Is this state fit for admission to the EU?

Well, is it? Let the reader decide.

From Catholic World News:

Turkey: propaganda encouraging assaults on Christians?

Istanbul, Dec. 17, 2007 (CWNews.com) - An Italian missionary serving in Turkey survived a stabbing attack on December 16, but the AsiaNews service argues that the latest assault on a Catholic priest illustrates the dangerous effects of "a widespread campaign of defamation and hatred against Christians" in the predominantly Muslim country.

Father Adriano Franchini, a Capuchin priest, was hospitalized after being stabbed by a teenage assailant in St. Anthony's church in Izmir, a coastal city. The Italian priest-- who has served in Turkey for 27 years-- was reported in stable condition, and doctors said he should recover quickly.

However an AsiaNews analysis by Mavi Zambak notes that the attack on Father Franchini falls into a pattern, matching several other recent acts of violence against Christians including the murder of Father Andrea Santoro in February 2006. Zambak remarks:

What all these cases have in common is the fact that all the culprits are young Turkish men, all supposedly unbalanced, crazy or mentally feeble, who ostensibly acted according to investigators on an impulse triggered by watching TV programmes and reading online material that focused on “missionary activities” by religious and secular Christians.

Father Franchini had been accused of proselytizing Muslims, the AsiaNews analysis points out. The accusations against him were part of a continuing propaganda barrage aimed against Christians in the Turkish media. The violent attacks, Zambak suggests, can be attributed to the hatred roused by those attacks, which Turkish officials have done nothing to counteract.

Of course our political leaders, dying to admit Turkey into the European Union at the soonest opportunity, would not care to raise issues such as this with their Turkish counterparts. They would not even care to be reminded of Turkey’s appalling human rights record, of its resurgent islamism, or of the fact that Turkey has not even acknowledged — never mind regretted — its culpability in the first genocide of the twentieth century.

Do we in Europe really want this rogue nation to be admitted to full membership of the EU? What sort of grubby political and/or financial gains are our politicians going to receive on the back of this betrayal? Moreover, the leftists in our midst are vocal whenever anyone says or does anything that carries the slightest whiff of ‘racism’ against Mohammedans and other immigrants in countries like Ireland; but why are their voices not raised in protest against the incomparably more serious abuses of human rights that take place on a routine basis in countries such as Turkey?

If we ever get a referendum on the issue — which Melancholicus very much doubts — every citizen of this union should do his duty by refusing admittance to the bosom of Europe to this barbarous state. Now Europe is already a sty of many evils; but we should beware lest we increase them. Though the shepherds may be negligent, even tyrannical and corrupt, how does it improve matters to open the door of the sheepfold to the wolf?