duckzilla wrote:Turkish authoritarianism is not much worse than Hungarian (and maybe Polish/Bulgarian/Romanian). It is again a weak argument given the amount of "pluralist democracies" which are already in the club.
This is a very ignorant and light usage of the word "authoritarianism". Romania does not have an authoritarian government. No citizen rights are being encroached upon or denied right now by the current political coalition. The problem they are creating is with their attempt to control and tame the judiciary to the extent that they want anti-corruption investigations to be basically neutered. But that's not authoritarianism. They're not controlling the media or using the military to abusively stay in power, which is one of the characteristics of authoritarian regimes (such as we've seen in South America). It's pretty far from that definition. Let's not play with words, let's use very precise words/labels, which can be based on evidence and cool-headed analysis.
The difference in how democratic these countries are and Turkey is huge. If we take only freedom of the press... In Romania, you can pretty much publish anything, you can criticise any party, any leader. In fact, freedom of the press in Romania is one of the main and most powerful factors in what made Romania implement some reforms over the years which allowed it to join the EU eventually. Lots of corruption cases that were eventually prosecuted were first raised to the public's attention by press investigations. Our press has pretty much played the role of a social gadfly, constantly prodding our political class for further reforms and for more transparency.
We don't imprison journalists here just because they criticise the government or because they unveil some corruption cases involving politicians. By contrast, Turkey has been cracking down on the press which is not favourable to their supreme leader. They have been arresting journalists from media outlets that criticised the government. They have been cracking down hard on people who were suspected to have links to particular reformist groups like the Gülen movement.
Romania, on the other hand, was a champion in terms of fighting corruption just a few years ago, before the current political coalition came to power and started pushing back on those reforms. Let's not forget that just a few years ago Romania was the country that sent most politicians and high corruptions cases to prison in the whole Europe. Tell me another European country that sent a former prime minister to prison on corruption charges. We did that and a lot more. We prosecuted and sent to prison over 2000 cases of high corruption. I don't think that there is one single state in the EU or Europe right now which can boast a similar record. Sure, we're coming from a much worse situation and we do need to also make a lot of progress, but let's not negate the progress that we made some years ago. Lately, the current coalition in power has made attempts to roll back those reforms and put a leash on these investigations on high corruption, because some of their leaders are directly targeted by these legal investigations.
Now show me something similar taking place in Turkey. There is no such thing. I mean, for fuck's sake, the party in power right now in Turkey has just lost the elections in Istanbul and they are forcing a rerun. Despite all the protests, despite the fact that they have organised these elections that they have lost (so they cannot claim that elections have been tampered with by their opponents), it's obvious that they are trying to undo a major loss. Nothing of the sort is happening in Romania or Hungary or any other Eastern or Southeastern European country.
We are miles apart. And I'm saying that Turkey cannot join the EU simply because they don't fit the culture. They're not really part of European culture. Sure there is a small area of Turkish territory that is located in geographical Europe but that's not a substantial argument for including Turkey in geographical or cultural Europe. The bulk of the country is in Asia Minor.
Secondly, due to Anatolia being historically a part of geographical Europe.
Well, yeah, Anatolia was part of cultural and ethnic Europe when it was inhabited by Greeks, Celts and Romans. But then Greeks and Romans also colonised Northern Africa to some extent, but that doesn't make Northern Africa part of Europe either geographically or culturally, right now.