Turkey: Why Turkey Stands a Good Chance to Enter the EU, IF it Communicates Properly

We keep being told that Turkey, this Muslim country of 72 Mln inhabitants, cannot possibly be a Member of the EU, let alone a Member State in its own right. As all the specialists very well know there are two broad sets of criteria for defining whether applicant countries have a right of entry into the EU, the so-called Copenhagen criteria.
On one hand the country must achieve "stability of institutions guaranteeing" democracy, human rights, rule of law, rights of minorities. The applicant must also have a functioning market economy and have integrated the so-called acquis. Those are the Copenhagen criteria as known by the entire world, and everybody knows that for Turkey to fulfill them is a matter of a few years (2-3). Turkey has got a long-standing relationship with the EU, a custom Union, and a constitutional structure that is copy pasted from France. Adopting the acquis is a technical issue, that could go very fast once was it not for the hidden Copenhagen criteria.
An often forgotten dimension of the criteria is the EU's absorption capacity, which is referred to in the next paragraph of the official treaty document(Chapter 7.a, iii). The crux of the matter is : who decides what the "absorption capacity" of the EU is. Well, the lack of clear sub-criteria on this and the domestic political games played by EU politicians has handed the "absorption capacity" criteria over to their public opinions.

I therefore did my homework and researched the available data on Turkish and EU public opinion. The result is that the public opinions are compatible.
The data speak for themselves. European and Turkish opinion share identical values (see bullet points 1 and 2) , and these are Peace, environment, social equality, and freedom of expression. The order is slightly different in each case, but the absolute % of respondents is not greatly dissimilar. The icing on the cake, however , is that all the talk about cultural differences has no place in the European mind (see bullet point 1, p.5). Europeans associate culture with arts, etc..., but not with religion. So away with all the talk about Turkey being Muslim and therefore incompatible with EU-membership.

The backbone of my reasoning is rooted in three different opinion polls published by Eurobarometer. The closeness and compatibility of Turkish and EU public opinions is startling.
1) On the cultural definition of the EU , check p. 5, for the Values of the EU see p. 77: European Cultural Values, Sep. '07.
2) Turkish public opinion analysis, on p.17 :
Eurobarometer on Turkey, 2007
3) Complementary, and revealing, data on "the concerns" of the Europeans, check p. 43 and 52: European Social Reality, Feb. 2007

What is the conclusion of this surprising insight... ?
Firstly, it seems once again that the Turks (who should be on the active side when it comes to convincing the EU public opinion) are doing a very poor job at communicating their similarities. Secondly, the Turkish politicians should start understanding the EU's position on Cyprus, PKK, Northern-Iraq, and the Armenian genocide in the light of the EU's values as ranked by the EU public opinion; nr.1 was Peace, and a few positions behind ... is freedom of expression. If Turks demonstrate exemplary behaviour on these