E.U., here we come

last updated 8 January 2015

Ankara, Turkey

“Turkey has taken a giant step forward,” Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said this week as his country began formal talks on joining the E.U. The long-planned accession talks were almost derailed at the last minute by objections from Austria, which proposed that Turkey be limited to second-tier membership. After late-night diplomatic wrangling, Austria backed down, and the talks proceeded. Austria’s hesitance reflected a general European reluctance to admit a huge, majority Muslim country into the E.U. The earliest Turkey can join is 2015; by then it’s projected to have a larger population, and therefore more E.U. votes, than any other E.U. member.