Author: Chatinian Lara

CONCERT VARIANT OF MOZART’S THE MAGIC FLUTE OPERA TO BE PERFORMED ON YEREVAN NATIONAL OPERA STAGE FOR THE FIRST TIME

Noyan Tapan
Mar 14 2006

YEREVAN, MARCH 14, NOYAN TAPAN. The 250th jubilee of Wolfgang
Amadeus Mozart will be celebrated by the performance of the concert
variant of the composer’s “The Magic Flute” opera on March 17 and
18 at the Yerevan National Opera and Ballet Academic Theater after
Alexander Spendiarian. The concert performance of “The Magic Flute”
on the Yerevan stage will be headed by Swiss famous conductor Facundo
Agudin. The premierre of the opera performance will also take place
under his head in May-June.

As Gegham Grigorian, the Artistic Head of the National Opera and
Ballet Academic Theater stated at the march 14 press-conference,
director of “The Magic Flute” opera Michael Locher is from Germany,
Sean MacAllister from Italy is the lighting designer, and the clothes
designer is Ann Spinelli from Switzerland.

According to Gegham Grigorian, entrance of one of the Yerevan
performances will be free for children and booklets dedicated to Mozart
and “The Magic Flute” will be published specially for that purpose.

Besides that, the performance will be released by DVDs as well as will
be broadcast in Armenia and a number of European countries. Spanish
journalist and photographer Rodrigo Carrizo Couto who is in Armenia
during these days will cover the concert for press of Spain,
Switzerland, France and Argentina.

Conductor Facundo Agudin’s cooperation with the National Opera and
Ballet Academic Theater started still in 2005 when the famous conductor
arrived in Armenia to participate in the premierre of composer David
Halajian’s “Stephan Elmas” piano concert.

“I’m very glad to be in Armenia. It’s an excellent opportunity for
me to work with the staff of the National Opera and Ballet Theater,”
the Swiss director mentioned. According to him, it seldom happens
that both orchestra and choir and soloists work at the theater so
jointly. “A wonderful working atmosphere is created here. I’m very
glad that I put on the stage that great work of Mozart just in this
theater,” Facundo Agudin emphasized.

Gegham Grigorian mentioned that a Mozart was for the last time put
on the Armenian stage 30 years ago. The Artistic Head of the theater
is sure that they will again put on the stage “Don Juan” as well as
the composer’s other works as the theater today has that potential.

National Public Radio (NPR)
SHOW: Day to Day 4:00 AM EST NPR
October 11, 2005 Tuesday

Orhan Pamuk, Turkey’s controversial Faulkner

ANCHORS: MADELEINE BRAND

REPORTERS: FRANK BROWNING

This is DAY TO DAY. I’m Madeleine Brand.

Turkey is trying to become part of the European Union, but Europe is
ambivalent and so for that matter are the citizens of Turkey. The
country’s bittersweet romance with the West permeates the work of
Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk. His books have been promoted on
billboards in Istanbul and translated into more than 30 languages.
Yet now he is being prosecuted for defaming Turkish honor. Frank
Browning went to Istanbul to talk with Orhan Pamuk and brought back
this report.

Mr. ORHAN PAMUK (Author): This is Orhan Pamuk. We are in Istanbul at
my office overlooking the entrance of Bosphorus. So many people come
here and visit me, and each time I’m embarrassed to have which I
sometimes call the best audio studio in the world.

FRANK BROWNING reporting:

It’s late morning. The eternal mist of the Bosphorus nearly burnt
away, the constant rumble of diesel-driven ferries echoing up the
slopes. Soon the muazzin will launch his call to prayer from the
mosque of Sangir(ph), built 450 years ago by Suleyman the
Magnificent. This ancient landscape forms the terrain of Orhan
Pamuk’s work.

Mr. PAMUK: From my desk, I can see inside the Topkapi Palace, various
buildings. I know all these buildings by heart. Next to it is Saint
Sophia.

