Tories talking Turkey

On the 'plane home last Thursday I picked up a copy of  The Daily Telegraph. I have long wondered what Tories thought of Turkey. Here is Boris Johnson, though his focus is elsewhere:

I badly want Turkey to be a member of the European Union. I believe that we in western Europe have a historic choice in the next few years, and that we can be visionary, or we can funk it. We can either turn our backs on the Turks, and declare openly or in code that a Muslim country, no matter how secular, may not be admitted to Europe. Or else we can show courage and leadership and begin the great task of the modern age, effecting a reconciliation between moderate Islam and the West, by bringing one of the largest and most powerful Muslim nations into the EU.

To understand how beneficial this might be for Turkey and Europe, think back to Spain under Franco, or Greece under the colonels. Who can doubt that EU membership was good for those countries and their concepts of democracy and human rights?

So it would be for Turkey. That is why we partisans of Turkish accession have been so disgusted by the decision of the Turkish government to prosecute the country's greatest living novelist, Orhan Pamuk. His crime? He referred in an interview to the killings in Turkey of Kurds and Armenians, both of which have undoubtedly happened in the last century. [...] The government of Prime Minister Erdogan has decided that Mr Pamuk  [...] must be tried for "insulting the national character", so exposing him to the possibility of three years in prison.
[...]
The only sign of life from Labour has been from the maverick former Europe minister, Denis MacShane, who was himself whacked by Blair for being too free in speaking his mind. MacShane is going to the trial of Orhan Pamuk in Turkey, and anyone who cares about freedom, democracy, and the future of Europe should be encouraged to do the same. But what kind of authority does poor Denis carry in this matter? He will arrive in Turkey as the representative of a governing party that not only bullies the BBC for speaking the truth[...]

Except John Humphrys and co. don't face three years in jail.

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What CIA did so readily after September 11, however, was what the Clinton White House had been pressing them to do for years [certainly since 1998]: insert CIA personnel into Afghanistan, aid the Northern Alliance, fly the predator... (Richard A. Clarke, Against All Enemies, P276)

That's not the impression I got from the 9/11 Commission report. Or as Clarke puts it himself in his epilogue: 'I did not resign in protest when my recommendations to bomb the al Qaeda infrastructure were deferred by the Clinton administration'