YP Letters: Complex issues that lie at heart of the debate over Europe

Refugees and migrants are helped by volunteers on their arrival aboard a dinghy at Mytilene on the northeastern Greek island of Lesbos, Tuesday, Feb. 23, 2016. Nearly 100,000 migrants and refugees have travelled to Greek islands from nearby Turkey so far this year.

I AM a Eurosceptic, but I believe that we are stronger as a member of a reformed and deregulated European Union. However, the aspect of defence is complex.

The only country which has recently met force with force is Turkey, when they shot down a Russian fighter, when it intruded into their airspace. Perhaps we should invite a couple of Turkish squadrons to the United Kingdom for a long exercise and see what they do to any of our Russian intruders.

Turkey is a powerful member of Nato, but we won’t let them join the EU, and yet we invite Bulgaria and Slovakia and are considering Serbia (all recent allies of Russia).

The only thing that the current Russian government will recognise is force. Otherwise they just laugh at the paper tiger from behind their 2018 World Cup flags and carry on bombing hospitals.

What will we do if they kill any UK nationals? We need to show them that Nato is a force to be reckon with and if they go against humanitarian conventional behaviour, we will teach them not to. Turkey is a nation whose friendship we should cherish and the Russians should decide if they want to remain members of the human race.

From: Robert Mansfield, Old Lane, Bramhope, Leeds.

IN a recent interview, George Osborne made the startling admission that the Treasury has made no plans for what would happen if we voted to leave the EU.

We can now see that this is part of his strategy to frighten us into voting to stay ‘In’.

Whenever he or David Cameron use the oft quoted phrase “a leap in the dark” to describe a vote to leave, we should realise that much of the dark has been created deliberately by him.

An example of this is farm subsidies. Many farmers are saying that they will vote to stay in because no one has told them that the subsidies will continue if we pull out. You can be sure that if George Osborne was for coming out of the EU, we would be presented with a Treasury basic framework of how an exit would work, including an assurance that farm payments will continue. I think we are being manipulated.

From: Terry Palmer, South Lea Avenue, Hoyland, Barnsley.

IF we are to believe what David Cameron came back with from his EU renegotiations in Brussels 10 days ago, why is it that not one iota is being put into EU law by Treaty change now?