Turkey faces cutoff in talks to join EU
December 12th, 2006 by
From the beginning, Turkey’s path to the European Union was a diplomatic minefield. The country is large, 99 percent Muslim, prone to military coups and economic crises, and developed to European levels only in small pockets. It has problems with torture, violence, freedom of expression, corruption and minority rights. The vast majority of its land mass is in Asia Minor, where battles against Kurdish separatists have killed some 37,000 people. Most pressingly, it has 40,000 soldiers occupying part of another EU member country, Cyprus, which it invaded more than three decades ago.
At a summit this week, European leaders look likely to partially suspend membership talks with Turkey because of its refusal to trade with or recognize Cyprus. But with so many other issues to deal with, Turks are buckling down to a long, hard slog. [Read more]
This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 12th, 2006 at 4:48 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.