“European customs and values” is a bit hard to define I feel. The eastern European states are quite different from the rest. Poland and Sweden are in stark contrast to one another, as is even Sweden and Germany.
I’d like to say that the EU is quite strongly in favour of democracies, which Turkey definitely isn’t. I’ve a dear friend who basically didn’t dare discuss politics because of the potential fallout that could have on his job and living situation. He’s since moved away from Turkey and his life has improved dramatically.
It’s difficult for me as a Swede to reconcile the fact that speaking out against the state could land me in hot water. Like I can call our PM a bag of dicks, and make poop-caricatures of any parliament member all day if I wanted to, and it wouldn’t necessarily have any fallout beyond burning some bridges with people.
Turkey’s also heavily religious conservative, and as a gay person that doesn’t sit well with me. That extends to all currently-in-the-EU countries that match that description as well, though.
I think you touched on the main aspects where things are different. Although, yes, there are many cultural differences across Europe as well (and I see that as a strength) they don’t run as deep. I would add my worry about their treatment of the Kurd minority. To be fair, however, things do change over the years, and there are a couple more countries that have turned for the worse, IMO.
Oh yeah, the treatment of the Kurds is harrowing. During the early days of Sweden’s bid for NATO, Turkey asked for a lot. They gave us lists of people to be extradited, and even made requests for our constitution to be changed to accommodate this. Basically extortion.
Needless to say, Turkey (and Hungary) hasn’t exactly garnered a lot of goodwill here in Sweden lately. A part of me is even a bit bummed out about the NATO thing, because the idea of allying with Turkey, and potentially having to deploy troops to defend them should it come to that, doesn’t sit well with me.
the idea of allying with Turkey, and potentially having to deploy troops to defend them should it come to that, doesn’t sit well with me.
That a good thing which comes from a larger coalition. The more countries involved that won't attack each other, and the more counties that will aid other countries in the coalition if needed, the less likely there is a need to raise those defenses. I'm glad to see Finland and Sweden joining, not because of the troops and resources they might commit, but because it improves everyone's self sovereignty, including those nations which aren't full members.
Quite the shock when Erdogan tried to blackmail his country into the EU. I hope Sweden will also not give in when it comes to burning religious books.
I would say there is a huge difference in culture and values when comparing to those people from Turkey who are very conservative or religious. We even have some here who voted in Germany for Erdogan!
But the difference isn’t that big with secular, non-conservative people. It is like Turkey has two sides.
European values are irrelevant for being a NATO member. But I believe being a democracy is a requirement, but USA is a somewhat flawed democracy too. But hen again no democracy is perfect.
Not NATO, the EU. Turkey is in NATO already, the other poster was probably mentioning EU because Erdogan has recently indicate he wanted to join before letting Sweden in NATO.
That doesn’t even make any sense. Erdogan has done nothing but backpedal on all the efforts Turkey had done before him to increase cooperation and become a member of EU. Erdogan clearly does NOT want Turkey to become a member of EU.
Also it’s completely unrealistic for Erdogan to wish to Join EU before Sweden becomes a member of NATO. In NATO all members want Sweden in, except Turkey and Hungary. In EU there are ZERO countries that want Turkey in the EU. So how would he realistically imagine it would be possible for Turkey to join EU before Sweden joins NATO.
Turkey is probably more at risk of being thrown out of NATO, unless they begin to moderate their behavior. Technically they don’t meet the requirements to be a member of NATO anymore.
It’s not even about customs or abstract values in general. Some of the past and present aspirants or aspirants in spe seem to see only the economic side of things, while considering the legally binding parts of the treaty like the European Convention on Human Rights or the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union more like an optional thing.
Quite the shock when Erdogan tried to blackmail his country into the EU. I hope Sweden will also not give in when it comes to burning religious books.
I would say there is a huge difference in culture and values when comparing to those people from Turkey who are very conservative or religious. We even have some here who voted in Germany for Erdogan!
But the difference isn’t that big with secular, non-conservative people. It is like Turkey has two sides.
Isn’t abolishing the death penalty part of the requirements? And there’s some more that makes it simply unrealistic to think it’s happening in the next decade or two.
It’s like a 30 point check list and so far they’ve completed zero or maybe one. It’s a long way.
Erdogan reinstated the death penalty at the coup, so basically he has moved away from EU membership since taking control.
