Turkey’s increasingly dictatorial president, Recep Erdogan, has destroyed his nation’s chances of joining the European Union by 2020, as some had hoped, for pushing through a new law aimed a destroying parliamentary opposition to Mr. Erdoğan’s ruling neo-Islamist Justice and Development party (AKP) by encouraging politically inspired, criminal prosecutions of anti-government legislators.
The E.U.’s rules demand that all applicant states must adhere to democratic governance and uphold such other basic principles as the rule of law, human rights, including freedom of speech, and protection of minorities. President Erdogan now bitterly calls the E.U. “a Christian club.’’