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In recent years, one of the most interesting protest movements in Europe has emerged against all odds in Albania, on the very periphery of the continent, and still little noticed in the rest of Europe.
Those who argue that Turkey will never reach European standards of democracy and development ignore the fact that societies can change. At this moment, however, it is difficult to be upbeat about Turkey's democracy.
That enlargement has a future has recently also been stressed in Paris. A few weeks ago French Minister for Europe, Jean Pierre Jouyet, announced that France had "crossed a very important Rubicon":
Will future historians point to the summer of 2007 as the moment when it first became clear that Turkey would join the European Union before either Serbia or Bosnia-Herzegovina?
The publication of our most recent report – Sex and Power in Turkey – Feminism, Islam and the Maturing of Turkish Democracy – takes place at a time of vigorous debate about Islam, secularism and democracy.
The entrenchment of the Balkan protectorates revives a question that ESI has posed in the past: to whom are international missions accountable, given their extraordinary powers? What happens when they make mistakes and violate the rights of citizens in the territories they govern?
Current policy debates in Kosovo which focus almost exclusively on status fail to take into account another change that is already affecting Kosovo society profoundly: the end of the era of mass migration
It is appropriate for the European Commission and for member states to insist on strict compliance with conditionality on EU integration, including concerning cooperation with the ICTY.
ESI is carrying out a series of studies on current debates on enlargement. The series begins with the Netherlands, and examines how Dutch attitudes on Turkey have developed since 1999.
The 11 March 2006 meeting of EU Foreign Ministers with their colleagues from the Western Balkans in Salzburg was an opportunity to reassure the region that its European prospects are not slipping into the distant future. This opportunity was missed.
No ESI report triggered a more vigorous national debate than our recent study of social change in Central Anatolia, Islamic Calvinists. In recent weeks Turkish commentators in all large national papers used this report to take a new look at the relationship between the Turkish state, Islam in Turkey and economic development.
ESI is calling on EU member states not to forget their commitments to the countries of the Balkans, and their vital interest in lasting stability in the region on the eve of Kosovo status negotiations.
