Europe's Big Freedom Fail

Christian Caryl, Foreign Policy
For many years, Europeans used the tantalizing prospect of future membership to urge the Turks toward democratic reforms — a strategy that also seemed to work wonders in Eastern Europe, where countries that dreamed of EU membership bent over backward to implement the sorts of changes that would make them more palatable to their new friends in the West. Turkey, too, made remarkable progress — at least until Erdogan began putting it into reverse gear a few years ago. Now, at a stroke, the EU has thrown this entire policy overboard.