BROWNING: Orhan Pamuk’s latest book is called “Istanbul.” It’s a love
letter to the great melancholic city, but now it’s no longer clear
that he will be able to continue living in Istanbul.

Ms. MAUREEN FREELY (Journalist and Novelist): He was declared a
traitor in a number of newspapers.

BROWNING: Journalist and novelist Maureen Freely has known Orhan
Pamuk since they were in high school in Istanbul.

Ms. FREELY: There were death threats. There were invitations on Web
sites for somebody to silence this person forever, that kind of
thing. And so he was forced to leave the country and he had to stay
more or less in hiding for several months.

BROWNING: Pamuk’s offense was an offhand, almost incidental remark
made last spring to a Swiss newspaper.

Mr. PAMUK: I just made a statement about one of our great taboos:
What happened to Ottoman Empire’s Armenians in 1915? This is a taboo
we still cannot discuss.

BROWNING: The next day, his reference to the most contentious issue
in Turkish history, the massacre of Armenians during World War I,
made headlines across the country. It also brought the denunciations
that eventually led a prosecutor to charge Pamuk with defaming
Turkish national honor. Again Maureen Freely, Pamuk’s friend and
translator.

Mr. FREELY: He can’t imagine living anywhere but Istanbul. So he’s
trying to stay and defend his right to stay and also defend his
country because the irony about this is that he’s a patriot.

BROWNING: Few believe Pamuk will go to prison, but the sentiments
beneath the case cut to the deeper themes he explores in his memoir.
The Istanbul of his childhood in the 1950s and ’60s was bathed in a
heavy atmosphere of melancholy.

Mr. PAMUK: From a very young age, I suspected there was more to my
world than I could see. Somewhere in the streets of Istanbul in a
house resembling ours there lived another Orhan, so much like me that
he could pass for my twin, even my double. I can’t remember where I
got this idea or how it came to me. It must have emerged from a web
of rumors, misunderstandings, illusions and fears, but in one of my
earliest memories, it is already clear how I’ve come to feel about my
ghostly other.

BROWNING: It’s a collective sadness born of the city’s history.

Mr. PAMUK: All the riches of Middle East and Balkans came to this
town and the Ottoman Empire fell apart. And this glorious empyreal
city went into ruins. I spent my childhood in that ruins and I wrote
about how beautiful it is, something to do with what the Japanese
call nobility of failure, the willing embrace of failure.

BROWNING: For a nation struggling to be a modern European partner and
a city determined to reclaim its metropolitan glamour, any talk of
failure these days, and worse of guilt, provokes jitters even among
liberal Western-orientated Turks like Tharia(ph), an independent tour
operator on a busy street near the ancient Hagia Sophia mosque.
Tharia credits Pamuk as a great writer, but…

THARIA: Mr. Pamuk, he say one million Armenian killed, Turkish people
killed them. And we didn’t like his word because at the moment we
want to be one hand. You understand what I mean? We feel we have to
be a legal nation at least at the moment especially.

BROWNING: Others like Ebrahem(ph), who runs a Turkish sauna in a
crowded cafe district near Taksim Square, told me in French that he
views Orhan Pamuk as a sort of tool of the Europeans.

EBRAHEM: (French spoken)

BROWNING: `Here in Turkey,’ he said, `there are a few left-wing
intellectuals who are very well organized and connected to the media
who operate more or less like the Masonic societies. Well, Orhan
Pamuk said we killed the Armenians because the Europeans, they wanted
someone who would say that the Turks killed the Armenians.

EBRAHEM: (French spoken)

BROWNING: Both Ebrahem and Tharia are torn by deep Turkish patriotism
and their yearning for a democratic Turkey that respects free speech
and human rights. Yet they’re also afraid that too much
European-style criticism could provoke internal separatists and the
hard-lines. These are the tensions that course Orhan Pamuk’s
melancholy prose.

