Comment by matt4077 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by matt4077 | Hacker News Reader

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It will probably go done in history as the EU's worst mistake – far worse than Greece or Brexit – not to have provided Turkey with a realistic path to membership. Around 1995-2005, Turkey was growing economically, a civil society was taking root and the people had an optimistic outlook friendly to the west. Erdogan was a mildly-religious fan of the EU and keen on economic progress in his first years.

I'm not saying that Turkey was ready for membership back then, but it became pretty clear that it wasn't a lack of democracy or poverty that was the main hinderance of turkish membership: there were just too many EU countries (and you only need one) that Turkey just had an inacceptable ratio of churches to mosques.

Around election-time EU leaders would conveniently drop most pretenses and admit to this more or less in the open.

For Erdogan, who was achieving ever more success at home, every EU visit became a humiliation. Pretty soon, he turned his back on Europe.

To have a chance of joining the EU, Turkey had to implement EU rules, and prepare for the free movement of people. It was nowhere near doing that.

The following is quoted from https://fullfact.org/europe/turkey-likely-join-eu/

Turkey first applied to join what was then the EEC in 1987. It was declared an eligible candidate in 1997. Negotiations were formally opened in 2005.

Now, in 2016, negotiations have closed on just one out of 35 chapters—‘science and research’, which was completed in 2006, the year after it was opened.

Of the remaining 34 chapters, 14 have been opened for negotiation.

In 2006, the EU decided that until Turkey agrees to remove obstacles to free movement of goods (including transport restrictions) between it and Cyprus, no more chapters will be provisionally closed. Eight chapters (including areas fundamental to EU law, such as free movement of goods and right of establishment and freedom to provide services) will not even be opened.

The other way to look at it is that Europe dodged a huge bullet by not creating said path to the EU for Turkey. It's not like Erdogan would have turned away from being an authoritarian dictator simply because Turkey was in the EU and things like Brexit would now have been a minor worry compared to an unstable state run by a authoritarian dictator that exemplifies everything the EU abhors. It's more than just the ratio of churches to mosques that makes Turkey ineligible for EU membership and Turkey/Erdogan have been proving that for years now.

He would not be able to do many of the things he does simply because he would have to conform to EU regulation. He may be popular at home, but EU is also popular, and i believe a credible path to membership would strengthen that support.

The EU did not initiate the first schism between the EU and Turkey; it was Turkey's refusal to accept Cyprus (by that time a full EU member) as a sovereign state that caused all other negotiations to come to a halt.

I don't think it's fair to put this on either the EU or Turkey alone. There were many factors prevent Turkish membership but the parent is right: religion played a huge role in the public opinion.

I remember Merkel actually saying that Europe was founded on "Christian ideals" (nevermind the actual ideals having more to do with post-renaissance secularism than original Christian dogma) -- the same Merkel nationalists are now blaming for the "Islamification" of Europe.

If Turkey had been more compatible and the EU members had been less bigoted, I imagine Turkey could have even helped with the "Islamification" so many people are now worrying about -- it would created a European example for how Islam can work under Western ideals and prevented a lot of the guilt and xenophobia that lies at the root of a lot of the conflicts with Islam we now have in Europe.

>the actual ideals having more to do with post-renaissance secularism //

Could you go in to that a little, a few examples maybe of the main non-Christian ideals that underpin the founding of Europe.

Some pointers to start with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

the central doctrines [..] were individual liberty and religious tolerance in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church [..] along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A...

The ideals of the French Revolution eventually became the underpinnings of both the US Constitution and the European and UN Declarations of Human Rights. The reason why they're called non-Christian is because they originated as a countermovement to religious doctrine.

  The ideals of the French Revolution eventually became
  the underpinnings of both the US Constitution and the
  European and UN Declarations of Human Rights.

Just a small timeline correction: the Constitution was actually ratified a year before the start of the French Revolution.

Turkey still has troops parked in what is technically territory belonging to another EU member state (Cyprus). This had to be sorted out somehow if accession were not to be vetoed, and Turkey was moving very slowly on the issue.

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