Last Sunday, an emergency session of the Turkish parliament dropped proposals to criminalise adultery as part of reforms of the country's penal code.That problem's going to crop up repeatedly!
The capitulation followed a meeting in Brussels between the European Union's Enlargement Commissioner, Gunter Verheugen, and Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Erdogan had initially warned the EU not to interfere in Turkey's "internal affairs''. He had argued that Turkish membership of the European Union did not mean it had to adopt the EU's "imperfect'' western morals.
But Verheugen insisted that if the Turkish prime minister went ahead with plans to make adultery a criminal offence, the European Commission would not back Turkey's planned accession to the EU.
Some are starting to rouse from their slumber and see the future:
The EU's internal market chief, Frits Bolkestein, warned last month that Europe could meet the same fate as the Austro-Hungarian empire if Turkey was allowed to join the EU.It's the juggernaut of demography:
Bolkestein quoted American Islamic expert Bernard Lewis as saying that Europe would be Islamic by the end of the 21st century. "If he is right, the liberation of Vienna in 1683 [when Christian troops defeated an invading Muslim army] would have been in vain," said the commissioner.
The commissioner said current trends supported only one conclusion: "The United States remains the sole superpower, China will become an economic giant, Europe is becoming more Islamic."
"Within but a few short years, the populations of four big cities [in the Netherlands] will have a predominantly nonwestern background and the majority religion will be Islam," he said last year. "It is high time to speak about these matters in plain terms.
In Germany, there are 2.6 million Turkish gastarbeiter (guest workers).Watch for more of this:
France, the Netherlands, Austria and Belgium also have large Turkish immigrant populations. Many politicians in those countries oppose Turkey's membership on cultural grounds.
Austrian agriculture commissioner Franz Fischler, in a recent letter to Verheugen that was leaked to the media, said that Turkey was a "sui generis society, far more oriental than European" and its professed secularism was "only skin deep".
Former German chancellor Helmut Schmidt said Turkey did not belong in the EU because "the decisive and essential developments that formed European culture - the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and the separation of clerical and political authority - are missing from the Islamic tradition".
The president of the EU constitutional convention, Valéry Giscard d'Estaing, warned that granting Turkey membership "would be the end of the EU".
Last week, French finance minister Nicolas Sarkozy predicted that it would be at least 15 years before Turkey joined the EU - and he called for a referendum in France first. French prime minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin questioned how Turkish governments could persuade Turkish society to embrace Europe's human rights values.
"Do we want the river of Islam to enter the riverbed of secularism?" he asked.
Even the Vatican joined in. Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger has maintained that from a historical and political point of view, Turkey represents a continent that is in "permanent contrast to Europe" and should not be in the EU.
This surge of anti-Islamic sentiment was boosted by a poll last month indicating that Turkey's application was supported by only one in three Britons, one in four Germans and just one in six French people.
By 2050,Turkey will have an estimated 100million citizens - more than any other EU country. With EU voting rights tied to population size, future Turkish decisions in the EU could change the face of Europe forever.
Irish Muslim convert Khalid Kelly, a supporter of the British Islamic fundamentalist group al-Muhajiroun, insisted: "Anyone who says terrorism is not part of Islam is wrong. It's an Islamic responsibility to fight. We are all terrorists."Khalid Kelly? You can't make this stuff up!
Update: A grimmer view is here. Political Correctness and the undemocratic structure of EU governance may just railroad this through in spite of everyone not wanting it.
