What Turkey Can Learn From Albania

TIRANA, May 18 – Last week a Turkish daily, The Turkish Daily News, published an article reviewing what Turkey might learn from Albania while traveling its own road towards European integration.
Albania is also in the process of efforts to become integrated into the EU as it seeks to become a member of the European Union, as Istanbul Is doing.
While Turkish political parties are bogged down in its own internal battles, important developments are taking place in the Balkans, the paper wrote. While Turkish democracy appears increasingly problematic, even to its best friends abroad, some of the smaller Balkan countries are making up for lost time.
In fact, the ambition of the Balkan countries is clear: catch up with where Turkey is today; submit an application for EU membership before the end of this year; achieve candidate status, at the latest, in 2009; begin negotiations as soon after that as possible. In seeking EU membership, two countries, Montenegro and Albania, are undergoing a remarkable transformation, The Turkish Daily News writes. Further it was noted that, it is possible, while Turkey wastes another year due to its internal crisis that the rest of Southeast Europe will catch up.
A few days ago, Edi Rama, the leader of the Albanian opposition and flamboyant mayor of Tirana, also urged his government to prepare an EU membership application to be submitted in September. Edi Rama and the Prime Minister of Albania, Sali Berisha, used Europe Day to showcase their new consensus. The government and opposition in Albania used to be famously hostile to each other, reflecting a deeply polarized society. Edi Rama noted that this era has passed. “At the end of the day, democracy is about how you disagree with each other. And the way of disagreeing gives quality, or not, to democratic life. We will continue to strongly disagree on domestic issues, but we will continue to push the government to take risks, to be courageous and to move ahead with this application submission.”
With both Montenegro and Albania pushing their case for membership, a new momentum is being created, the paper wrote.
The story ended by reminding readers that Albania has had a long and traditionally close link with Turkey.
Asked The Turkish Daily News, “Who would have thought, a few years ago, that Ankara has lessons to learn from Podgorica and Tirana?”