Yes, and Turkey (80 million middle eastern people) will get EU membership.
Merkel cut a deal w/ Turkey to take back immigrants in return for EU membership.
link: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-tu...
Merkel cut a deal w/ Turkey to take back immigrants in return for EU membership.
link: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-europe-migrants-germany-tu...
Even if Merkel tried to push for Turkish membership, it'd take years of negotiations and further years of reforms before anything could happen.
EDIT: Note that what the article actually says is that she has offered to help accelerate the membership discussions. But even if Germany pushes to ensure talks with Turkey are fast-tracked, the ultimate thing that prevents Turkish EU membership is that Turkey needs to carry out extensive reforms - both political and economical - as well as convincing several EU member states not to veto membership before there's any way they will be allowed entry. Even if the negotiations concluded tomorrow, it'd take years - probably a decade or more - for Turkey to complete the required reforms (and that assumes the government would even want to carry out these reforms, which Erdogan seems totally uninterested in). I think it's more likely membership will take on the order of 15-20 years.
Even if Turkey solves it's human rights issues, which are a big blocker right now, it still takes a single EU country to veto Turkey accession.