Mr. PAMUK: This fight is going through the souls of all the people in
this country. It’s not a fight between good people and bad people.
It’s a fight between two spirits of the same person. And the
popularity of my books in just five years is due to the fact that
Turkey’s problems between east and west, between modernity and
traditional Islam turn out to be the…

(Soundbite of call to prayer)

BROWNING: Just then, the muazzin at the Sangir mosque(ph) sounds the
midday call to prayer.

(Soundbite of call to prayer)

BROWNING: Though neither Pamuk nor his family were ever religious,
he’s not opposed to religion. In fact, Islam’s imprint, he says,
persists on everything from art and science to war and politics, and
the dance between Islam and secularism generates the stuff of
literature. The history feeds the melancholy and the melancholy
nourishes the revenue of moods that fill his journals, his essays and
his novels.

Mr. PAMUK: If one writes honestly about one’s moods, I think, then
one knows about not oneself but all humanity, and that we are all
made up of so many moods which continuously deceive us.

BROWNING: Deceive us?

Mr. PAMUK: Mm-hmm. In, say, for three hours, a bit sad, and for
another four years, you’re OK. And in another five hours, I may be
angry. Getting down your sentiments is the essential reflex of an
inborn order, I think.

BROWNING: Orhan Pamuk hopes he’ll be able to continue penning down
and writing about those sentiments in his home in Istanbul. His
hearing on charges of defaming Turkish honor is set for December
16th. For DAY TO DAY, I’m Frank Browning.

BRAND: NPR’s DAY TO DAY continues. I’m Madeleine Brand.

EBRD THINKS TO INCREASE NUMBER OF PROGRAMS IMPLEMENTED IN ARMENIA

ARKA News Agency, Armenia
Oct 14 2005

YEREVAN, October 14. /ARKA/. EBRD is going to increase the number of
programs implemented in Armenia, as it was mentioned at the meeting
of the members of the Board of the EBRD with the RA Premier Andranik
Margaryan, according to the RA Government’s Press Service Department.

The members of the Board congratulated Margaryan on high economic
indicators of the past years, achieved due to consistent policy pursued
by the government. Noting that a favorable investment environment is
important for any country, the members of the delegation discussed
with the Premier the activities done in the republic in that direction
as well as further plans.

In his turn Margaryan highly appreciated the work of the EBRD in
Armenia. According to Margaryan, the programs implemented by the EBRD
in the banking, energy and insurance sectors, as well as work with
entrepreneurs of the private sector had a positive influence on the
economy of the country. Margaryan attached importance to further
development of cooperation in those directions, suggesting the
possibility of long-term crediting with low interest rate in further
programs that would develop the private sector. The premier introduced
to guests the process of privatization in the republic, as well as
steps done to stimulate export, implement the strategic program on
poverty reduction and anticorruption strategy, introduce reforms in
the customs and improve legislative field to develop economy.

The delegation of the Board of the EBRD that visited Armenia includes
Terens Braun, Michael Neumaer, Gonzalo Ramos, Zhohe Veiga de Masedo,
Scot Clark, Igor Podolev, Pier Stanchina, regional director Michael
Davy, Head of EBRD Yerevan Office Michael Winstin.

A Survey of the Paintings, Drawings and Prints of Garo Antreasian, Sept. 6
-October 30
Fresno Art Museum, Fresno, CA

Friday, October 27 Conversation with the Artist

The large works on exhibit include The Red Brigade (Plate 4 of
4). Acrylic on wood, 66 x 24″. Courtesy of the Artist and Gerald
Peters Gallery (Santa Fe) Its severity balanced by the use of
intensely rich color. The Memorial Series (Plates I – IV), 2004, is a
dramatic and somber reference to commemorate all martyrs and has been
created using charcoal on paper.

