It's no dark secret that Jack does nothing without naked political advantage:

France will hold a referendum on Turkey's entry into the EU when the issue arises, and any further EU enlargement will also be subject to a popular vote, President Jacques Chirac said yesterday. ... Mr Chirac has in effect given the French people the power of veto - at an unspecified time - on Turkish accession.

The president's support for a referendum is aimed at preventing French anxiety about Turkish membership [infra] influencing another referendum, on the EU constitution, which will be held next year.

By separating the two issues, Mr Chirac has reduced but not eliminated the likelihood of France opposing the constitution. The constitution cannot be adopted if France does not back it.

But Jack saying so don't make it so.

He had asked the government to prepare a [French] constitutional amendment to guarantee that any enlargement of the EU - after the entry of Romania, Bulgaria and Croatia, which is already under way - should be put to a public vote rather than decided by parliament.

[Mr Chirac] said Turkey was not likely to be in a position to join the EU for 10 to 15 years.

That comfortably puts Turkey beyond Jack's political horizon. He will be an eminent guest of Santé prison by then, and Turkey will become M. Sarkozy's problem.

Tearing a page from Mr. Kerry's playbook, France maintains a variety of nuanced positions on Turkey:

09.11.02: "[Turkey's] capital is not in Europe; 95 per cent of its population live outside Europe; it is not a European country ... [the head of Europe's constitutional convention, Valery Giscard d'Estaing, went on to say letting Turkey's 70 million Muslims in would be] "the death of the European Union".

12.13.02: [Recep Tayyip Erdogan] also attacked Jacques Chirac, the French president, accusing him of violating a personal pledge by secretly pushing for an even later date of 2008 [over a December 2004 or 2005 date]. "That was a very bad mistake," he said.

04.29.04: French President Jacques Chirac said Thursday that Turkey's entry into the European Union...is not "desirable" now but could be in the future.

Chirac, speaking at his first full-fledged news conference in six years, said Turkey had not yet met the conditions for entry into the EU.

And this: "Is Turkey's entry possible today? I say 'No,'" [Jack] said. "My conviction is that it is in the long term."

Chirac's news conference came weeks after Foreign Minister Michel Barnier told parliament that France would oppose Turkey's entry.

05.10.04: "The negotiations will be long and difficult. We should not be under any illusions about this. It will not happen overnight. It is an issue that will take years."

07.24.04: "Turkey's integration into the EU is welcome as soon as it becomes possible... Turkey has made considerable progress. It must continue and intensify the implementation of democratic and economic reforms."

09.24.04: "We are not doubting the good faith of Mr Erdogan, but to what extent can today's and tomorrow's governments make Turkish society embrace Europe's human rights values? ... Do we want the river of Islam to enter the riverbed of secularism?" [French Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin]

10.02.04: "We have an interest in having Turkey with us," Mr Chirac said.

[Emphases added.]

At least the French populace's qualms are more tenable than the French government's dilatory and finical bureaucratese. Bottom line, Jack wants his big fat EU constitution and Turkey can go hang itself. And the French public, too, for that matter.

Turkey belong's in the EU. The EU has already replaced Amerca as the strongest economy. Europe should deal with Turkey and its economic challenges. Then, Wal-Mart should come to town once everthing in Turkey is fixed.

Sterling
Sterlingwright.blogspot.com

I'll translate: "We haven't figured out what we can extort from Turkey in exchange from not throwing a wrench into the process".

Hmmm... now why does that sound familiar...