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Building regional alliance to stabilize Eastern Europe. [236]
@jon357
and they weren't a founder member of the EU
Italy has been there since the beginning yet they are not a founder?
Speaking about Turkey, Erdogan's biggest rival was just arrested, shortly before his likely nomination for the presidential election.
Istanbul mayor arrested days before likely presidential nomination
theguardian.com/world/2025/mar/19/istanbul-mayor-arrested-ekrem-imamoglu-days-before-likely-presidential-nomination-erdogan-ntwnfb
You can say the same about East and West Germany uniting,
You can also say that red is blue. The FRG had long been a stable democracy when the GDR joined, and the GDR became part of its' political system, and even if it had gone terribly wrong, the GDR was never large enough to become a veto player. An autocratic Turkey however could very well become one in the EU. One only has to look at the kind of damage Hungary, a country with 1/10 of Turkey's population.
I suspect that if the German constitution had offered the same kind of power to e.g. Thuringia, people in West Germany would have either amended it or would have been much more reserved about the prospect of German reunification.
A quick look at your posts suggests you have been doing this since your first post, years ago
Ok, so then it never worked on my devices, hence I never felt the need to fix it. Case solved.
It's definitely deliberate though, and he takes time to do it given all his quotes.
All I am doing is marking the parts I want to quote, use "quote" and then copy the parts I want to quote in there. If you want to believe that I am doing something else so be it.
@Bobko
Some countries that ranked higher than Turkey? Kyrgyzstan, Pakistan, and Lebanon.
Well, without having looked into it, each ranking puts different weight on certain criteria's. Turkey under Erdogan has purged a lot of people after the failed military coup, with a lot of people losing their jobs despite having no ties to the coup attempt. Turkey is one of the countries with the most journalists being jailed, enough to warrant its' own Wikipedia page.
Deniz Yücel was a prominent case of a journalist being incarcerated without any evidence for more than a year, iand he and other journalists were reportedly the victims of abuse during his time in prison.
en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deniz_Y%C3%BCcel
Ultimately you have Erdogan ruling the country for more than 20 years. During this time he changed the constitution in order to stay in power and later to give the previously mostly ceremonial office of president most of the power. Many criticial journalists and opposition politicians are jailed. His party has complete hegemony over the press, any dissenting voice in the state apparatus are purged. He has given his family and friends important positions in the government. His son-in-law was made finance minister (with terrible consequences for the economy) And now the mayor of Istanbul has been arrested. The one opponent Erdogan is still concerned about. Because as former mayor of Istanbul he knows the power and prestige of this office. Before his arrest there have been multiple other to neutralize him as a political threat, including the annulement of the mayoral election, on flimsy grounds.
I would argue that all of this paints a pretty bad picture.
