Crimea

[Pete from Boston]

Following that logic, centuries of conquering also created Russia.  I think the reasoning today, though, is "we don't do that anymore" in regard to simply marching in and annexing land. 

[Alps]

It was a quiet war, but any breach of a nation's sovereign territory should be regarded as nothing less than an act of war.

[kkt]

It's more like Germany's annexation of Czechoslovakia and Austria.  1. Send agents provocateurs to commit various crimes and incite civil disturbances. 2. Claim ethnic members of your group are being oppressed. 3. Claim your military is vital to protect the oppressed minority.  4. Hold a sham election.

[english si]

There are probably a dozen reasons Turkey doesn't get in, but there are several good reasons it shouldn't, starting with an abysmal human rights record, enforced laws against free speech ("insulting Turkishness"), an ongoing century-long ethnic cleansing policy...  Ukraine looks like a model candidate in comparison.

Oh yes. The question is one about what the EU is - is it a superstate, or is it a trading block? Certainly you can't have them in a superstate, but maybe you can have free trade with them - some argue that the free trade would be a political carrot to get them to improve the human rights record, others argue that free trade will aid the free trade of ideas, and the human rights record with improve (plus as they get economically free, they will want to be politically free). And it is quite clear that the not-good reasons are known to Turkey, so they only pretend to jump through the human rights hoops, while knowing that it doesn't matter.

As a candidate, Turkey gets lots of economic and political benefits from that status. As it isn't ever going to be a member state, it's human rights issues are not going to fixed as what benefits they get from candidacy make the additional benefits of membership not big enough to warrant giving the people freedom. As it is a candidate, there's not a desire to for the EU to severely condemn its human rights record and risk damaging their ties with the West. One of the reasons why Turkey is a candidate is to stop it looking South and East too much - just as the EU doesn't want Ukraine looking NE to Russia. (More so Ukraine, as the insular EU sees Russia as competition, not a potential place to do business. The Arab world is full of smaller countries not in a superstate, so the blinkered EUrocrats can't understand how they could be better placed economically than the EU).

Oh, and Cyprus will block them due to the Northern Cyprus question (which should have been sorted before letting Cyprus in the EU, so that a solution could have been reached).

The Turks are mostly Muslim, but Turkey has a secular government, just like most Europeans are Christian but their governments are mostly secular.  Religion has been a private matter for individuals to decide since 1921.

In theory, not in practise. The "insulting Turkishness" law works well to suppress non-Muslim views being openly espoused (and socially the exclusion that comes from not being Muslim is huge). The strict lacite of Ataturk still applies, with headscarf bans and so on, but while the Government is neither Islamic nor pro-Islamic, it is anti-non-Islamic. Especially at local levels.

It was only a few hundred years ago they thought the Protestant and Catholic countries of Europe could never, ever get along.

Actually the wars of religion had almost nothing to do with religion and a lot to do with whether a country was ruled by Bourbons or Hapsburgs.

There are several reasons for not admitting Turkey, but the population being mostly Muslim isn't one of them.

No it is a reason - arguably it's the dominant one. Even more ironically it is the country that invented the lacite (aggressive separation of both Church and State, and Religion and Politics) that Turkey practises that is most against Turkey joining the EU and this bigoted reason is a major one driving that Frankish opposition.

That they are Muslim just isn't a good reason to block them (Algeria used to be in the EU, when it was part of France). Nor a sensible one if the EU is serious about religious freedom in Turkey (rather more cultural than governmental, but still not great from the government).

I think it has more to do with Turkey would have the second highest population in the EU, and nobody wants to give a "fringe" country that much power.

Especially as it's a good 10%, and maybe a bit more of the population, live in Europe (and we don't have issues with wholly Asian Cyprus, nor the outlying areas in the Caribbean, Africa and South America). Turkey is also growing in population, while Germany is shrinking fast: the UK (mostly through migration) will be the most populous EU country, at about 70 million, before too long (though Turkey would have over 90 million at that point).

The official reason for not officially considering Ukraine as a potential candidate a few years ago was that it was "too big" (Belarus was "too scary", Moldova "too poor"). OK, that came from one of those xenophobic 'little European' French Eurocrats, but I don't see Eastern Europe, nor the nations like the Netherlands and the UK that love trade (though like less being the places where immigrants to/within the EU/Schengen end up) pushing for Ukraine to be considered.