As these long, drawn-out steps suggest, by 2016, Turkey is no closer
to becoming a member of the European Union than it was in 1955. What has
changed is that now it plays a key role in the union’s survival. While
several small European countries have Muslim minorities, overwhelmingly
Christian Europe could not see itself welcoming a Muslim country equal
to one-fifth its total size. And yet, in the years since the end of
World War II, it has welcomed sizable numbers of individual Muslim
immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa to do its menial labor
(including a sizable Turkish contingent in Germany).
#EU #NATO #US #Turkey #MiddleEast
