De notre envoyé spécial aux Etats-Unis :
TURKEY’S ADMISSION INTO THE EUROPEAN UNION – A TIME BOMB?
« The Turks were there. Everything is ruin and mourning. » Victor Hugo
The Turks arrived from central Asia in the twelfth century. The two Turk tribes settled on the threshold of Europe. Over the following centuries, being warriors and conquerers they occupied countries extending from Europe to Africa. During the Ottoman period, their empire stretched over 21 million square kilometres. Persecutions and abductions were the conquering power’s constant practice. After decades of subjection under Turkish rule, the peoples rebelled and waged liberation wars. When the Ottoman Empire fell to pieces, unpre—cemented massacres exterminated the non-muslim peoples in the Empire at the Young Turks’ instigation. Thus after the massacres of Adana in 1909, the Turkish authorities, on April 24th 1915, arrested 800 Armenian intellectuals and notabilities in Constantinople, then organized the execution of 1,5 million Armenians on their native soil. In addition to the Armenians, the Assyro-Chaldeans and the Pontic Greeks suffered the same fate. Turkey became a republic in 1923 under President Mustapha Kemal Atatürk, who carried his predecessors’ work through with new massacres. The republic covers an area of around 780,000 square kilometres of which 97% are in Asia and 3% only in Europe. The Asian part of Turkey – Anatolia–, is called in geography books Asia Minor.
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After the creation of the Turkish republic persecutions again non-muslim populations went on, which proves that even a radical change in a political regime cannot eradicate the blinding dogmatic spirit deeply-rooted in everyone’s mind and moral manners. The murder of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul on January 2007, and the deadly attacks against elder ladies in Samatya (in the suburbs of Istanbul) aroused highly indignant reactions in Western countries.
Turkey belongs in the world’s twenty richest countries and, with only 3% of its total area in Europe, it applies for admission into the European Union. The Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayip Erdogan revealed in one of his speeches that Turkey is already part of Europe with more than five million of its nationals settled in E.U. countries.
Are member States of the European Union aware of what’s ahead of them? Yet some of these countries had in the past suffered occupation and violent exactions by the Turks during the Ottoman period.
If Turkey joins Europe, it will become the most populated country in the E.U. Turkey is regarded by clandestine immigration as the easiest sieve to pass through. According to a report by the Turkish police 728,000 persons of 162 different nationalities are thought to have sneaked across Turkey into the E.U. between 1999 and 2004. In those uncontrolled migratory flows are men fleeing dictatorships or persecutions, but how can we be sure they are not infiltrated as well by drug or weapon traffickers coming over to Europe with criminal intentions? Clandestine immigrants enter Europe through Greece and Bulgaria that have 446 km borders with Turkey. The European Union seems already overwhelmed by this vast issue and blames border countries like Greece, Bulgaria or even Poland for not taking appropriate measures to check immigration flows. If tomorrow Turkey becomes a member, the E.U. will have 2,221 km of frontiers to control. This would bring about the very complex situation — dealing with the whole of its borders, and today’s sieve would transform into a high-flow funnel for illegal immigration. Therefore isn’t Turkey’s admission into the European Union a time-bomb? The future will tell.
Nersès Durman
Paris,
Traduction du Pr Michel Savio