I think it’s a good thing that it is a long process, even if people moan about Ukraine not getting a shortcut. Imagine if Turkey had completed the membership before the coup. That would have been horrible today. Similarly it would be unwise to allow Ukraine in right now, since we have no idea of what will happen after the war. A dictator could potentially take the power there too. The requirements aren’t just bureaucracy, they do serve a purpose.
Personally I hope that they both succeed eventually, but it has to be done properly. Both Ukraine and Turkey could contribute positively to EU if only they manage to get proper democratic governments and follow human rights etc. first.
They’ve had F-16s for years, producing most of them domestically (under license). Maybe some upgrades?
Turkey’s been developing their own “5th gen” fighter, and they do have a pretty decent domestic military industrial base, but they got barred from purchasing the F-35 in 2019 when they bought an S-400 system from Russia - I wonder if he wants those. It’d need some US congressional cooperation to make happen, though.
It sounds like it’s going through because Sweden and Turkey have worked together to address legitimate concerns about Turkish national security? But I don’t see any mention of the EU talks; the article neither dismissing them or addressing them at all (unless I’m just dumb right now and am mis-read something. So I’m still wondering if those talks are “off the table”, or if someone could please correct me about my misunderstandings
Nah. Sweden doesn’t seem to have given any firm commitments about security beyond “We work on it together”, which can mean exactly as little or as much it fancies Sweden after they are in NATO.
To me this is simply “Erdogan has decided he has seen this bargaining to completion and it would look really bad, if this thing wasn’t resolved by Vilnius. Pressure started to mount with This is starting to be embarrassing Recep from rest of NATO” and he simply called it good.
Nothing needs to have been changed on this exact moment, He just decided he has tried long enough and has exhausted the concessions and no point dragging it on. Instead of benefit, it started to be more hindrance in his calculation to keep this going.
He can now tan in the limelight in Vilnius as the leader who saved the situation at last minute. Mind you the problem was of his own creation, but hey those are the best kind of problems. You have exact control and can “solve the problem” at exactly the most suitable last minute moment. Actual problems are harder for “last minute saviour” credibility collection. You might actually fail to solve the problem and thats not good.
I think the US congress would veto Biden’s approval (or already has), if I’m reading correctly? But I can’t find any follow-up as to what actually made the deal go through.
I also wonder if the EU is going to reopen talks about Turkey joining. But seems like Sweden has also done a lot of legwork already to jibe with Turkish security concerns, so maybe that was enough? I’m curious too
Talks weren’t suspended because the EU hates Turkey (national politics and sentiment nonwithstanding Berlaymont just doesn’t care about those things) but because the accession procedure went nowhere, and in some areas backslided.
As such reopening is contingent on nothing but Turkey actually taking its prospect of joining seriously. I wonder if Erdogan understands that “Sweden reinvigorating Turkey’s application” pretty much means Sweden giving Turkey private lessons in how to be less of a shithole… in any case it doesn’t surprise me that Sweden agreed to such language.
It’s a well known issue on plenty of popular sites (Facebook/Twitter/reddit/etc.). I’m sure federated sites like Lemmy, Mastodon, and others are just as susceptible to it as well.
I’ve commented on posts in the past to try and combat it and occasionally still do. But there’s a real limit to the amount of stress that comes with trying to convince someone that they’ve been lied to and could be misleading others by repeating what they heard. Especially with the whole “fake news” crap that has been surging I’m the last handful of years. Any proper data used to support truth is just dismissed as fake news.
At some point we have to start blaming the people reading this stuff. I’m not saying that social media platforms shouldn’t try to address this problem, but clearly they don’t know how to, and don’t care. That’s why we’re here, after all.
It’s misinformation directed at a certain target group. I bet you that there’s misinformation out there directed at people like you and me that we’ve fallen for.
Oh surely. But I personally I would consider that a failure on my part. I’m not saying it’s all on users, but I do wish people thought more about what they read.
I agree, but governments are poor at educating adults. (Well, they're poor at educating children, too.) There's no way the situation will improve by blaming the problem on the users.
In the past I would have agreed with you, but in the age of increasingly sophisticated AI being able to nearly perfectly imitate people’s voices or images, I think we need to start asking more of social media companies. When truth starts looking indistinguishable from fiction we’re going to need to find new ways of parsing which is which. Fact checking will be extremely important.
It’s not going to get that frenzy as this happens almost every week now. They had their time in the spotlight after that kid washed up in Turkey and it was in the front page, but people can’t keep being invested emotionally when it’s carried on for another decade.
The western powers don’t care about migrants, they’re busy dropping bombs and sanctions in their home countries to stop any revolution. “These children will die in the name of God, amén.”
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