Hacker News Reader

Comment by bitcharmer | Hacker News Reader

I wonder what some mid- to long-term consequences of Turkey slipping into dictatorship will be for NATO as a whole.

It's clear Turkey is drifting away from the values held by the alliance members.

I'm so glad they haven't been accepted into the EU. That would be a disaster.

This is the sixth or seventh incident within the past 10 years. Every time economy goes to the gutter, they make a speech about how "outside forces are trying to bring us down" or "the world is envious" or "we will shut down twitter". Two weeks later, everything goes back to normal. So far, wikipedia took the longest to recover because everyone was too scared to take action without asking the president and he was probably too busy with other things like blaming trump for the devaluation of turkish lira or inciting war in idlib. It's mostly unmaintainable posturing. He got a little ruffled up after his candidate lost the election for the mayorship of istanbul last summer and the competing party started spilling out their money laundering schemes. It's usually all bark and no bite.

>"Every time economy goes to the gutter, they make a speech about how "outside forces are trying to bring us down"

Thank you for discovering universal rule. If you read US/Canadian press for example you might find out that for any bad thing happening inside some evil foreign entities are responsible. Any government needs an enemy to take people's eye from their own f..k ups.

For extra credit, start paying attention to how wedge issues work. "Let's you and him fight" is probably the second-oldest trick in the book.

> I'm so glad they haven't been accepted into the EU. That would be a disaster.

At that time though Turkey would have been a real welcome growth addition to the EU.

2005 +9% growth, the year the EU opened accession negotiations with Turkey.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Union%E2%80%93Turke...

I don't think economy is the only factor we should be considering when assessing perspective members.

I am Turkish and I feel like the culture difference is just too massive to be a member of EU right now. Economically, it would be an nice addition to EU, because Germany and France would very much enjoy the free access to the this huge market, so the current situation reflects that: EU has nice access to Turkish market with the current agreements, but they do not allow Turkey to be a member.

would you say the cultural difference was equally massive 20 years ago, when turkey was much more aligned towards an EU future? I don't think so much has changed in turkey culturally, but a lot has changed politically

No, I still think we were not ready 20 years ago and we still not are. The main problem with the political changes that it stole from the time we could have used to find a middle ground between both cultures and be compatible, but it was spent on nonconstructive things instead. I do not support that Turkish culture should be replaced by European one, but we could have made it work somehow.

What are the cultural differences that lead to incompatibility in your opinion, and which of those would you like to keep?

Growth is irrelevant unless you're a net-contributor. The EU really doesn't need more underdeveloped economies to support, it needs to get everybody to a similar level and deal with the tax havens, not do some SV-hypergrowth model where the issues will magically resolve themselves if only you can have 15% population growth by acquiring more members.

In my view China has used exactly some SV-hypergrowth model where almost every Chinese living is 50x better off than their parents.

Yes, and that's great for China. But for a country to benefit the EU by becoming a member, it would have to be above EU average and be a net-contributor. Turkey isn't anywhere close, so it would be another money sink for the EU.

Isn't the issue with the EU it's underperformance to what the Chinese did in half the time?

It's not that simple. You'll want to look at GDP/capita to compare countries in general.

My point is a different one though: If Turkey joined the EU, it wouldn't be a net contributor, it would get huge subsidies from the EU. As such, it wouldn't benefit the EU economically, and it would be a disaster politically. It may be nice for some private companies to get easier access to a new market, but the price would be much too high, and I'm fairly certain that the EU would not survive Turkey as a member state.

Yes, Turkey's economy was ok but how is its GDP per capita, democratic index, wealth inequality, human and minority rights like?

There's a reason EU countries have huge numbers of Turkish expats already despite Turkey's economy.

France just left a NATO exercise after aggressions from Turkish navy

https://www.france24.com/en/20200701-france-suspends-role-in...

Nothing. Macron's police forces were as bad and brutal with the yellow vests movement as the Turkish police was with the Gezi Park protests back in 2013, if anything some Western European leaders are taking notes. To say nothing about the very recent meeting between Macron and Putin which ended on a very congratulatory note from both sides.

As for Germany they have been in bed with Russia for a long time, and Austria is basically one of the main conduits for laundering money coming from "bad" Russian people (who steal from the majority of the Russian population).

Nothing.

Just like how Poland and Hungary are EU members and they are walking their own way not giving a f about anything, rewriting the constitutions and laws as they wish

And completely backing each other in the votes as well... It's a sham.

Yes, it's a sham that members of an organization are exercising their voting rights. Why not take away these rights in the name of democracy when they are not voting in the proper way.

> Just like how Poland and Hungary are EU members and they are walking their own way not giving a f about anything, rewriting the constitutions and laws as they wish

There are mechanisms in place to change constitutions and laws in all countries. The primary function of parliament is to legislate. In Poland, Hungary and the rest of the EU.

The problem (at least in Poland where I come from) is that the government/ruling party (PiS) are pushing laws that violate the constitution. The same party controls such bodies as consitution tribunal and the high court, as well as attorney general.

They can do whatever they want without having to touch the constitution. They just ignore it.

They are because being kicked out of the EU requires unanimous vote and hungary and poland just veto eachother into the EU. Nobody expected two states to become fascist at the same time when the EU was created.

This kind of exaggeration surely doesn't help the cause either.

Anti-democratic ethnic nationalism doesn't sound as catchy and fascism is a historically loaded term.

Anti-democratic may also not be the best term when a majority of the people more or less support what you do. Illiberal, populist, protectionist, sure, but these do not sound nearly as bad.

Authoritarian is a more descriptive term than anti-democratic.

>Nobody expected two states to become fascist at the same time when the EU was created

Since Germany and Italy was such a long time ago ;)

Bulgaria is another notable outlier. Formal EU member, democracy by constitution, government officials relatively well respected in Brussels. Inside - autocratic regime with no division of powers, facade institutions serving the interest of the political oligarchy, no authentic political parties representing the interests of the wider population.

I can remember Slovakia not doing all too well either on these grounds but couldn't find any so perhaps I'm mistaken.

> facade institutions serving the interest of the political oligarchy

seems in line with the EU approach, no?

I remember about 10-15 years ago, I went there during their Liberation Day. There was a TV on, and I could understand most of what was said, due to having visited Bulgaria many times before. The guy was standing on a podium, between two eagles. First they played Flight of the Valkyries. Then the guy started speaking openly, and to wild cheering form the crowds, about how he wanted to send Turks and Gipsys back to the countries they came from. I was just, "Holy hell, this is on public TV in Bulgaria? What YEAR is this???" I had to ask the shop keeper. He told me the show was live.

That was probably Volen Siderov, the founder of the first nationalist political party after the fall of communism. His "Ataka" party gained some serious momentum during 2005-2009, but is now largely defunct, with very little support, partly thanks to his inconsistent and outrightly rude behaviour. They always held rallies on the Liberation Day during those years and many Bulgarians were seeing "Ataka" as the only authentic party among all other creations of political engineering under the guidance of former state security.

I don't think it's fare to compare Poland to Turkey. No one is jailing judges.

It extremely hard to do a major judicial reform which is needed. The ruling party argument is that that the system of election the supreme court is flawed. There is a risk of deep state influence from the previous system and ties to Russia.

When Germany was reunified they a purge of people with ties to DDR. Nothing like that happened in Poland.

The ruling party has ex-communists in their ranks and somehow that's ok with them. The whole argument about cleansing the judicial ranks is bogus and a vulgar excuse for a power grab.

Weren’t they messing with Supreme Court in Poland?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com