EU Enlargement - Analysis about magazine and newspaper articles [5D]
from The Economist - Special Report : Turkey and the EU - Article 2 - Angela Longo "The impossibility of saying no"
It's an opinionist's article and just looking at the title, an intelligent reader, understands that the opinionist is in favour of Turkey's entry into the EU. The article is made up of four paragraphs that have got a subheading, which offers a very short summary of the problem which will later be analised. The structure of the FIRST PARAGRAPH is based on the opposition between the EU, which is fiercely secular,has a young and growing population, its biggest city was a cradle of Christian civilisation; and Turkey, which is far poorer than even the poorest of the ten countries that joined the EU, it has a history of military coups,its torture are all documented and its people are Muslim. It was not until 1999 that an EU summit accepted Turkey as a candidate. In 2002 EU leaders went further, declaring that if Turkey satisfied their "Copenhagen criteria", they would fix a date for opening negotietion; these criteria include having stable institutions that guarantee democracy, the rule of law, human rights, a functioning market economy and the capacity to cope with competition within the EU. The SECOND PARAGRAPH is about the market and the problem of religion: the suggestion that Turkey could be kept out of the EU simply because of its religion is not really tenable. In the THIRD PARAGRAPH, the negative factors for the Europeans are listed: Turkey IS NOT in Europe,even if most geographers would say that one-tenth of the country's land-mass is already in Europe. Then there is SIZE: Turkey has 71m inhabitants, would be the biggest EU coumtry, so Turkey could be very influent in voting in the European divices. Turkey's POVERTY. In the LAST PARAGRAPH Angela Merkel proposes to institute a special status for Turkey, making it joining the union but not making it become a memberstate. Mr Erdogan, the Turkey prime minister, is not interested in any such staus. |