Quote Originally Posted by Furunculus View Post
if turkey has turned away from western liberal democracy then it is in part the eu's fault.

this was not the attitude taken with the balkans, and turkey earned its place in the eu with 40 years on nato's front line.
Yes and no. If you said this 8-10 years ago it would have been an understandable sentiment. Erdogan actually showed a lot of promise in his early years, and still leaders like Sarkozy ruled out Turkey's membership. Many reasons for that, but it's safe to say that changing perceptions of islam had a lot to do with it.

But meanwhile, Erdogan has convincingly shown himself to be a thug. And arguably, Turkey's membership should not even have been seriously considered 10 years ago for reasons that are often forgotten. I'm thinking about the Cyprus dispute mostly, something that most people are dimly aware of but which I have an peculiar interest in. As it stands, Turkey doesn't recognise one of the EU's members as a sovereign state, and it's extremely easy to argue that Turkey is the largest obstacle for a permanent solution for the dispute.

Incidentally, the 2004 unification plan that the (Greek) Cypriots rejected was a completely one-sided deal engineered to placate Turkey. The United States and the United Kingdom strongly argued in favor of the deal because, as you said, Turkey is an important NATO ally.