For a government minister to make statements endangering his own portfolio is not a common occurrence. For this reason, it was noteworthy that Turkey's EU Minister Egemen Bagis stated that Turkey is likely never to become a member of the European Union but could one day enter into a Norwegian-type relationship with the union.
If you ask Bagis, who spoke last week at a conference at Yalta, Ukraine, there is only one reason complicating Turkey’s EU membership: the Islamophobia and prejudice that were exposed most recently at the voting for the 2020 Olympics venue.