European Student Think Tank

As Ukrain­i­ans headed to the polls for a par­lia­ment­ary elec­tion on Octo­ber 28, 2012, the country’s future was once again put into uncer­tainty. The gov­ern­ing party of the sup­posedly pro-Russian Pres­id­ent Viktor F. Yanukovich, gained vic­tory des­pite strong sup­port for pro-western oppos­i­tion parties and an unex­pec­tedly strong rise of the ultrana­tion­al­ists. How is the election’s out­come going to influ­ence the EU-Ukraine-Russia Tri­angle and the future dir­ec­tion of Ukraine?

Rethink­ing the EU’s future: Two play­ers of a game, Tur­key and the EU It is very likely to hear a joke from Inter­na­tional Rela­tions stu­dents in Tur­key: “Even Venezuela will become a mem­ber of the EU before Tur­key does”. It has been a long time since the Turk­ish author­it­ies have expressed their desire to join the [...]

Recent elec­tions in EU mem­ber states have seen the rise of euro­scep­tic parties, often caus­ing even estab­lished pro-European parties to run cam­paigns dis­tan­cing them from the Union. The par­lia­ment­ary elec­tions in Poland between the pro-European gov­ern­ment parties and the national-conservative oppos­i­tion might have turned the tide, as euro­scep­ti­cism has failed to con­vince voters. Five reas­ons why the re-election of the PO-PSL gov­ern­ment is good news for the EU.

At least 16 Kosovo Serbs and 4 NATO Peace­keep­ers were injured dur­ing clashes at a dis­puted bor­der cross­ing. Viol­ence in North­ern Kosovo has flared up again after the situ­ation seemed to have sta­bil­ized some­how after the end of the Balkan wars. What makes things worse is that this alarm­ing situ­ation might cause Ser­bia to lose its EU mem­ber­ship can­did­ate status: Ser­bia now faces a dilemma: its national pride on the one hand and its pos­sible European mem­ber­ship on the other.

Ratko Mladic is caught, but Ser­bia has not changed much. Instead of act­ing as though the coun­try is stead­ily mov­ing toward the European Union, Europe’s lead­ers should reject Ser­bia until it truly deals with its past. The pop­u­lar Ser­bian sup­port for a gen­o­cidal gen­eral is sig­nal­ing a clear mes­sage that it has all but done so.

“Tur­key is not in Europe”. If you have ever found your­self in a dis­cus­sion on the future of the EU enlarge­ment and the Turk­ish case, I bet you have heard this over and over again. I did hear this a lot from the Turko-skeptics and every time I ask them the simplest yet most com­plic­ated ques­tion: which Europe are we talk­ing about?

Iran and Tur­key are get­ting closer than ever and enjoy­ing a unique growth in trade and energy cooper­a­tion. Nation­als of the two coun­tries are enjoy­ing visa free travel and there are plans to use Turkish/Iranian cur­ren­cies for trade instead of US dol­lars. Does this mean an ideo­lo­gical con­ver­gence of the two? Are they becom­ing the same des­pite their sharp reli­gious (Sunni vs. Shi’a) and polit­ical (sec­u­lar vs. Islamic) differences?

Are Turks and “Europeans” vir­tu­ally dis­con­nec­ted from each other polit­ic­ally, eco­nom­ic­ally and socially? Claim­ing a dis­con­nec­tion is a pop­u­lar phe­nom­ena shared by many of the crit­ics of Turk­ish mem­ber­ship to the EU. It is fas­cin­at­ing that the myth of dis­con­nec­tion is still around even though there is no his­tor­ical or con­tem­por­ary evid­ence to sup­port it.

A coun­try with a 70+ mil­lion mostly Muslim pop­u­la­tion is at the door­steps of the EU: the Turks! What do we know about them and how much of what we know actu­ally reflects real­ity? It is not time to talk about who they are but about who they are not. Let’s ana­lyze some of the European myths about “the other” start­ing with the “Tro­jan Horse” analogy.

The recent his­tory of the coun­tries that used to make up Yugoslavia is one of extreme viol­ence and severe blood­shed. Integ­ra­tion into the European Union is a desir­able step to assure peace and sta­bil­ity in the region. But this will not come without prob­lems. Can we pre­vent that age-old bilat­eral prob­lems and enmit­ies will be inher­ited by the daily func­tion­ing of the EU?