Turkey Can Improve Democratic Record for EU Bid - Al-Monitor: the Pulse of the Middle East

Turkey Can Improve Democratic Record for EU Bid

By: Tulin Daloglu for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse. Posted on February 26.

ANKARA Turkey — Turkey’s effort to join the European Union is still far from being realized. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has justifiably expressed his frustration with this, which was set as a state policy since more than a half-century ago. As he is, however, openly lambasting the country’s past at any given opportunity, starting from the military coups to the generals' role in policy-making; from the alleged state restrictions that prevented pious Muslims like him from practicing Islam to the previous governments’ economic failures, the Europeans take even a more critical look at Turkey — coupled with all of the things that Erdogan has been critical about this country’s past as well as the size of its population, belonging to a different culture, tradition and religion.

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