North Macedonia Officially Becomes 30th Member of NATO

[Vistulange]

Azerbaijan is, as has been mentioned, a dictatorship which is only really pro-Western in the same sense as Saudi Arabia - simply a pragmatic, strategic measure which could change at a moment's notice. Georgia remains a very fragile democracy (in the loosest sense of the term), and seems to be continually backsliding, resembling the Shevardnadze days more and more. NATO dragging its feet a bit seems warranted.

Let’s not act like NATO gives a shit if a nation is democratic or not seeing as they let dictatorships join all throughout and after the Cold War. *Glares at Turkey and Greece*

Turkey was a multi-party democracy when it joined in February 1952, Therm. Get your facts straight. I'd point more to Portugal as an example of non-democracies being admitted to NATO.

[New Bremerton]

I've never heard of HOI4. I've played a bit of WoW and watched Code Geass, where the idea for an English-speaking federation came from.

The British Empire in that timeline was a autocratic and totalitarian dictatorship though, so be careful what you wish for. It's the exact reason why Lelouch launched his resistance to begin with.
PS: No spoilers, please. I am only aware of its basic plot summary from the beginning, but nothing else.

Then you should watch all the way to the end. You're guaranteed to enjoy it.

[New Bremerton]

Let’s not act like NATO gives a shit if a nation is democratic or not seeing as they let dictatorships join all throughout and after the Cold War. *Glares at Turkey and Greece*

Turkey was a multi-party democracy when it joined in February 1952, Therm. Get your facts straight. I'd point more to Portugal as an example of non-democracies being admitted to NATO.

And Francoist Spain. Spain joined in 1982. My bad.

[Vistulange]

Turkey was a multi-party democracy when it joined in February 1952, Therm. Get your facts straight. I'd point more to Portugal as an example of non-democracies being admitted to NATO.

And Francoist Spain.

Spain became a member of NATO in 1982, whereas the Francoist regime was disestablished in 1975. So no, Spain is also not an example.

[The Archregimancy]

Is it Mass- or Mac-?

It depends on the language.

In English we pronounce it Mass- in keeping with our modern pronunciation of the name of the ancient kingdom of the Argead dynasty.

However, regionally it's usually pronounced with a hard Mak- sound, in keeping with the original spelling. In ancient Greek it was spelled with a kappa (Μακεδών) rather than a sigma (which would be Μασεδών), and the Cyrillic spelling of the relevant bit of the name of the modern country of North Macedonia is Македонија, with a ka. So it should be a hard 'k', but in English we've mutated it to a soft 's', presumably because of the common (though not absolute) rule that a 'c' before an 'e' is soft.

And yes, I know that 'Celt' and 'Celtic' are notable exceptions, but in fact both words were usually pronounced with a soft 's' at the start until the later 19th century, when Latinising classicists took control of much of the British educational system, and insisted we use the Roman pronunciation of 'Celt'. The soft 's' pronunciation still survives in some contexts, most notably in the name of Boston's basketball team. Those same classicists didn't get their hands on the modern English pronunciation of 'Macedonia', but that's presumably because the name would have been barely used in modern contexts, at least outside of the Balkans, until the early 20th-century Balkan Wars.

Is it Mass- or Mac-?

MaC. It's pronounced and spelled MaCedonia, not Massedonia.

Not very helpful advice given that 'c' can represent both an 's' and a 'k' sound in English.

[Nakena]

Let’s not act like NATO gives a shit if a nation is democratic or not seeing as they let dictatorships join all throughout and after the Cold War. *Glares at Turkey and Greece*

Turkey was a multi-party democracy when it joined in February 1952, Therm. Get your facts straight. I'd point more to Portugal as an example of non-democracies being admitted to NATO.

Under Menderes who was not a dictator but is nonetheless in many way a spiritual predecessor to Erdogan.

[New Bremerton]

And Francoist Spain.

Spain became a member of NATO in 1982, whereas the Francoist regime was disestablished in 1975. So no, Spain is also not an example.

See my edit.

[Shrillland]

Well done for North Macedonia now that Greece has let up. Next stop, the EU!

[Baltenstein]

Well done for North Macedonia now that Greece has let up. Next stop, the EU!

You might want to hold your horses on that one. After depicting Greece as the one and only obstacle to NM's glorious EU future for years it turned out recently that it's France who doesn't want them in the EU.

[Vistulange]

Turkey was a multi-party democracy when it joined in February 1952, Therm. Get your facts straight. I'd point more to Portugal as an example of non-democracies being admitted to NATO.

Under Menderes who was not a dictator but is nonetheless in many way a spiritual predecessor to Erdogan.

Rubbish. Just because you can put Adnan Menderes into a broad category alongside Tayyip Erdoğan does not mean that they are in any way similar.

