[antientropic]

We should count ourselves lucky Turkey didn't join the EU in 1995-2008. I'd rather have an authoritarian Turkey outside of the EU than inside. We have enough trouble with the likes of Orban and Kaczynski already.

And I don't follow the arguments for Turkey joining. Yes, it may have enormous potential; but nobody would say Mexico should join the US just because it has potential.

[k-mcgrady]

>> "We should count ourselves lucky Turkey didn't join the EU in 1995-2008. I'd rather have an authoritarian Turkey outside of the EU than inside."

On the other hand wouldn't they be subject to certain laws to prevent or reduce the authoritarianism if they were part of the EU?

[nickik]

The EU was designed with lots of hops that a country had to jump threw but because for political (even idiological reason) those things always gets ignored if they are in the way of the larger planes. Greece for example should never ever have been able to join the EU given the rules that existed and we can see how that turned out.

The EU simply has very little oversight of internal politcs of countries and because there is no way you can be kicked out, once you are in, you can do pretty much as you want. That is, as long as you don't need massiv amounts of financial aid.

[return0]

The EU is not the eurozone. Greece entered the EEC in 1981. Get your facts straight and please spell check.

[Tomte]

Poland is steering a very problematic course, but who cares when we don't even act on Hungary, which is much closer to a dictatorship than Turkey.

[Natanael_L]

Good luck enforcing it

[k-mcgrady]

Remove privileges. No democracy? Fine, no freedom of movement. Turkey would need the EU a hell of a lot more than it needs Turkey. Of course I'm not sure whether legally they can agree to sanctions like I suggested.