Sadly, this could have been avoided 20-15 years ago when Turkey was pretty liberal and aproaching the EU. This has been the biggest mistake of the EU history: letting the right declare it a christian club, and thus losing both a moderate islamic country and a bridge to the middle east.
Erdogan understood long ago that Turkey would never be accepted in the EU (even with big pressure coming from USA and UK) and has used the EU membership as a bargaining chip.
Now the membership option is openly dead, and Erdogan can proceed with his fundamentalist agenda.
Also, having been clearly betrayed by EU and OTAN in this military coup, he really has nothing to worry about anymore. Turkey will be out of NATO soon, and it will become a Russia ally.
What a blunder the west is playing: only 25 years after the URSS collapse, and instead of integrating Russia into the global institucions, the USA decided to proffit the strategic advantage to expand and provoke. We have managed to turn the possibility of true global integration, collaboration and progress into a new cold (actually warm and soon hot) war.
Erdogan understood long ago that Turkey would never be accepted in the EU (even with big pressure coming from USA and UK) and has used the EU membership as a bargaining chip.
Now the membership option is openly dead, and Erdogan can proceed with his fundamentalist agenda.
Also, having been clearly betrayed by EU and OTAN in this military coup, he really has nothing to worry about anymore. Turkey will be out of NATO soon, and it will become a Russia ally.
What a blunder the west is playing: only 25 years after the URSS collapse, and instead of integrating Russia into the global institucions, the USA decided to proffit the strategic advantage to expand and provoke. We have managed to turn the possibility of true global integration, collaboration and progress into a new cold (actually warm and soon hot) war.