RE: NATO, that's with the US having their back too, so it is not as much of a burden for Europe.  It's not an internal worry.

You know, for someone sensitive to anti-American comments, you're quite casual with the anti-European propaganda that we're freeriders...

<ducks and runs>

In the long run, we're all dead. John Maynard Keynes

Don't tell me NATO and the EU have nothing to do with each other. All the former communist candidates for accession thought you could not have one without the other. [Still waiting for Marek's diary on Atlanticism]

I know it is a significant decision and I don't know what the right answer is.

To talk about a "gray area" implies that Europe and the Middle East are somehow poles in some relationship. I don't think that's the case. There are more ways to look at Turkey. The Ottoman empire was its own thing, and it inherited as much from the Caliphate as it did from the Byzantine empire.

Those whom the Gods wish to destroy They first make mad. -- Euripides

1. Huh? I don't understand your point at all. Bosnia is white and has lots of Muslims unlike Turkey which is brown and has lots of Muslims. Some of the states who have been allowed in straddle other boundaries between East and West.

2. Most of the EU states are already in a military alliance with Turkey. The EU is not a military alliance. Is there any obligation for Ireland to come to Greece's defence if the Egyptians tried to invade? I'm not aware of one.

3. " I just think you are not acknowldeging the significance of the decision." We've been more-or-less promising Turkey membership for fifty years: I do acknowledge the significance of the decision. Refusing membership now on "cultural" grounds indicates that we have decided to build a white Christian club and that we have no principles whatsoever.

1. Why?

2. EU membership doesn't end Turkey's NATO membership. Why are Turkey's potential wars less worrying than instability affecting Bulgaria, Romania and Croatia?

3) As opposed to a historically and culturally grey area between Western and Eastern Europe? Or between Sweden and Greece?

It's perfectly legitimate to be anti-expansion, but to suggest that Europe is not a cultural grey area in itself is a lie that needs resisting.

Regarding Russia in the EU, before the joining of the last 10, there was some serious discussion (on the Russians' part!) about partial EU membership: meaning the Kaliningrad district, which found itself with the prospect of separation from the motherland by two Schengen borders.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}

You could well be right, but I think that subject to all the usual issues (economics, crime, human rights) people would accept Russia joining. But maybe the UK just has different neuroses to France about the EU.

Well, on population, Russia is not as big as the whole EU, it is much less: currently, 31% of the EU-25 (142.8 million vs. 458.5 million). But while Russia's population declines faster than any country in the EU-25 (in fact the whole EU-25 is projected to grow until 2025), the EU will most likely absorb another 120-150 million (Romania, Bulgaria, ex-Yugoslavia, Turkey) before Russia. So if Russia joins say in 2025, it will be around 20% of the then-EU: about the same ratio as Turkey would be in 2015, or the last ten new members were to the EU-15.

_{*Lunatic*, n.
One whose delusions are out of fashion.}