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BBC reports - Sweden is in! (www.bbc.co.uk)

submitted 1 year ago by 2Xtreme21@lemmy.world to c/worldnews@lemmy.ml

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[-] 2Xtreme21@lemmy.world 28 points 1 year ago

Per the NYT, here’s what Sweden and NATO would do in return:

In return, Sweden and Turkey would continue to work bilaterally against terrorism, Sweden would help reinvigorate Turkey’s application to enter the European Union, and NATO would establish a new “special coordinator for counterterrorism,” he said.

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/10/world/europe/erdogan-turkey-sweden-nato.html

[-] NuPNuA@lemm.ee 3 points 1 year ago

Interesting, the idea of Turkey entering the EU was considered pie in the sky around the time of the Brexit referendum, now Sweden are helping them apply.

[-] damnYouSun@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago

Sweden will help them apply, but they've got to do all the prerequisite economic work themselves.

[-] gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 9 points 1 year ago

Not to mention, the governmental policy and structure work themselves. And the governmental structure and policy changes made by Erdogan are more or less what the EU wants fixed (e.g. erosion of judicial independence and rule of law; imprisonment of political opponents; strong democratic process that operates without internal interference). Sweden will abide by the letter of the agreement, as they should: they’ll help Turkey improve their EU bid. It’s just that “improve” absolutely encompasses moving that accession bid from “lol no” to “pretty goddamn unlikely but technically not impossible”.

Erdogan will probably be sore about that later, but he’s really only got himself to blame. If you wanna be in a club that has a rule where you’ve got to be a full and thriving democracy, it’s frankly stupid to be surprised when they won’t let you in because you’ve stopped being a full and thriving democracy. And the club members are under no obligation whatsoever to help you pretend that you are a full and thriving democracy when you clearly aren’t.