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Turkey's potential role as an east-west energy hub

Why Europe Doesn’t Want Turkey’s Islamic Millions



President Obama has been banging the drum for Turkey's accession to the European Union. Not that there's anything new in his policy. Obama sees a 'European Turkey' as a win-win situation both for Europe and the United States. He believes, as does the Turkish PM Recep Erdogan, that it is the natural quid pro quo for Turkey's development as Europe's east-west energy bridge.

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Obama also perceives it will restore US-Turkish strategic relations in a volatile region. But, above all, Obama believes accession would send a powerful message to the Islamic world -Turkey's population is 99.8 percent Muslim - that the West is not the enemy. "The United States and Europe must approach Muslims as our friends, neighbours and partners in fighting injustice, intolerance and violence, forging a relationship based on mutual respect," Obama told EU leaders in April. "Moving forward toward Turkish membership in the EU," he went on, "would be an important signal of your commitment to this agenda."

The energy bridge

There is no doubting Turkey's potential role as an east-west energy hub that can help Europe achieve greater diversification from Russian oil and gas dependence. The 'great pipe hope' is the Nabucco gas pipeline scheduled for construction in 2011. However, the 7.9 billion euro project to transport gas from Turkey to Austria through Bulgaria and Hungary, reducing European dependency on Russian gas, has been fraught with problems since conception. Not least over the viability of non-Russian sources of gas to run through it. Most of Turkmenistan's gas distribution is already managed by Russia's Gazprom. Iranian gas exports are subject to US and UN sanctions over its nuclear enrichment program. But Nabucco's vital initial supply was always reliant on two new gas fields in Azerbaijan - the rights to which were, at the end of March, formally signed over to Russia's Gazprom. Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, has already linked EU-Turkish energy prospects to stalled talks over Turkey's EU membership. While Obama and US policy may perceive the accession of Turkey's almost 80 million Muslims into what Islamic nations (and Obama) may see as a 'Christian' club as a useful international, intra-cultural olive branch, Europeans see it in far darker social terms.

Muslim Apartheid

Germany and France already have enormous social problems with their un-integrated Islamic millions, many, especially in Germany, from Turkey. Germany, France and Britain are all currently struggling with mass immigration problems after accession was granted to poor eastern European states. But Turkey is poorer still, having only one-third the standard of living of most European countries. Mass Turkish emigration across Europe if accession is granted is seen as inevitable. Europe's concerns include:
  • Turkey is not culturally 'European'
  • Accession will unleash a wave of Turkish (Muslim) immigrants on Europe
  • Turkey is too big and will thus wield too much power in Europe
  • Turkey is too poor and will cost the rest of the EU too much in subsidies
France's Nicolas Sarkozy swept to power in May 2007 on a tide of anti-Turkish/Muslim sentiment in the wake of France's on-going street riots - again linked to disaffected, un-integrated, Islamist youth. The EU's own polls consistently reveal cross-European support for Turkey's admission hovering around 30-35 percent. The most comprehensive, in 2005, showed only 20 percent support in France and 21 percent in Germany. Even in Britain, where support is highest in Europe, it is just 44 percent. Far from demanding acceptance or integration - the alleged multicultural ideal - Muslim communities in Germany, France, Britain and across Europe generally are increasingly demanding the right to exercise Sharia Law via their own courts, as well as live in cultural separation in schools and society.

Turkey: the reality

While the White House persists in speaking of a Turkish secular state, domestically PM Recep Erdogan, with the apparent blessing of his people, plainly has other aspirations. Turkey's Islamist leaders see Erdogan's Islamist aspirations as positioning the country as the champions of a new Caliphate. In 2006 Erdogan's government attempted to criminalize adultery, amongst other more radical Islamist moves. After assuming office, Erdogan failed in his bid to appoint Ahmet Sezr, an Islamist who perceives monetary interest as contrary to Koranic teaching, as head of the central bank. In April 2007 Erdogan nominated Abdullah Gul, his former foreign minister and another Islamist, as president. Gul's appointment gave the prime minister a virtual political free hand - a goal of which has been to curb free speech. Turkey recently blocked NATO Secretary General, former Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, from taking office because of his principled support of free speech during Denmark's Mohammedan Cartoon affair. And, as recently as March, the EU had cause to warn Erdogan's government, after it imposed a massive $500 million fine on the Dogan Group, Turkey's largest media group, interpreted by the EU President Jose Manuel Barroso as a direct attack on free speech in the Turkish press. Does any of this sound like a country moving towards "common values shared by democratic states"? Handcuffing EU states to a ticking demographic cultural and social time-bomb - as Germany and France attempted to warn the 'listening' Obama - on the altar of Islamist appeasement is just too high a price to pay for an 'energy bridge' that looks increasingly like a pipedream. Obama may be talking Turkey, but his EU-Ankara policy patently is one.


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Peter C. Glover -- Bio and Archives

Peter C. Glover is an English writer & freelance journalist specializing in political, media and energy analysis (and is currently European Associate Editor for the US magazine Energy Tribune. He has been published extensively and is also the author of a number of books including The Politics of Faith: Essays on the Morality of Key Current Affairs which set out the moral case for the invasion of Iraq and a Judeo-Christian defence of the death penalty.


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