'Turkey's scheming proves it doesn't belong in EU'- Hitchens oped

[pete2]

The most underreported story of the month must surely be the announcement by French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner that he no longer supports the accession of Turkey as a full member of the European Union. His reasoning was very simple and intelligible, and it has huge implications for the Barack Obama "make nice" school of diplomacy.

At a NATO summit in Strasbourg in the first week of April, it had been considered a formality that the alliance would vote to confirm Anders Fogh Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark, as its new secretary-general. But very suddenly, the Turkish delegation threatened to veto the appointment...

..The implications of all this, as Kouchner stated in an interview, are extremely serious. "I was very shocked by the pressure that was brought upon us.. Turkey's evolution in, let's say, a more religious direction, towards a less robust secularism, worries me." This is to put it in the mildest possible way. It's not just a matter of a Turkish political party undermining Turkey's own historic secularism. It is a question of Turkey trying to impose its Islamist and chauvinist policies on another European state—and indeed on the whole NATO alliance. And if this is how it behaves before it has been admitted to the European Union, has it not invited us all to guess how it would behave when it had a veto power in those councils?

http://www.slate.com/id/2216518/
There is more context in the article, and this from the linked article

Kouchner echoed Sarkozy and said it was not for the Americans "to decide who comes into Europe." He said, "We are in charge in our own house."
Kouchner's Austrian counterpart, Michael Spindelegger, also rejected Obama's call. "It's not new. The Bush administration also tried to convince us," said Spindelegger. "But it is clear that the European Union and its member states will alone decide," he told the Austrian public station Radio Öl.

[Eorna]

I think that with the economic crisis, and given the numerous problems that large Islamic immigrant communities are now creating in Britain, Sweden, France, Norway, Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Turkish membership is not going to happen. Thank God.