Further alignment than currently planned would create new issues around steel, cars, genetically modified crops and other substantive issues, diplomats said.
It’s complicated. Greece has historically actually been a huge proponent of Turkey’s EU accession as a way of what we see as “taming” Turkish aggression and border-revisionism. That is still in some ways the official Greek position, although with Erdogan it looks ridiculously fantastical and instead our oligarchy is delusional enough to think that allying itself with Apartheid Israel against Turkey is a good long term strategy.
In Sarah Paine’s maritime-vs-continental power, Greece has been trying to play the game of maritime power logic, i.e., prosperity through rules, whereas Turkey has been following more a continental power logic, that focuses on control of territory. So, the Greek strategy of engaging Turkey through the “web of rules” framework of the EU makes sense. There are however two wrinkles:
The Greek oligarchy has decided that hydrocarbons in the Aegean is going to be a source of wealth for them. So they also want to play the Turkish game of territory control. Turkey has escalated with the Blue Homeland doctrine.
In the short window of the early 2000s when Greece and Turkey were best buds, they decided to push for solving the Cyprus dispute in the EU. It led to the Annan Plan, and then Greek-Cypriot nationalists shit the bed.
But, frankly, the biggest actual opposition to Turkey’s candidacy has always come from prissy Western Europeans who pearl clutch about a Muslim country becoming an EU member. And this became a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I remember reading an article many years ago, with the then very liberal turkish prime minister, where it was stated turkish people spent more time at the cafe than at the mosque and how the belief was more cultural than religious.
It’s complicated. Greece has historically actually been a huge proponent of Turkey’s EU accession as a way of what we see as “taming” Turkish aggression and border-revisionism. That is still in some ways the official Greek position, although with Erdogan it looks ridiculously fantastical and instead our oligarchy is delusional enough to think that allying itself with Apartheid Israel against Turkey is a good long term strategy.
In Sarah Paine’s maritime-vs-continental power, Greece has been trying to play the game of maritime power logic, i.e., prosperity through rules, whereas Turkey has been following more a continental power logic, that focuses on control of territory. So, the Greek strategy of engaging Turkey through the “web of rules” framework of the EU makes sense. There are however two wrinkles:
But, frankly, the biggest actual opposition to Turkey’s candidacy has always come from prissy Western Europeans who pearl clutch about a Muslim country becoming an EU member. And this became a self-fulfilling prophesy.
I remember reading an article many years ago, with the then very liberal turkish prime minister, where it was stated turkish people spent more time at the cafe than at the mosque and how the belief was more cultural than religious.
Times long past.
Once Cyprus joined the EU all hope for admitting Turkey was utterly and completely lost.