ANKARA Turkey — Turkey’s effort to join the European Union is still far from being realized. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has justifiably expressed his frustration with this, which was set as a state policy since more than a half-century ago. As he is, however, openly lambasting the country’s past at any given opportunity, starting from the military coups to the generals' role in policy-making; from the alleged state restrictions that prevented pious Muslims like him from practicing Islam to the previous governments’ economic failures, the Europeans take even a more critical look at Turkey — coupled with all of the things that Erdogan has been critical about this country’s past as well as the size of its population, belonging to a different culture, tradition and religion.
Therefore, one should applaud German Chancellor Angela Merkel honestly saying at a joint news conference with Erdogan, while wrapping up her two-day visit to Turkey on Monday [Feb. 25], that she has “hesitations concerning Turkey’s full European Union membership.” She also stated: “We are conducting negotiations whose outcome is open-ended, that is to say the results are not known.”
