Local view for "http://purl.org/linkedpolitics/eu/plenary/2001-10-24-Speech-3-216"
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"en.20011024.9.3-216"2
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"Mr President, Commissioner, ladies and gentlemen, the Lamassoure report maintains that Turkey has a right to become a member of the European Union. That is its basic message. I, for my part, believe that membership is not just Turkey's right, it is vital to the country. Historically speaking, Turkey has made an admirable effort to move towards Europe. An effort which started not today but a long time ago. Turkey's efforts to modernise started at the end of the nineteenth century.
We Greeks, as Turkey's neighbours and ‘historic adversaries’, if I may put it thus, know this better than anyone else. We know from our own experience how difficult it is move forward from a tradition of eastern despotism towards a modern society. Turkey has a particularly long tradition in this respect because it was at the top of the pyramid of despotism in our region.
Turkey suffered the historical accident of basically coming out unscathed – not unscathed as such, because it suffered a great deal – but it was not defeated in either the First or the Second World War. Sometimes it is better to lose than to win a war. We must not forget that France and Germany, the mainstays of the European Union, were both defeated, one at the beginning and the other at the end of the Second World War and I think that they learned that armed force and confrontation are not the way to survive in today's world. The disaster on the 11 September has taught us, I think, that today's world needs reconciliation in order to survive, by which I do not of course mean reconciliation with the terrorists, I mean reconciling tensions between us, precisely in order to isolate terrorists and establish a safe and fair world. Turkey is a third world European country which needs to learn the same lesson as France and Germany, that is, that if we want to move on, we have to stop waging the wars of the 1920s or the wars of the 1940s in the present day.
I think that Turkey has built up an internal mechanism and a system of external relations which is dominated by the idea of authority and it uses this to tyrannise its people – witness the terrible story of prisoners' suicides and much else besides. Of course, the move which Turkey has to make is a difficult one. But it is trying to make it and we must help it and our reception of it in the European Union must be commensurate with its efforts to move towards us."@en1
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