, bloody, ethnic struggle with the Kurds, and denies and intentionally obscures its historical responsibility for the Armenian Genocide. But even if democratic forces would come to power in Ankara, if the Cyprus and Kurdish issues would be miraculously solved and if Turkey would finally admit its guilt in the Armenian Question, we would still be left with a massively large country that few consider European, where unenlightened ideas about family, society and politics remain prevalent, and whuch is for all intents and purposes culturally distinct from Europe.<\/p>\n
If it is our aim to unite Europe, we must define where Europe begins and where it ends. Therefore, it is our task to identify which countries are part of our shared civilization and which are not. Which societies have so much in common that they can reasonably be assumed to coexist in a political community called Europe? In other words, which societies pass the threshold of \u2018Europeanness\u2019? It is our sincere conviction that Turkey does not and never will pass this threshold.<\/p>\n
Originally posted on our Facebook page.
\nhttps:\/\/www.facebook.com\/EuropeanPan\/posts\/1665907143712077<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n