Europe's new

摘要

Prime Minister Erdogan's turnaround efforts have brought Turkey to Europe's doorstep. Now the real work begins to get his country inside. Recep Tayyip Erdogan went the extra mile — literally — in his campaign to bring Turkey into the fold of the European Union. The Turkish prime minister traveled to Brussels eight times last year to press his case for membership, visited Berlin four times and Paris twice to counter the considerable anti-Turkish sentiment in Germany and France and made countless other stops in capitals from London to Luxembourg to lobby for support. This unprecedented shuttle diplomacy flummoxed his own officials when they sought to track him down after a Brussels visit in November. "We tried to reach him in the Hague," says Engin Solakoglu, spokesman at Turkey's mission to the EU, "but he had already moved on."