The Democrat Party of 1952, at the elite and decision-making level, which Adnan Menderes himself certainly was a member of, had very, very, very, very little difference from the Republican People's Party. If you put a random villager from Manisa who had voted for DP in the DP headquarters upon the night the DP won the 1950 elections, he could have very well thought that he was in the CHP headquarters with İsmet İnönü, as opposed to being with Celal Bayar. These people were practically the same in ideology and worldview, with the slightest difference being that the CHP was a bit more statist in regards to the economy - owing to the legacy of the Great Depression, before which the CHP was quite liberal - and that the DP was more towards free enterprise. Otherwise, in regards to religion, the role of the state, language, etc. the two parties were extremely similar. They came from the exact same tradition, and the DP was formed out of people who were, themselves, Unionists just like the CHP folks. Hell, Celal Bayar - the head man of the DP up until the late 1950's - has a very notable quote: "When I speak of 'the party', I do not mean the Democrat Party. I mean the Committee of Union and Progress." Bayar was a Unionist to the core and bone - it's difficult to overstate just how much of a committed Unionist he was, even on the night of 27 May 1960, when he recalls having contemplating firing four bullets at the men who had arrived to arrest him, then using the last one to commit suicide, then later changing his mind to only committing suicide, and nearly carrying it through when he was prevented from doing so. It was only in the late 1950's that the Democrat Party began to slide towards authoritarianism, with the real excesses starting after 1957; it has absolutely no pertinence to the admittance of Turkey into NATO whatsoever. Moreover, even when these excesses started, the Democrat Party held no real ideological conflict with the foundational values of the Republic itself.

On the other hand, Tayyip Erdoğan comes from a distinctly anti-establishment root, that of the National Outlook movement of Necmettin Erbakan. From the outset, with the National Order Party in the early 1960's, Erbakan made it crystal clear that he was against the secular republic, at least, to the "secular" bit, more than the "republic" bit. I should make it clear here that Erbakan was by no means a "monarchist": there was no monarchist-restorationist movement in Turkey, ever. It was not even the result of a mass purge. Of course, there were some folks in the early nationalist movement who were somewhat pro-monarchy, such as Refet Bele, but they were never powerful political forces. Anyway, Erbakan's parties repeatedly got shuttered, but Tayyip Erdoğan was in one way or another involved in politics with this movement from the 1970's onwards, with youth wings and so on. He was a notable member of the MTTB - the right-wing, nationalist-religious union of students - and was once head of the Istanbul chapter during the 1970's, if I recall correctly. Looking through the MTTB yearbooks of the times, you see many a familiar name there, alongside Erdoğan's: Cemil Çiçek, former Speaker of the Parliament; Bülent Arınç, former Deputy Prime Minister and current presidential adviser; Abdullah Gül, former President, etc. All of these figures were distinctly separate from the "Menderes tradition": that mantle had been assumed by Süleyman Demirel's Justice Party, a secular, centre-right party. Erbakan's "National Outlook" openly rejected that ideology in favour of a distinctly Islamist and semi-nationalist outlook.

Even in the 1990's, when Tayyip Erdoğan rose to prominence as the Mayor of Istanbul under the Welfare Party, the party (and Erdoğan himself) was rejecting the tenets of the secular republic, hence the 1997 memorandum that brought down Erbakan's government and put Erdoğan behind bars under charges that would be considered bullshit these days, not just in Turkey but also elsewhere in the world. It was only when Erdoğan very publicly split off from his former movement in the 2000's, decrying them as fundamentalists and famously stating that "he had taken off the National Outlook jacket", that Erdoğan fabricated this story of assuming Menderes' mantle, as the leader of a reformed, centre-right political party. Even then, it was not only Menderes that was idolised, but also Turgut Özal as well. This is an indication that it was one thing in particular that Erdoğan assumed, and that was the commitment to a free market economy, as opposed to the heavily state-controlled economic model advocated for by the National Outlook movement.

[Nakena]

Under Menderes who was not a dictator but is nonetheless in many way a spiritual predecessor to Erdogan.

Rubbish. Just because you can put Adnan Menderes into a broad category alongside Tayyip Erdoğan does not mean that they are in any way similar.

