To me, it felt like nothing could stop Turkey from becoming the most powerful and influential European country by the end of 21st century. But then Erdogan happened. Oh well.
What if citizens of a democratic country vote to make it less democratic? Is it still a democracy?
But if it was a simple boolean, then no, voting to cease being a democracy means you are in fact (either way) no longer a democracy. The opposite result would be a paradox.
That is, the views which Erdogan embodies have been brewing within the public, and are widespread enough. It may not have been visible at the time, or not as clearly, but it was there.
Same thing with Trump in the US, BTW.
It's not unusual for the candidate people didn’t vote for to be the one who would actually defend their rights better.
The change you need for them to be at the level of Europe is cultural and that takes many generations.
The EU can be a relatively effective machine for rapidly dragging countries forward, though a certain amount of cooperation is required.
> The change you need for them to be at the level of Europe is cultural and that takes many generations.
Some of the former Soviet and Warsaw Pact states have seen extremely rapid change and progress under the EU, particularly on democratisation and corruption reduction. Others, not so much; the EU can lead a horse to water, but it has difficulty making it drink if it doesn't want to (notably see Hungary). But you're certainly not talking _multiple generations_.
However, like with India, the "demographic dividend" window started on the late (~2023 for Turkey, ~2021 for India), unlike China and its one=child policy which kickstarted the demographic dividend extremely early in their demographic transition. For some (including me), this hsorten the window and i personnaly think they will exit this window before 2040, 2045 at the very best, but others (economists more than demographs) it won't have an impact on the duration and end in ~2050. In any case, the next 20/30 years are the true test for India and Turkey, so any person saying that its "too late" for either of those countries is wrong.