In so doing, he has made more progress than any of his predecessors. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish president, has persuaded the EU to grant visa-free travel to his 75 million countrymen inside Europe’s passport-free Schengen area. And secondly because the country is now coming into Europe anyway. For a brief period around the turn of the millennium, some serious people (including the British government) supported Turkey joining the EU.īut today, the question has become academic - first because Turkey’s liberal trajectory long ago halted and began rolling backwards. The question became slightly more plausible a century ago with the rise of Ataturk and the modern Turkish state (one of the only successful efforts to reconcile the Islamic religion with state power). The Ottomans were kept out of Europe not by some early-onset prejudice, but by the armies of Europe having to beat back their repeated invasions. Is Turkey part of Europe? For most of our civilisation’s history, to have even asked such a question would have been to invite derision. ![]() ![]() Reports suggest this comes as a result of a rift with President Erdogan caused by the increasingly ‘Presidential’ nature of Turkey’s politics. Update: Since this article was published Ahmet Davutoglu has resigned as Turkey’s Prime Minister.
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