GDANSK) – Turkey must be admitted to the European Union,
Poland’s former president and Nobel laureate Lech Walesa insisted
on Wednesday.
“There’s no Europe without Turkey,” Walesa told AFP in an interview.
“Turkey should gradually reach Europe’s level of development and enter
tomorrow,” he added.
Turkey kicked off membership talks with the EU in 2005.
The process has been sluggish, however, in part because of France and
Germany’s wariness about letting the Muslim-majority nation of 75 million
into the 27-nation bloc.
Poland, which is due to take over the EU’s rotating presidency in the second
half of 2011, backs Turkish entry.
The deeply Catholic Walesa said religious-rooted concerns should not come into play.
“Borders and splits have led to conflict, especially on the religious side,”
he said. “Religion has been exploited”.
“Religion will return to its proper place. People will understand that in reality,
God is the same for all religions but there are too many defenders of the faith,”
he said.
Poland joined the EU in 2004, 15 years after its communist regime was brought down bloodlessly by Walesa’s opposition movement Solidarity.