The name of Garo Antreasian has been synonymous with creative
lithography in the United States for the past fifty years. In 1994,
Antreasian was awarded Printmaker Emeritus by the Southern Graphics
Council and he also holds the Honorary Master Printer Certificate
awarded in 1969 by Tamarind Lithography Workshop, Los Angeles, where
he worked as Technical director. He was a Professor and Chairman of
the Department of Art and Art History at the University of New Mexico
from 1964 through 1987 as well as the Technical Director of the
Tamarind Institute of the University of New Mexico. Other honors,
among many, include fellowships for travel and study, and Visiting
Lecturer Fulbright Award from San Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
His work is a part of important collections including the Library of
Congress, Smithsonian Institute, and the New York Public Library.

“Conversation with the Artist” –5 pm, Friday, October 27.

ECHMIADZIN DEPRIVED OF ELECTRICITY

A1+
| 14:48:42 | 12-10-2005 | Politics |

October 16 in Echmiadzin the elections of mayor will be held. The
pre-election heated campaign promises to have a noisy outcome on
the election day. The main candidates are the ex-mayor of Echmiadzin
Yervand Aghvanyan, deputy Defense Minister General Manvel Grigoryan,
and Gagik Avagyan who is supported by the NA deputy Hakob Hakobyan.

Besides electoral bribery, promises and terror, actions against
campaign are also practiced in Echmiadzin. For example, when TV
channels broadcast programs about the opponents of Gagik Avagyan the
whole Echmiadzin is deprived of electricity as the above mentioned
candidate is in friendly terms with the officials of the Echmiadzin
electricity network.

The same took place yesterday when Yervand Aghvanyan was guest of
a program on Shant TV. A woman called and informed that Echmiadzin
is deprived of electricity, and the three candidates for the post of
the mayor have decided to exclude their candidacy in order to support
Yervand Aghvanyan.

The Echmiadzin Local Electoral Committee neither affirmed nor rejected
the information. They only informed that the Committee has not received
a written announcement.

ARMENIEN HOFFT AUF TURKISCHE ZUGESTANDNISSE IN EU-VERHANDLUNGEN

Associated Press Worldstream – German
Mittwoch, 5. Oktober 2005

Eriwan

Armenien erhofft sich im Laufe der EU-Beitrittsverhandlungen mit der
Turkei historische Zugestandnisse Ankaras. Außenamtssprecher Gamlet
Gasparjan sagte am Mittwoch in Eriwan, vor einer Aufnahme in die EU
sollte die Turkei die Verfolgung der armenischen Minderheit Anfang
des 20.

Jahrhunderts als Volkermord anerkennen. Eriwan hoffe daruber hinaus,
dass die Turkei als EU-Mitglied ihre Grenze zu Armenien offnet
“und echte Schritte zur vollen Garantie der Rechte und Freiheiten
nationaler Minderheiten einleitet”.

Der Osten der heutigen Turkei war das Kernland der armenischen Kultur
bis zum Zusammenbruch des Ottomanischen Reichs gegen Ende des Ersten
Weltkriegs. Nach armenischer Darstellung wurden bei Vertreibungen und
Verfolgung bis zu 1,5 Millionen Menschen getotet; Eriwan spricht von
einem Volkermord. Wegen des armenisch-aserbaidschanischen Krieges
schloss die Turkei 1993 ihre Grenze zu Armenien. Fur Armenien,
das keinen Zugang zum Schwarzen Meer hat, bedeutet das erhebliche
wirtschaftliche Nachteile.

–Boundary_(ID_C4UAGUpDpN7r7/faR6DOGA)–

TURKEY NOT FIT FOR MEMBERSHIP
By Matthew Nickson

Daily Texan, TX
Oct 10 2005

Last Monday at a ministerial conference in Luxembourg, the foreign
ministers of the European Union agreed to begin membership talks with
Turkey. The decision to open “adhesion negotiations” – taken after
overcoming an Austrian counter-proposal for a “privileged partnership”
– is a blow to the democratic goals of a unified Europe.

