![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldIt's because of Cyberpunk 2020 that I know why Turkey's not likely to get into the European Union.
Cyberpunk 2020 is a roleplaying game setting in the classic dystopic cyberpunk mode: advanced computer and biotech, oppressive governments, hegemonic corporations, environmental decay, and the beaten-down yet struggling individual. One of its background modules is Eurosource, an introduction to the terribly dystopian yet hegemonic Europe of 2020. Britain and Greece are ruled by military dictatorships, the former having exterminated the British royal family, while Germany is a militarily aggressive corporatist state, Spain and southern Italy are economic wastelands, the South Tyroleans live in a diaspora after the terrorist attack on a nuclear fission plants, and the European Parliament's members are elected not according to population but rather by tax revenue. (The City of London has more MEPs than Turkey.)
Turkey's a European Community member-state? Yes. Not only that, but the various post-Communist states of central Europe, from a Poland that's under partial military occupation to a Czechoslovakia that suffers food riots to a Yugoslavia that just conquered Albania, are only associate members, ruthlessly exploited for their natural resources and cheap labour. Turkey might be a put-upon member-state of the European Community, but it still has all the advantages that its neighoburs to the northwest lacks.
Why was Turkish membership a possibility? I suspect it's because, in the 1980s, there was nowhere else the European Community could expand. With Sweden, Switzerland and Austria remaining neutral, Norway remaining independent and Finland locked into its loose Soviet orbit, there was no post-1973 prospect for central or northern European expansion. With the admission of Greece in 1980, and of Spain and Portugal in 1986, there was no prospect for further expansion into southern Europe. With the eight post-Communist states that did get into the EU in 2004 and the two that got into the EU in 2007 Communist states under Soviet occupation locked into Comecon, there was certainly no prospect of eastwards expansion. Integration with Yugoslavia was a very distant possibility, as one author noted in 1989, but very distant. If the European Community was to expand, then the only realistic prospect would be into Turkey, a capitalist NATO member-state that was already reasonably integrated into western Europe.
The collapse of Communism in 1989-1990 changed all this. Once initial adjustments were survived, all of the member-states that joined up in 2004--the Baltics, the Visegrad Four, Slovenia--quickly surpassed Turkey. Their democratic systems were solidly implanted, certainly safe from Turkey's praetorianism; living standards and GDP per capita were substantially further ahead than Turkey's, with higher economic growth than Turkey after their nadirs were reached; most critically, these countries were culturally and historically closer to western Europe than Turkey, with Germany particularly committed to establishing a stable central Europe. Once these possibilities opened up, why expand into Turkey?
Turkey might yet become a likely prospect for EU membership, if the European Union economy recovers and its expansion, whether into the western Balkans or deeper into the former Soviet Union, comes to an unwanted halt. Might. A booming Turkey has other options than to join the European Union, and European electorates for their part seem decidedly hostile to including Turkey. Imagine, though: If Communism in central Europe had fallen only a few years later, Ankara might be the capital of a European Union member-state.
Cyberpunk 2020 is a roleplaying game setting in the classic dystopic cyberpunk mode: advanced computer and biotech, oppressive governments, hegemonic corporations, environmental decay, and the beaten-down yet struggling individual. One of its background modules is Eurosource, an introduction to the terribly dystopian yet hegemonic Europe of 2020. Britain and Greece are ruled by military dictatorships, the former having exterminated the British royal family, while Germany is a militarily aggressive corporatist state, Spain and southern Italy are economic wastelands, the South Tyroleans live in a diaspora after the terrorist attack on a nuclear fission plants, and the European Parliament's members are elected not according to population but rather by tax revenue. (The City of London has more MEPs than Turkey.)
Turkey's a European Community member-state? Yes. Not only that, but the various post-Communist states of central Europe, from a Poland that's under partial military occupation to a Czechoslovakia that suffers food riots to a Yugoslavia that just conquered Albania, are only associate members, ruthlessly exploited for their natural resources and cheap labour. Turkey might be a put-upon member-state of the European Community, but it still has all the advantages that its neighoburs to the northwest lacks.
Why was Turkish membership a possibility? I suspect it's because, in the 1980s, there was nowhere else the European Community could expand. With Sweden, Switzerland and Austria remaining neutral, Norway remaining independent and Finland locked into its loose Soviet orbit, there was no post-1973 prospect for central or northern European expansion. With the admission of Greece in 1980, and of Spain and Portugal in 1986, there was no prospect for further expansion into southern Europe. With the eight post-Communist states that did get into the EU in 2004 and the two that got into the EU in 2007 Communist states under Soviet occupation locked into Comecon, there was certainly no prospect of eastwards expansion. Integration with Yugoslavia was a very distant possibility, as one author noted in 1989, but very distant. If the European Community was to expand, then the only realistic prospect would be into Turkey, a capitalist NATO member-state that was already reasonably integrated into western Europe.
The collapse of Communism in 1989-1990 changed all this. Once initial adjustments were survived, all of the member-states that joined up in 2004--the Baltics, the Visegrad Four, Slovenia--quickly surpassed Turkey. Their democratic systems were solidly implanted, certainly safe from Turkey's praetorianism; living standards and GDP per capita were substantially further ahead than Turkey's, with higher economic growth than Turkey after their nadirs were reached; most critically, these countries were culturally and historically closer to western Europe than Turkey, with Germany particularly committed to establishing a stable central Europe. Once these possibilities opened up, why expand into Turkey?
Turkey might yet become a likely prospect for EU membership, if the European Union economy recovers and its expansion, whether into the western Balkans or deeper into the former Soviet Union, comes to an unwanted halt. Might. A booming Turkey has other options than to join the European Union, and European electorates for their part seem decidedly hostile to including Turkey. Imagine, though: If Communism in central Europe had fallen only a few years later, Ankara might be the capital of a European Union member-state.
