{"id":21393,"date":"2010-08-18T23:16:30","date_gmt":"2010-08-18T21:16:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.turkishforum.com.tr\/en\/content\/?p=21393"},"modified":"2010-08-18T23:23:23","modified_gmt":"2010-08-18T21:23:23","slug":"no-europe-without-turkey-lech-walesa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/2010\/08\/18\/no-europe-without-turkey-lech-walesa\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;No Europe without Turkey&#8221;&#8211;Lech Walesa"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><strong>GDANSK) &#8211; Turkey must be admitted to the European Union,<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong>Poland&#8217;s former president and Nobel laureate Lech Walesa insisted<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong>on Wednesday.<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong>&#8220;There&#8217;s no Europe without Turkey,<\/strong>&#8221; Walesa told AFP in an interview.<\/div>\n<div>&#8220;Turkey should gradually reach Europe&#8217;s level of development and enter<\/div>\n<div>tomorrow,&#8221; he added.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Turkey kicked off membership talks with the EU in 2005.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>The process has been sluggish, however, in part because of France and<\/div>\n<div>Germany&#8217;s wariness about letting the Muslim-majority nation of 75 million<\/div>\n<div>into the 27-nation bloc.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Poland, which is due to take over the EU&#8217;s rotating presidency in the second<\/div>\n<div>half of 2011, backs Turkish entry.<\/div>\n<div><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong>The deeply Catholic Walesa said religious-rooted concerns should not come <\/strong><strong>into play.<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;Borders and splits have led to conflict, especially on the religious side,&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>he said.<strong> &#8220;Religion has been exploited&#8221;.<\/strong><\/div>\n<div><strong><br \/>\n<\/strong><\/div>\n<div>&#8220;Religion will return to its proper place. People will understand that in reality,<\/div>\n<div>God is the same for all religions but there are too many defenders of the faith,&#8221;<\/div>\n<div>he said.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Poland joined the EU in 2004, 15 years after its communist regime was brought\u00a0down bloodlessly by Walesa&#8217;s opposition movement Solidarity.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>GDANSK) &#8211; Turkey must be admitted to the European Union, Poland&#8217;s former president and Nobel laureate Lech Walesa insisted on Wednesday. &#8220;There&#8217;s no Europe without Turkey,&#8221; Walesa told AFP in an interview. &#8220;Turkey should gradually reach Europe&#8217;s level of development and enter tomorrow,&#8221; he added. Turkey kicked off membership talks with the EU in 2005. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":179167,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21,89],"tags":[3414,2338],"class_list":["post-21393","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-eu-members","category-turkey","tag-lech-walesa","tag-the-european-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21393","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21393"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21393\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/179167"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21393"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21393"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.turkishnews.com\/en\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21393"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}