Since joining the European Economic Community as an associate member
in 1963, Turkey has consistently professed its reformist credentials,
eager to counter the world community’s outdated image of a thinly
veiled military dictatorship. But time and again – despite progress
in certain areas outlined in the 1993 Copenhagen Criteria for EU
expansion – the Turkish government has shown it is either unwilling
or unable to fully democratize and modernize. In its own country,
Turkey continues to systematically restrict freedom of expression and
oppress its minority Kurdish population. Abroad, Turkey maintains an
ever belligerent posture toward its neighbors, particularly Armenia
and Cyprus.

The latest example of Turkish repression came last Friday, when
a Turkish administrative court convicted an Armenian journalist,
Hrant Dink, of insulting the “Turkish identity” by writing about
the Armenian genocide. During World War I, the Ottoman Army and
its guerilla auxiliaries massacred more than one million Armenians
who refused to convert from Christianity to Islam. To this day, the
Turkish government illegalizes practically any admission of Turkish
guilt and threatens or imprisons individuals who speak out.

Nationalist officials trivialize the massacres as tragic but
inevitable consequences of war, or dismiss the Armenians as pro-Russian
traitors. Although Armenia is a small, underdeveloped country, Turkey
continues to blockade it by land, cutting off road and rail traffic.

Ironically – and in a sign of the Turkish court system’s perversity
– Dink was tried and convicted for writing that Armenians should
rid themselves of anti-Turkish anger. The court implied from his
admonition that Dink – who received a suspended six month sentence –
was somehow deriding the Turkish blood.

The fact is, unlike many former European colonizers, Turkey has
made few if any efforts to atone for its imperialist past. The Turks
have been unable, notwithstanding decades of co-membership in NATO,
to arrive at a truly permanent peace with Greece. As late as 1996,
the two countries nearly fought a war over the Imia islands in the
Aegean Sea. Furthermore, the Turkish government adamantly refuses to
recognize the independence of the Greek portion of Cyprus and the
sovereignty of the government in Nicosia. Although Turkey signed
a July 29 protocol extending its customs union with the European
Union to the 10 members admitted in 2004 – among them the Republic
of Cyprus – Turkey obstinately refuses to open its ports and airports
to Cypriot commerce.

Turkey also has a bad track record with its Middle Eastern neighbors.

The country has consistently been accused by Syria and Iraq of
siphoning an inordinate amount of water from the Euphrates River,
which Turkey has diverted for a massive – and environmentally risky
– development project involving the construction of 22 dams and 19
power plants.

The Southeast Anatolia Development Project has been touted as an
economic boon for Turkey’s minority Kurdish population. Yet Turkey
has engaged in a long-standing policy of political and cultural
warfare against the Kurds who live in southeastern Turkey, near the
Iraqi border by imprisoning Kurdish political figures and limiting
classroom instruction in Kurdish. As recently as the early 1990s,
Turkey conducted a Central American-style scorched earth campaign
against Kurdish villages suspected of harboring separatist guerillas,
killing as many as 30,000 people.

All the foregoing is not to deny that Turkey has enacted reforms
in its quest for EU membership. The country has abolished the death
penalty and retreated from its once total censure of Kurdish culture.

In the economic realm, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has
repealed subsidies favoring the textile industry. If admitted to the
EU, Turkey holds out the promise of revitalizing laggard European
economies with its growing consumer market, cheap labor (an augury
of massive emigration) and increased trade.

But Turkey’s reforms are too little, and Turkish society has evolved
insufficiently since 1963. Treacherous fault lines still haunt the
political landscape, with Islamic fundamentalists on one extreme and
a military clique on the other, ever ready to intervene to defend
the ideological vision of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk.

The bottom line is that Turkey absolutely does not deserve an EU seat
alongside progressive, democratic nations like France, Great Britain,
Germany and Spain.

Nickson is a third year law student and executive editor of The Texas
International Law Journal.

