Turkey Thread

[Husar]

The moment the EU showed its willful concessions, support for the EU in Turkey increased. According to one poll 62% of Turks want to join the EU, up from 42% in last year. About 7/10 believe Turkey will never be allowed in (http://www.economist.com/news/europe...ky-deal-turkey). Whether Turkey fits into this "value community" or not, you could argue that Turkey has been backing these values in an international scale for decades and by right deserve to have their allies search for a middle ground as they are now.

Don't pretend that Turkey's aggressive diplomacy and bullying of low profile countries isn't shared by a handful of EU states.

Erdogan goes against a whole lot of democratic values, the whole torturing in prisons and other human rights abuses are still not out of the way, then you have the unwillingness to even aknowledge past crimes, new crimes against the Kurdish population, possible ties to ISIS and so on. Where in this do you see a backing of liberal European values?
You can tell me all day how some EU countries do or at least support similar things but none of that is mainstream public perception and that is what counts. Politicians don't get elected based on the truth but on the mainstream public perception. Or you could say it is about how Europeans want to see their countries even if they fail to be like that and Turkey does not fit this at all.

Wow, how one-dimensional is it that you granted the Arab Gulf visa-free travel before your own neighbor, who is closer to your own "values," doesn't sabotage your interests as much, and pulls out its ambassadors from you the same way?

I have absolutely no idea on what grounds visa-free travel is given and there is usually about zero public discussion on the topic when it happens. In fact I did not even know that, you bring about the least relevant point here when it comes to public perception of other countries because visa restrictions do not seem to reflect public perception at all in this case.
And please explain how this visa-situation is one-dimensional, do you know they used only one criterium to decide this or are you just making this up?

Being a military ally presupposes intense cooperation and adapting to common standards at least in some sphere(s). Which promotes mutual understanding and makes it easier to cooperate on in other fields.

Turkey is a military ally of NATO and NATO is not the EU. Being in a good position to nuke the USSR is not the same as having a good human rights record or promising future in that regard. Saddam Hussein and Gaddhafi were also military allies at one point and Egypt has a lot of US tanks. Does that make all these countries eligible to join NATO or the EU? If Russia sells us gas for 40 years, did they earn their right to be in the EU for having been such a reliable business partner for 40 years? They kept millions of Germans warm in the winter for 40 years after all!
We also have more common basic standards with Russia than the US: the meter, the liter, the gram...