I definitely like using turkey as an example of how quickly a relatively healthy democracy can turn into an opressive theocratic regime when pointing out how close the USA became a similar nation just this past year and warning friends to not be complacent in upcoming election cycles.
> Western capitals were dead silent during the 2016 coup attempt.
Yeah, and for the better. The coup attempt is very controversial and it's not good guys vs bad guys situation.
To be fair, the west cheered for Erdogan up until Erdogan completely abandoned his initial positions. Later, the west simply worked with Turkey and Erdogan was properly elected through the years.
What the West was supposed to do? Invade Turkey? Assassinate the politician who consistently got about %50 of the vote of the Turks on elections with no less than %85 voter turnaround?
The way Fethullah Gülen got red-carpet immigration treatment in the US stinks to high heaven, though. It seems suspicion the US was behind the coup attempt is widespread in Turkey and not limited to AKP supporters.
Well, for once the CIA agent Graham Fuller[0] actively supported Gulen's green card application[1]. I don't know if Gulen was a CIA himself but there are ample clues that he is at least involved with the US government. CIA has a rich history of pulling such operations. That's Fascinating read actually.
He was given a green card as a "prominent educator" despite not having a degree himself. Anyone who's been through the US immigration wringer knows the process is very strict, and prima facie Gülen was not eligible.
The only similar case that springs to mind is the maid of the former Indian vice-consul in NY's maid:
That's not me. You can tell by the way the letters in the username are arranged. My point is that the guy behind the coup has known ties to the CIA and in my opinion that stinks. Of course I wouldn't know if or what role CIA had in the coup but I find it fair to ask the questions due to the established links.
My mistake, I was browsing through the user page so I didn’t see the name of the user I originally replied to.
Sorry.
However, I bet someone like Gülen would get red carpet immigration treatment even if the CIA wasn’t involved. I don’t necessarily doubt CIA involvement, I just doubt that his immigration treatment is indicative of anything.
They did all that but Turkey is also a powerful country and important ally.
EU can stall Turkey's admission in the EU and they did that however they also need Turkey to tackle the refugee crisis, Russia and other issues.
EU got to the brink of collapse with 1 million Syrian refugees, Turkey is hosting 5 million of them. EU and Erdogan got a deal, EU turns blind eye to some of Erdogan's stuff and Erdogan takes back all the refugees that EU sends back.
Similar agreements are in place with the USA. US lowers the heat under Erdogan and Turkey keeps the peace in Kabul. Stuff like that.
> EU got to the brink of collapse with 1 million Syrian refugees
That's overblown. Support for the EU is the highest for a decade and close to all time highs. Brexit seems to be proving something of a cautionary lesson.
Now the support is strong, it wasn’t as strong in 2016 when refugees were marching in Europe and EU’s proposed solution for the refugees was to distribute them evenly to all states.
EU managed to sign(actually, re negotiate the one signed in 2013 that Turkey no longer wanted) a send back deal with Turkey, now it’s all good.
> EU got to the brink of collapse with 1 million Syrian refugees (...)
That's quite the extraordinary claim. Can you offer any extraordinary evidence that supports your claim? Because from what I've gathered, it barely holds any bearing with reality.
Yes, check Brexit and Marie Le Pen, politics in Poland, Hungary, Germany back in 2016. The refugee crisis was a central theme back then and anti-EU politics managed to gain significant grounds thanks to it. In UK, they even passed the mark narrowly and left the EU.
Sure, the refugees are never the only EU issue but the 2016 crisis pushed EU to its limits and even chopped of part of it. That's why EU was at the bring of collapse and if it continued there was as strong probability that anti-EU politics would prevail in other(than UK) EU states too.
One country left the EU and was made an example. Britain is worse off for it and didn't gain anything. The entire world had the pendulum swing to conservative governments, including the US which had even less refugees at the border.
I don't appease bigots. We are going to see many more refugees within our lifetime and the "1st world" cannot ignore the problem forever by sending them to different poor countries.
It's not the number of refugees that the EU can't handle, it's the fact that they're not white, english-speaking christians. We can bullshit around that, but statistically refugees commit fewer crimes and attain higher education in larger numbers than native-born citizens.
Germany, to give an example I can speak to, has a fertility rate around 1.5. Quite frankly most of the EU could really use the new blood if they could only get over the fact that those people weren't born on magical "EU soil"
You mean Brexit, which started 3 years before the Syrian refugee crisis and Marie Le Pen, whose support numbers moved from 17.8% to 21.3% after the Syrian refugees? That's your "major fracturing"? Meanwhile Poland and Hungary have been moving to a far right dictatorship pretty steadily.
> Turkeys' EU accession plan went nowhere, despite Turkey being genuinely serious for years on end.
Only the Turks are to blame for this. Maybe they were serious, but they did a shit job.
Had Turkey quit their bullshit regarding Cyprus, things would probably have gone very differently. Turkey has no legitimate claim to any of Cyprus, as evidenced by literally nobody wanting to live in the Turkish controlled shithole.
From a purely pragmatic point of view it’s hard to imagine a world in which northern Cyprus is genuinely worth more to Turkey than EU membership would be.
Well, I beg to disagree. There are millions of Turks living in Northern Cyprus. Prior to Turkey's military intervention, the Turkish people were being massacered. If Turkey ever ceases to support Northern Cyprus, there needs to be some sort of military presence to keep peace.
Northern Cyprus is not just a lifeless island, it's a place that has been the home for many Turks for hundreds of years. If having lived in the same country for hundreds of years after conquering it doesn't give you a legitimate claim to reside there, I don't know what will.
I think the value of human life is much more important than getting into a union. The EU shouldn't have pushed this requirement.
