Hugh Pope defends Tukey's candidacy

The journalist Hugh Pope, a specialist on Turkey, makes a plea in favour of another EU enlargement. "In the same way that Turkey diligently changed in order to adapt to Europe, a new manner of conceiving the European character would be to welcome the Euro-Muslim pragmatism that reigns in Turkey. This is impossible for those Europeans who upbraid the 'Islam' of their new neighbours for bad manners, oppression of women and sartorial tradition. These problems, which are real, have less to do with religion than with education, wealth and experience in an urban environment. There was a time when Northern Europeans also treated Spain and Italy with condescension, considering that those countries were not European. But today nobody would ever question the advantages of the modification of Europe's self-image or the distribution of its wealth, advantages that allowed the integration of these two countries."

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