contricusc
Contributor
The EU will always be hostile as Turkey is a geopolitical rival vying for the same spheres of influences and resources.
Turkish military presence predates Cyprus becoming a EU member. Thus it was the EU which chose a path of hostility, not Turkey.
I don’t think you understand the long term strategy of the EU. The EU simply swallows countries that are geographically close and politically aligned, and the borders of the EU are not limited to the current ones.
Cyprus was an easy to get country (they wanted inside the EU and it had a good geographical location and small population) that was easy to swallow and digest, so taking them in was a no brainer.
In the same manner, you will see countries like Montenegro, Bosnia, Kosovo, Albania, Serbia get absorbed one by one into the EU, because they fit geographically and are small enough not to alter the balance of power and destabilize the economy.
The bigger targets like Ukraine, Belarus and Turkey are much more difficult to absorb and integrate, because of their size, so there needs to be a very high political alignment first. We are seeing this evolution in Ukraine, where the current regime is 100% pro-EU, unlike the governments of the pro-Russian past. This means that Ukraine was already “conquered” in the sense that the population and leadership has been converted to a pro-EU mindset. But since Ukraine’s situation is so complicated because of the war, it will take some time before it will be able to join the EU, as it will need to end the war and reclaim its territories first, and also rebuild its economy. But Ukraine’s future in the EU is almost certain.
With Turkey, the population size is a big issue, because it would technically be the largest country in the union, with the most voting power in the EU parliament, which makes Germany and France weary. But if Turkey would become a very pro-EU country in both population and political opinion, the pressure on France and Germany to accept Turkey would rise.
The thing is, the main objective of the EU is to become one of the big boys, together with the US and China. And when it comes to total power, the addition of countries like Turkey, Georgia, Azerbaidjan and Armenia could greatly incease the overall size of the union. But this is something for a later time, because the EU institutions need to get more power themselves first, in order to be able to slowly bypass the opposition from certain countries.