Allow them in even with what they do to the Kurds?

As I said over at Talk Left, I hope that Turkey will join the EU, but there are several human rights issues that needs to be addressed first.
This is a step in the right direction though.

Actually this is direct work of Europe, who made it clear to Turkey that if it ever wanted to get into Europe, it'd better not kill Ocalan, the #1 Public Enemy in the eyes of the Turkish Army. The Death Penalty had been essentially unused on non-political criminals for quite some time anyway.

This is how the European Union works ; how it tried to prevent the rise of tyranny in Eastern Europe after the fall of the Soviet Union : promising admission on the constraint of having a real capitalist democracy. It worked to some extent ; compare the Baltic States to the Caucasian ones. Indeed its main problem is inherent geographical limits : It can work on Turkey, but not in Maghreb (although Morocco at one point wanted to submit its candicacy), or in the middle east.