Category:OSI Commission on Turkey
In October 2007, the Open Society Institute formed an "Independent Commission on Turkey" to verify the means the EU is using to assess Turkey's application to EU membership. A panel of several "intellectuals" convenes twice a year to "share their views with the public and will warn the European Union not to diverge from its principles. The group's intellectuals will also make impartial evaluations on controversial issues such as conditional membership status and open-ended negotiations"[1]
Of note is that OSI has a strong presence in Turkey and the Soros groups are involved in many business deals especially in real estate. Furthermore, a curiosity about the proposal for an EU membership for Turkey is that both the United States and Israel (through the American Jewish Committee) have taken it upon themselves to lobby on Turkey's behalf. OSI's efforts can be seen as one of creating business opportunities and furthering US interests in the region by working for an EU membership. The reason Israel/AJC might have an interest in such membership has the same rationale as with its lobbying for the admission of the recently admitted Eastern European countries (Bulgaria, the Baltic countries, etc.). Its aim there is totransform the EU into:
- a large block without a single voice in international affairs;
- incorporate groups that have greater allegiance to the US/Israel[2]
- inhibit the creation of a unified European force capable of withstanding US interests
- render the EU's tariff structure meaningless to US and Israeli interests. The larger the EU becomes, the more open Europe is to US and Israeli manipulation of EU trade barriers. Trading via the "weak links" simple erodes the importance of creating a EU market. Whereas at the beginning the EU was meant to lift the standards of all its members and find areas of cooperation, the neoliberal model preferred by the US and European right-wing groups is attempting to reconfigure the EU to only signify a open giant market where a competitive dynamic produces ever lowering standards. Thus incorporating Turkey into the equation is favored because it becomes a cheap staging post for exports to the remainder of the EU market.
References
- ↑ New group formed to defend Turkey in EU, Today's Zaman, 3 October 2007
- ↑ The Bulgarian president thanked the AJC after Bulgaria became a EU member. The Polish president when asked about the benefits of joining the EU stated that it "would strengthen its relations with the United States"! NB: It joined the EU and he seems to confuse it with the US, but this isn’t an error because he was actually thanking the US for the lobbying efforts.
Pages in category "OSI Commission on Turkey"
The following 2 pages are in this category, out of 2 total.
