Napier, MSCNewsWire, 25 June 2016 - New Zealand diplomat Michael Lake serving as the EU’s ambassador to Turkey was responsible for instituting the most daring strategy in the history of the European community. It was to enroll Turkey as a full member.

In the event it turned out to be the most dangerous of the EU’s expansionary schemes and has just been exposed as the most divisive too.

Mr Lake (pictured above), an alumnus of King's High School, was the EU’s ambassador to Turkey from 1991 to 1998. His comparatively long tour of duty there emphasised the importance of his strategic role.

It was Mr Lake’s skill as an envoy that long after his departure to other international roles ensured that the US-inspired concept of Turkey joining the EU was viewed as a desirable objective and thus kept in play.

Right up until the referendum on the UK’s membership in fact. The prospect hovered spectre-like over the referendum and gained strength through the refusal of the Remain movement to talk about it.

Notably this applied to British Prime Minister David Cameron himself. He failed to convincingly deny that Turkey’s membership of the EU was still on the table, thus conveying the impression that it was still was a live issue, and thus a possibility.

In the event Turkey’s president Recep Erdogan seemed to walk away from the long-incubated EU membership scheme just hours before the Brexit vote. He described the EU as a “Christian club.”

Simultaneously Mr Erdogan installed a series of executive hard-line policies designed to dismay the United States which views Turkey as the most secular of Islamic nations and thus the most acceptable to the EU and indeed to the West as a whole.

Mr Lake meanwhile is known to have had his own reservations on Turkey’s membership and these appear in the book he compiled on the topic, The EU & Turkey – A Glittering Prize or a Millstone (below). It remains the seminal text on the topic.

Long retired, Mr Lake’s pivotal role in Europe’s hinge of fate remains unknown in his native land, New Zealand , which he visits only occasionally .

Otherwise he and his family divide their time between a London base in Notting Hill and a house in the countryside.

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