Muslim population impedes Turkey’s EU accession?

The main reason for Europe’s opposition to Turkey’s joining the European Union is its Muslim population, The Wall Street Journal reports.

The daily notes that Turkey has been trying to join EU since 1987. “It is Turkey’s overwhelming embrace of Islam which is the real, but unspoken, issue,” the WSJ writes adding that country’s EU joining problems are not linked with Cyprus dispute or implementation of political reforms.

European leaders fear that Turkey can become the “second only to Germany in scale if it were to join the EU,” as the country has a population of 72.5 million, the newspaper says.