I don’t know if the “Little Mermaid” sculpture in the harbour of Copenhagen is well known outside Scandinavia?
. Lille Havsfrue on a normal day
Within Scandinavia this cool and pretty sculpture is a well-known landmark though. Everybody knows of her and she is a bit of a national symbol of Denmark. I have seen her in the distance, but never up front. You can’t help but like her! In Danish she is called “Lille Havsfrue”.

Apparently a prank was played on the Little Mermaid the other day, as she was dressed up in full moslem female dress. Well, she isn’t exactly the most modest girl, posing naked in the harbour for almost a hundred years!

The prank was played by unknown person(s) who wanted to draw attention to Turkey’s potential entry into the EU. He put a sign saying “70 million Turks in the EU?”

Turkey has been wanting in (to the EU) for at least 20 years and now finds itself overtaken by countries like Romania (known for corruption and poverty since the fall of communism there) and Bulgaria.
. Lille Havsfrue as a modest muslima…
Another interesting question is, will Moslem extremists get upset with Denmark again, like they did about the Mohammed cartoons… Or will they let this one pass?

TURKEY’S EU QUEST

As I understand it, the main reasons sited for the delay / refusal in accepting Turkey into the EU are:

• The fact that the great majority of Turkey’s land-mass is not in fact located in Europe at all, but in Asia/Middle East.
• The widespread perception that Turkey is oppressing it’s Kurdish minority, sometimes persecuting and torturing Kurds.
• The fact that Turkey is almost completely moslem and additionally does not “share the European heritage” that the rest of the EU countries do.
• The EU would find itself a neighbour of Iran, Iraq and Syria which all border Turkey…
• The Cyprus situation. Because of it, Greece does not like Turkey at all and Greece is already a member state with full voting powers..r

Turkeys population is approx. 70 million which would make it the second largest (and most influential) country in the EU after Germany. Germany has, for historical reasons, been very careful not to abuse this situation, being the mild and gentle giant of the EU after its national re-unification. It is far from certain that Turkey would behave in the same way; in fact most evidence would point to the opposite.
Future Europeans in the EU… or Middle Eastern Turks?
Btw, where are the girlies?
Personally I agree with this. I do not feel that Turkey belongs in the EU right now. The recent expansion of the EU has happened very fast. The idea with Eastern Europe has been that it is better that certain new member states are taken in before they are quite ready financially and politically (i.e. decent state finances and solid western-style democracy), as the alternative is even worse.

The alternative would have been for their economies and finances to develop much slower, in the shadows of the Western European countries. Being second-tier economies, they’d remain corrupt and with high criminality. Sooner or later they would inevitably join the EU anyway, as they undisputably European. The days of waiting in the outskirts are now over as Poles and Estonians members on almost equal standing to France, Germany and the UK. And enthusiastic members they are too, at least the Poles!

I suppose it could be said that it is hippocrisy to let some of the new Eastern member states in, but not Turkey. After all, the largest Turkish city, Istanbul is located in Europe. And Turkey had wanted membership in the EU ‘club’ ong before even the fall of the iron curtain! So is it just Islamophobia and European cultural snobbery that is keeping Turkey out?
The tiny North West peninsula where Istanbul is, is in Europe.
Capital Ankara is in Asia.
I am not sure that I know the answer to that! I am not categorically against Turkish membership but I really don’t want it right now. I do not feel as if I share a common culture and heritage with the Turks, and the stories that you hear from there underlines this. Bride-snatching, honour-killings, torturing of political prisoners and the bizarre relationship between the state and its main religion, Islam, makes me feel as if Turkey does not (yet) belong in the EU.

Whereas I feel that I could live in any other member-state if there was a good reason to do so, I can’t imagine living in Turkey. Certainly not as a single woman at any rate. (In all honesty that goes for Romania and Bulgaria too right now).

There have been some pretty bad clashes of culture between Turkish economical migrants and local populations in Germany and Scandinavia. Whether integration has worked or not is highly debatable. Migration of Italians and Greek to Northern Europe has not been a problem though. This too shows that the cultural differences are pretty big, even between Turkey and Greece, one if its neighbours.

In a longer perspective, Turkey will probably become a formidable country-bridge between East and West again. Just imagine how things would change for Turkey if the Middle East became democratic and peaceful. Turkey is large enough to play an independent role both politically and geograpically… It occupies some of the strategically most important real estate on the planet. But can Turkey ever become an integrated part of the European Union and a potential future “United States of Europe”?

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