Can Europe withstand Türkiye?

From Agis Virutis

In the past few days we have heard Erdogan say that Turkey wants to resume the EU accession process. This was a goal that Greece actively and enthusiastically supported in the past, as the Greek political system in the past believed that the desire to take advantage of the benefits of its accession to the European Union would be sufficient to discourage Turkey from continuing its hostile behavior towards Greece, and an incentive to agree to resolve any disputes over the continental shelf with positions less extreme.

This point of view turned out to be wrong.

Sharing the benefits of the European Union with other members was not enough incentive for Turkey to join the thousands of fronts that diverged from basic European ideology and legislation, but rather used the privileges provided by the European Union during the transitional regime to join. To boost its trade with the European Union, and then channel huge sums of these gains into remedial action against other neighboring countries.

Turkey has intervened destabilizingly in northern Iraq against the Kurds of the region, also in destabilizing Syria, also through the Muslim Brotherhood trying to destabilize Egypt, but also in support of Hamas executives who were trying to destabilize. Any truce (or even a balance of terror) between Israel and Palestine, in Lebanon, in Libya and perhaps ultimately in business dealings with ISIS.

What has changed for the better since Türkiye abandoned its accession path?

maybe nothing…

What can Greece gain today from supporting Turkey’s accession to the European Union, seeing that all its past revisionist “improvement” of its neighbor has turned into false hopes.

Erdogan’s acceptance yesterday of Sweden’s accession to NATO after a year and a half of excessive bargaining with the Americans gives a glimpse of what might happen in a united Europe if a full-fledged Turkey had the opportunity to veto its operations until the sun rose. the West.

Perhaps the EU can absorb a country like Turkey 20-25 years after the accession process.

What is not at all certain is whether the European Union, in the way it operates today, can survive long after Turkey has joined its bosom.

And this is something that needs a lot of thinking, a lot of changes in the structure of Europe.

Are the many changes in the structure of the European Union finally worth it or can they be made? In order to be able to bring Turkey into its bosom, it is something that the people of its member states will decide by choosing those future governments that will support or refuse to include it, in the choice of European voters.

Perhaps twenty years ago, when conditions were more favorable, Turkey could have succeeded in joining the European Union if it had chosen to spend its energy and resources on rapprochement rather than on its neo-Ottoman narrative.

Now he may have to wait many years for the ground to become fertile again for such a debate.

It is a far-reaching goal that will eventually come to the fore of European voters, and as evidenced by the rapid shift of national parliaments of EU member states to the right, towards opposition rather than migration flows. Radically different European cultures of support as evidenced by the rise of the AfD in Germany and Le Pen in France, this answer is probably negative.

No European politician will be able to give an affirmative answer, except for those whose term begins 20 years from today.

maybe later…

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