For a few weeks during my stint in France, posters decorated almost every public surface with messages such as: La Turquie dans l'EU? NON! Simple, clear, and to the point. It must have been election time. Slate has posted an interesting article tying together French politics and Turkey's bid for the EU. From that article (Sarkozy is expected to win the upcoming French elections):
"Sarkozy is the first leading politician in any large European country to say loudly and clearly that Turkey will not join the European Union... Every time George W. Bush in the White House or Thomas L. Friedman in the New York Times demands that Turkey should be admitted, the Turkish case is set back further. ... Chris Patten ... was expressing the irritation of all his colleagues in Brussels—and every European politician—when he said dryly that it was very good of the Americans to keep offering Turkey EU membership, but that this was a question on which the Europeans themselves might feel they had some right to be heard.
" ...it is no more the American president's business to tell Europe how to deal with Turkey than it's the French president's business to tell the White House how to deal with Mexico. Sarko doesn't even need to spell out the immense economic and social problems that Turkish membership would present. He only has to say that admitting Turkey would be a mistake, and he is saying something that a large majority of voters in France, and most other European countries, already think."
Politics are so much easier to stomach when one has no real ability to directly change or suffer from the outcome.
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