Europe fears 'gobbling Turkey'

Listen hard to Europe — particularly the French, Germans and just recently, one fulminating Dutchman with an important Brussels job — and this is what it is brokenly repeating to itself. "What does a turkey say? Gobble, gobble, gobble?"
In effect, Europe is almost childishly fearful Muslim, fast-multiplying Turkey could swallow it whole if it is allowed into its favourite club, the European Union (EU).From gobbling to cobbling, the all-points alarm has been sent out — Europe faces being ingested and then casually regurgitated as a bit of cold weather Islam and the completion of Muslim ambitions to colonise the Christian West.
Could anything be more infantile? Might anything be more hidebound in a Europe loudly, loftily and legislatively committed to human rights of free association, non-discrimination and tolerance?
This is the Europe that raps Turkey on the knuckles about its appalling treatment of the Kurds.
This is the Europe that acts schoolmasterish and severe about Narendra Modi’s conduct in Gujarat, Pakistan’s stop-start democratic process and the killing fields of Darfur. And yet, it is the very language and the very views of an EU commissioner, the Dutch politician Fritz Bolkestein.
He has let fly, barely three weeks before Brussels formally issues a long-awaited report on Ankara’s "European vocation". The report is widely expected to back Turkey’s negotiations for accession to the 25-member EU. By year-end, European heads of government will be forced to a final decision on Turkish membership. If they say ‘yes’, 10 years later, Europe will stretch to the borders of Iraq and will have added an estimated 80 million Muslims to its population.
This point appears unduly to worry Bolkestein. Demography, he warns, is the "mother of politics".
Sixty-eight million is 68 million Turks too many. And they are growing still. With a runway rate of growth, Turkey is projected to hit the 83-million mark by 2010. This would make it the biggest hitter in decision-making EU councils of ministers.
Germany and France would be forced to trail forlornly behind Turkey and Britain would languish in distant fourth place.
Careless of his lurid imagery and hot-button historical references, Bolkestein warned that Turkish entry would finish the job of the Ottoman Empire, "the liberation of Vienna would have been in vain". It was a tactless reference to a remarkable European victory in 1683, when Polish, German and Austrian armies freed Vienna from a siege led by Ottoman Turks.
So, the Turks are being blamed for actions three centuries old. One might as well castigate - and cast out of Europe - the British, Dutch, French, Germans and Belgians for past imperial excesses.
History and high-handed interpretations of European identity are all very well. The truth is Europe is running scared of the gobbling turkey. It would rather Ankara fall down on a point of principle, such as insufficient Kurdish human rights or Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s controversial new law criminalising female adultery.
Europe would so much rather Ankara fall than be pushed. It looks better that way and would be entirely consistent with European Human Rights laws.