Patronising Turkey is a dangerous game for Europe - by Denis MacShane
Europe is doing its level best to tell Turkey it is no longer wanted as part of the European Union. It is a high-risk game with little to gain and a great deal to lose. How much longer will this sec-ular, democratic, Muslim country look westwards to a European future, instead of turning east?
Take the proclamation by Jacques Chirac, president of France, on a recent visit to Armenia. Indulging his hosts and delighting the politically active Armenian diaspora in France, Mr Chirac said Turkey should recognise the massacre of hundreds of thousands of Armenians in the turmoil of the first world war as “genocide”. In doing so, he unilaterally created a new condition of EU membership for Turkey. This is rather like Tony Blair popping up in Madagascar or Algeria and telling France to apologise for the postwar massacres undertaken by French soldiers as they put down uprisings."
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