Leading German political figures have said Turkey has no place in the European Union and warned EU leaders meeting in Copenhagen today not to make any rash promises to Ankara.
On the eve of the summit, the European Commission President, Mr Romano Prodi, said the EU will not allow boundless enlargement and the "time was now ripe" for the EU to define where its borders end.
Mr Helmut Schmidt, the former Social Democrat chancellor, and Mr Edmund Stoiber, conservative leader in Bavaria, argue that Turkey would reduce the EU to a free-trade zone with limited political power.
Mr Schmidt, a close adviser to Chancellor Schröder, writes in today's Die Zeit that Turkey would endanger the EU's negotiating freedom on foreign affairs. He adds that Turkey's accession would "open the door to an equally plausible full membership for other Islamic states in Africa and in the Middle East".
Mr Schmidt acknowledged Germany's interest in a politically and economically stable Turkey. "But freedom of movement for Turks would leave little prospect for the integration of the [2.5 million] Turks and Kurds living among us, which is urgently required," he writes.
Mr Stoiber, leader of Bavaria's Christian Social Union (CSU), said Turkey's huge population of 69 million would give it a decisive say in EU institutions. That would "fundamentally change" the Union and "destroy Europe's integration capabilities".
"Turkey did not take part in the Enlightenment or the European struggles for freedom, self-determination and solidarity," he wrote yesterday in the Süddeutsche Zeitung. "But that is the foundation of the European identity and value system."
Mr Prodi rejected Mr Stoiber's claim that Turkey would overstretch the EU's integration capabilities.
