Mr. McDonald,
Unlike, say, Spain in the mid 70s? Or Portugal a few years before that? Or the former Warsaw Pact members that will be members soon? Or the various pieces of Yugoslavia?
Slovenia is the only Yugoslav successor state joining in this round, and it's an exception--by far the richest part of post-Communist Europe, the most liberal part of the most liberal Communist country in Europe during the Cold War, lacking any ethnic conflicts apart from standard native/immigrant ones, and having its participation in the Yugoslav wars be limited to a couple of weeks of intermittant fighting that only killed a few dozen people and ended with Slovenia's complete disassociation from the conflict.
All of the other Yugoslav successor states are quite far indeed from joining the EU. Croatia might be able to make it, along with Romania and Bulgaria; but then, Croatia is also the richest of the remaining Yugoslav successor states, the most integrated with western Europe, the most democratic, et cetera. And its application is still a long shot.
"Having a European Union member-state that could conceivably fall prey to military coups and internal ethnic civil war is suitable for a cyberpunk scenario of the future, but it doesn't make for a desirable scenario."
Unlike Austria? Germany? Spain? France? Britain? Greece? All of which have fell prey to military coups and internal ethnic civil war within modern memory? Nah, you're right. It has nothing to do with Turkey being 'brown' and 'muslim', doesn't it?
It may have something to do with that, yes. More powerful evidence, though, is the fact that there have been
four coups in my parents' lifetimes, including one just six years ago.
Just as importantly, neither Germany, nor France, nor Austria, nor Britain, nor Greece, have had civil wars in my parents' lifetimes. (Northern Ireland comes close, granted.)
"The European Union requires a fairly high standard of its member-states. It was entirely conceivable for NAFTA to be negotiated with a Mexico that was semi-democratic. To join the European Union (and its predecessor organizations), though, a country first has to be democratic and have the rule of law."
If you think DeGaulle's France in the 60s was 'democratic', you've got another thing coming.
Conservative, yes. Democratic, definitely.
Ditto for Greece.
Actually, when Greece suffered a military coup, it was
rejected by its European partners as ineligible to participate in European integration. Only when the coup was overturned and the generals expelled from any hope of power did Greece have any chance.
And how long do these traits need to be in place? Spain hadn't been 'democratic' for very long before joining the EU. Of course Spain is white and christian, as as Greece.
In Spain's case, fascism was a dead letter after Franco died. The king restored democracy, the Socialist Party formed the government for two decades afterwards, and the country became a federal state--Catalonia and the Basque Country got as much self-government as they were likely to get. The collapse of fascism in Portugal was swifter still.
In Turkey's case, Ataturk died in the late 1930s. Turkey's democracy remains insecure, the last time that socialists were in power their prime minister got executed, and concessions towards Kurdish or other regional identities remain few and far between, and insecure.
"Central European applicants have done a better job of achieving both of these qualities than Turkey. More importantly, they have experiencedactual economic growth in the past decade, unlike Turkey."
Could Britain or Spain or Ireland have passed that economic growth hurdle when they finally joined? Oops, that's right... white and christian... I keep forgetting!
Britain, despite its economic problems in the 1970s, was still a wealthy country. The Republic of Ireland was poor, but it had barely more than three million inhabitants. Spain in the mid-1980s was relatively poor, but it was at roughly 80% of the EU-15 average with some regions at or above par. Turkey, as the Eurostat document I linked to pointed out, has been stuck at one-quarter of the EU-15 average for most of the past decade. Still more importantly, the Turkish population continues to grow rapidly at rates far above the European average. Spain
attained Israel's 1970 level of GDP per capita the following year; Turkey still hasn't gotten there.
If Turkey was admitted immediately into the European Union, then you would introduce a country with the largest population in Europe, the least developed economy in Europe, and a military establishment of overwhelming strength and doubtful commitment to things like "democracy" and "human rights." That isn't a viable combination of characteristics for any country aspiring to join an emergent confederation. Turkey's population growth is stabilizing; if Turkey's economy picks up sharply and the military is neutered and society is freed, then it would become a viable candidate.
Until such time, though, Turkey is a bad candidate. American pressure on the EU to admit Turkey regardless of its internal faults is likely to be as productive--nay, counter-productive--as European pressure on the US to immediately admit Cuba to NAFTA, Castro and all.
