by Jeff Dray

Created on: February 11, 2009

Should Turkey be allowed to join the EU?

Well, why not? After all, they are attached to Europe and there are plenty of Ex-Soviet states that have joined who cannot really be regarded as European. Although they are in Europe geographically they are not a European country, having more in common with the Middle East and the Arab world

The only proviso is that they should have something to bring to the party and they need to clean up their act as regards Human rights. As it stands, they are not ready to join, they would be a net cost to the alliance and the whole idea is for the EU to be a trading alliance.

I can't really understand why they would want to join, When the UK joined the only effects we noticed were am
inpenetrable new raft of legislation and interference and a sharp increase in taxes. Having said that we aren't talking about the UK, a country that has never really regarded itself as European, but Turkey, a moderate Islamic country with pretensions of secular governernment
but with practices and attitudes that really belong back in the middle ages.

They would benefit greatly from membership but I'm not sure that the alliance would derive much from ther membership. It is really a matter for the EU to decide, which in reality means Germany and France. If you can convince those two nations to support their application the opinion of other members seems usually to be irrelevant. The EU is one of the most un-democratic organisations we world has ever seen. The individual voters of any member state are seldom, if ever, given the chance to voice their opinions about matters that seriously impact their lives. If they were the Euro would never have been introduced, Eurocrats would not get away with the outrageous amounts of tax payer's money they squander whilst the working population is squeesed tighter and tighter, losing up to 55% of their income to taxes which is swallowed up by the beaurocratic behemoth that occupies Brussels.

Rather than allow further expansion the European Union should work towards reducing its influence, to give sovreignty back to nation states and allow the differences that made countries great to re-emerge.

I remember the time when I was proud to present a British Passport when travelling abroad. Now I am forced to carry a tawdry document that places my nationality in second place to E U membership. I have never felt myself to be European but that's what my passport claims. A huge amount of my hard earned income is grabbed from me to support countries with which we have little or nothing in common, countries that would certainly not lift a finger to help Britain if we were in trouble, countries with which we have nothing in common, countries that have done little or nothing to help in the war against terrorism, but expect financial aid from the community when they suffer attacks.

Opening up membership to Turkey would provide easy access to Europe for those from Arab nations who wish to impose their ideology on us by force, once they joined there would be no border control between Europe and the hostile nations to their east.

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