The EU and Turkey is a complex relationship. Turkey has been trying for some 40 years to get in and still is nowhere. The issue does start with the fact that if Turkey does join as it has the 2nd highest population behind Germany it would have the 2nd highest number of seats in the European parliament, giving it instant power. Soon Turkey would take over Germany and you would have this large muslim nation having a huge impact on EU affairs. Most don't want this, but some countries like Britain and Italy support this as its a way they could counter the dominant German-French block in the EU.
There are other reasons, one being that there are already millions of Turks living in the EU and we don't have a good reputation, especially in Germany. The EU couldn't handle the influx of Poles, Romanians and Bulgarians, so the concept of 78million Turks having free access to the EU is a nightmare for most. Turkey is huge, Istanbul alone has a population of 15million its bigger than most EU nations, the EU just couldn't handle a country of that size which still has a relatively poor population. Turkey has a big economy but the wealth isn't spread equally at all, so to fund that would be a step too far for the EU.
The other issue is that Turkey no longer has this urge to join, 15 years ago a good 80% of the population looked favourably to joining the EU, now 70% doesn't want to join. The EU's at fault for this because they toyed with Turkey for a long time and flat out lied on many occasions. The frustration grew to such a level to which today even with critical elections coming up, no political party even has the EU on their agenda, its become irrelevant. This is why they say Turkey turned towards the middle east. The EU pushed Turkey that it began to make new friends in the middle east, it wasn't an ideological change, it was to build economic and diplomatic relations with Iraq, Iran, Syria and the rest of the middle east, not only them though Turkey built excellent relations with Russia which annoyed America of course. Of course all this imploded in epic fashion.
The ideological switch is something else, its the agenda of the government to create a religiously conservative population who maintains links with the old Ottoman territories and muslim world. Before Turks didn't care for this, 80 years of secularism and being taught in schools that Arabs were bad and that the only solution was western democracy and rampant Turkism. Turkey can be considered liberal in a sense but a majority of the country is conservative. The liberals supported Erdogan in the beginning, 15 years ago the enemy was the army and the liberals in Turkey loved the fact that Erdogan knocked the army out. Now things changed people realised that Mr Erdogan wants to stay in power, the media is firmly in his pocket, there are more religious schools than ever before, they are even converting normal schools to religious schools. 50% of the country adore the man, while the other 50% hate him. Turkey is truly split down the middle because of Erdogan. He is such a polarising figure and he is the one to blame for this. He always uses a 'us vs them' rhetoric, he even called himself and his followers the 'black Turks', oppressed for years by the secularist 'white Turks'. A lot of his supporters love the fact that he trolls the others in the country thats why they support him. Also his support levels rise when Merkel visits Turkey begging Turkey to stop the flow of refugee's at least thats how Merkel's visit was portrayed anyway.
Hanzo...... Did you know Satan lives in Turkey ? His throne is in Pergamum.
Pergamum is just old Greek/Roman ruins, I don't think theres any religious link to it.
My Russian is weak, but I've been following this entire situation on their military forums. It seems to me that they're not satisfied with the state of Syrian army. Their troops are tired after 5 yrs of constant war.
Russians however, are actually dropping their bombs from old soviet stocks with only few high-end bombs being used.
It's strange how everybody is sucking up to Kurds which was evident during that siege of Kobane. In the end, Kurds will get some autonomous region and that's it.
Qatar is an interesting country. small in size, small in population (half the people there are foreigners), and yet it's the richest country in the world per capita. it's similar to the UAE. but while the UAE is spending their money on reaching Mars, Qatar is spending their money on art. true, they treat their foreign workers like shit, but isn't that every country? the part about funding terrorist groups is definitely trouble, but what one person calls a terrorist group, another person calls it freedom fighters
they'd be stupid to fund ISIS, since ISIS wants to kill them
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