ARMINFO News Agency
October 8, 2005

AUGMENTATION OF AZERBAIJAN’S MILITARY BUDGET REAL THREAT TO PEACE AND
STABILITY IN SOUTH CAUCASUS

YEREVAN, OCTOBER 8. ARMINFO. The augmentation of Azerbaijan’s
military budget is a great threat to peace and stability in the South
Caucasus, Vice Speaker of the Armenian Parliament Vahan Hovhannissyan
said during the NATO Rose Roth semiar in Yerevan today.

This is especially dangerous as after the USSR collapse Azerbaijan
got twice as much military hardware as Armenia – 312 T72 tanks
against 241, 545 infantry fighting vehicles against 298.

Concerning the Karabakh conflict Hovhannissyan says that Karabakh has
never been part of independent Azerbaijan. There had even been no
Azerbaijan as such before the proclamation of the Soviet Azerbaijan.
The territory of present day Azerbaijan had another name while the
Azeris were known worldwide as Caucasian Tartars. Karabakh was given
to the Soviet Azerbaijan in 1921 and proclaimed self-determination
after the USSR collapse like all the other Soviet republics and
according to the international law.

Hindu, India
Oct 9 2005

European Union will “watch” the trial of Turkish writer

Pamuk facing charges for writing about the deaths of Kurds and
Armenians

ISTANBUL: The European Union enlargement chief met on Saturday
Turkish writer Orhan Pamuk at his home in Istanbul, where the two
discussed freedom of expression ahead of Mr. Pamuk’s December trial
for allegedly insulting the Turkish identity.

A Turkish prosecutor used a clause in the penal code to open a case
against Mr. Pamuk, one of Turkey’s most successful writers, for
remarks he made about the deaths of Kurds and Armenians in Turkey.

The clause has also been used in recent days to convict an
Armenian-Turkish journalist, raising concerns about Turkey’s
tolerance of free expression.

The E.U. has said it will be watching closely when Mr. Pamuk goes
before a judge on December 16.

Controversial code

European Union Enlargement Commissioner Olli Rehn, on the third day
of a visit to Turkey following the opening of the country’s E.U.
membership talks on Tuesday, met Mr. Pamuk for around an hour and a
half, NTV television reported.

Mr. Pamuk said he and Mr. Rehn did not discuss the case directly, but
talked about “human rights in Turkey in general,” the Anatolia news
agency reported.

The 301st paragraph of the new penal code says “a person who insults
Turkishness, the Republic or the Turkish Parliament will be punished
with imprisonment ranging from six months to three years.”

Some prosecutors have liberally interpreted the code and used it to
try those who question Turkey’s treatment of minorities, particularly
Armenians and Kurds.

On Friday, Turkey convicted Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink
under the same clause for an article he wrote earlier this year in
which he mentioned poison and Turkish blood in the same sentence.

The court said the article was “intended to be insulting and
offensive,” while Mr. Dink said his words were taken out of context.

Mr. Dink, who has lived in Turkey all his life, received a six-month
suspended sentence.

He said the conviction was an attempt to silence him and held back
tears as he said on Turkish television that he would leave Turkey if
he could not get his conviction overturned.

Genocide charge

A case was opened against Mr. Pamuk after he told a Swiss newspaper
in February, “30,000 Kurds and 1 million Armenians were killed in
these lands and nobody but me dares to talk about it.” He was
referring to those killed during Turkey’s two-decade conflict with
Kurdish rebels and to Armenians killed by Ottoman Turks around the
time of World War I.

Armenians and several countries recognise those killings as the first
genocide of the 20th century, which Turkey denies.

“My trial isn’t something that worries me, but Turkey’s democracy,
human rights and freedom of expression are important details for all
of us,” Anatolia quoted Mr. Pamuk as saying. –

ic Wales, United Kingdom
Oct 8 2005

EU talks Turkey

Staff Reporter, Western Mail

At the end of a week that saw the EU agree to formally begin
membership talks with Turkey, Wales MEP Eluned Morgan gives her
verdict on the ‘Turkey Question.’

THE European Union’s success has always lain in its unique ability to
draw countries towards peace, democracy and co-operation through the
magnetic pull of prosperity and stability. This week we witnessed a
climax of this process as EU countries gave the go-ahead to embark on
a new and uncharted phase of development.

On Monday, 18 years after it first applied to join the European Union
and after days of fierce wrangling, Turkey was finally allowed to
open formal negotiations on becoming a member. The move has divided
public opinion, both here and in Turkey. Indeed not since the
break-up of the Ottoman Empire 100 years ago have Europeans agonised
so much over the “Turkish question”.

At the European Parliament last year I voted in favour of starting
these formal negotiations. For someone who as a young member of
Amnesty International wrote countless letters to Turkish leaders
appealing for them to improve their human rights record, it was a
difficult decision. But I believe it was the right one.

For the EU to have slammed its door on Turkey, and thus symbolically
the Islamic world, at this terrorist-infested moment in history would
have been tragic. Turkey’s membership talks should be seen more as an
opportunity for reform and progress than a threat. Moreover, Monday
night’s decision marked the beginning, not the end, of what will be a
long, difficult process of negotiation for Turkey. Success is by no
means guaranteed.

Turkey still has to travel a long and bumpy path of economic, social
and environmental reform. It is a poor country. Its average income
per head of population is a mere $US2,790 compared to $5,270 in
Poland and $28,530 in the UK. Infant mortality rates are telling: 41
deaths per 1,000 births, a rate twice as bad as either Bulgaria or
Romania, and far higher than recent EU entrants such as Poland and
Slovenia.

The country’s recent social reforms also leave much to be desired.
Little progress has been made on women’s rights and not enough is
being done to tackle “honour killings”. Earlier this month acclaimed
Turkish novelist, Orhan Pamuk, was charged with the “public
denigrating of Turkish identity” and faces prison merely because he
claimed certain topics were off-limits in Turkey. There also remains
a long way to go on relations with Cyprus, Armenia and Turkey’s 12
million Kurds.

The EU has opened the door for Turkey, but it is just an opening. If
they fail to make up sufficient ground on the economy, social and
environmental reform, the door will remain closed.

But despite the difficulties and the challenges that lie ahead, there
remains good reason to work towards Turkey’s entry into the EU.

Of course, there are those who argue that Turkey is not “European
enough”, meaning that it is “too Muslim”. But the doomsday-style
prophesies of a “clash of civilisations” are misplaced. Though
Turkey’s people are mainly very religious, it is a fiercely secular
democracy that has historically enjoyed a close relationship with the
West.

Turkey is a founding member of the United Nations, a member of Nato,
the Council of Europe, the OECD, and an associate member of the
Western European Union. Modern Turkey is also a fundamental part of
our lives as modern Europeans. Thousands of Brits holiday there every
year, belly-dancing is the fitness fad of the moment, and we enjoy
kebabs.

We cannot ignore the benefits a closer alliance would provide. Turkey
lies near the unruly Caucasus republics, the hotspots of Central Asia
and, of course, the Middle East. It is a leading regional power that
exerts a stabilising influence on those countries, and it is in
Europe’s long-term interest that Turkey should be firmly anchored
into the EU.

Acting as a bridge between Europe and the Middle East, Turkey’s
inclusion in the European Union would be a real boost to our security
and will help close down a busy and prosperous black market route
from Asia. Currently 65% of UK asylum applicants and 80% of the UK
heroin supply comes through Turkey. Common EU standards on law
enforcement will turn this situation around.

It is in our own strategic interest to give Turkey a fair chance to
demonstrate whether it is capable of meeting the EU membership
conditions.

And make no mistake, if Turkey meets all these conditions it will be
quite a different Turkey from the Turkey of today.

It will be a Turkey where the EU’s policies and standards are
implemented and where the principles of democracy and human rights
are a daily reality. A Turkey where the rule of law is firmly rooted
in its society and state. A Turkey where European values successfully
coexist among a predominantly Muslim population.

Such a Turkey would prove an invaluable crossroads between East and
West, Islam and Christianity.