The Democrat Party of 1952, at the elite and decision-making level, which Adnan Menderes himself certainly was a member of, had very, very, very, very little difference from the Republican People's Party. If you put a random villager from Manisa who had voted for DP in the DP headquarters upon the night the DP won the 1950 elections, he could have very well thought that he was in the CHP headquarters with İsmet İnönü, as opposed to being with Celal Bayar. These people were practically the same in ideology and worldview, with the slightest difference being that the CHP was a bit more statist in regards to the economy - owing to the legacy of the Great Depression, before which the CHP was quite liberal - and that the DP was more towards free enterprise. Otherwise, in regards to religion, the role of the state, language, etc. the two parties were extremely similar. They came from the exact same tradition, and the DP was formed out of people who were, themselves, Unionists just like the CHP folks. Hell, Celal Bayar - the head man of the DP up until the late 1950's - has a very notable quote: "When I speak of 'the party', I do not mean the Democrat Party. I mean the Committee of Union and Progress." Bayar was a Unionist to the core and bone - it's difficult to overstate just how much of a committed Unionist he was, even on the night of 27 May 1960, when he recalls having contemplating firing four bullets at the men who had arrived to arrest him, then using the last one to commit suicide, then later changing his mind to only committing suicide, and nearly carrying it through when he was prevented from doing so. It was only in the late 1950's that the Democrat Party began to slide towards authoritarianism, with the real excesses starting after 1957; it has absolutely no pertinence to the admittance of Turkey into NATO whatsoever. Moreover, even when these excesses started, the Democrat Party held no real ideological conflict with the foundational values of the Republic itself.

On the other hand, Tayyip Erdoğan comes from a distinctly anti-establishment root, that of the National Outlook movement of Necmettin Erbakan. From the outset, with the National Order Party in the early 1960's, Erbakan made it crystal clear that he was against the secular republic, at least, to the "secular" bit, more than the "republic" bit. I should make it clear here that Erbakan was by no means a "monarchist": there was no monarchist-restorationist movement in Turkey, ever. It was not even the result of a mass purge. Of course, there were some folks in the early nationalist movement who were somewhat pro-monarchy, such as Refet Bele, but they were never powerful political forces. Anyway, Erbakan's parties repeatedly got shuttered, but Tayyip Erdoğan was in one way or another involved in politics with this movement from the 1970's onwards, with youth wings and so on. He was a notable member of the MTTB - the right-wing, nationalist-religious union of students - and was once head of the Istanbul chapter during the 1970's, if I recall correctly. Looking through the MTTB yearbooks of the times, you see many a familiar name there, alongside Erdoğan's: Cemil Çiçek, former Speaker of the Parliament; Bülent Arınç, former Deputy Prime Minister and current presidential adviser; Abdullah Gül, former President, etc. All of these figures were distinctly separate from the "Menderes tradition": that mantle had been assumed by Süleyman Demirel's Justice Party, a secular, centre-right party. Erbakan's "National Outlook" openly rejected that ideology in favour of a distinctly Islamist and semi-nationalist outlook.

Even in the 1990's, when Tayyip Erdoğan rose to prominence as the Mayor of Istanbul under the Welfare Party, the party (and Erdoğan himself) was rejecting the tenets of the secular republic, hence the 1997 memorandum that brought down Erbakan's government and put Erdoğan behind bars under charges that would be considered bullshit these days, not just in Turkey but also elsewhere in the world. It was only when Erdoğan very publicly split off from his former movement in the 2000's, decrying them as fundamentalists and famously stating that "he had taken off the National Outlook jacket", that Erdoğan fabricated this story of assuming Menderes' mantle, as the leader of a reformed, centre-right political party. Even then, it was not only Menderes that was idolised, but also Turgut Özal as well. This is an indication that it was one thing in particular that Erdoğan assumed, and that was the commitment to a free market economy, as opposed to the heavily state-controlled economic model advocated for by the National Outlook movement.

Thanks a lot. This puts many things into perspective.

[Loben The 2nd]

Literally nothing of value lmao.

[Cisairse]

Literally nothing of value lmao.

bruh

[Aureumterra]

Good, the more the merrier

[Loben The 2nd]

Literally nothing of value lmao.

bruh

Do the Macadon's possess secret ancient manuscripts about defeating a nuclear armed country?

do they at least have the budget to rearm their military for NATO Standards?

[Nakena]

Do the Macadon's possess secret ancient manuscripts about defeating a nuclear armed country?

do they at least have the budget to rearm their military for NATO Standards?

The grave of Alexander is supposed to be somewhere in Egypt. (?) So any ancient secrets that may come with it might be there.

[Novus America]

Good, the more the merrier

Eh NATO works on consensus. Most big decisions require unanimous support. In such a system larger can become unwieldy. I do not think this is that great or bad. It is not very consequential beyond demonstrating they are getting on better with Greece now.

[Novus America]

bruh

Do the Macadon's possess secret ancient manuscripts about defeating a nuclear armed country?

do they at least have the budget to rearm their military for NATO Standards?

Well unfortunately no, they do not meet NATO spending standards as of the latest numbers I can find (2017). Only spending 1.09% That is bad because we have way too many sub 2% freeloaders in the organization.

It was more a political than military decision of course.

[Valrifell]

Do the Macadon's possess secret ancient manuscripts about defeating a nuclear armed country?

do they at least have the budget to rearm their military for NATO Standards?

The grave of Alexander is supposed to be somewhere in Egypt.

The early Ptolemys had it moved to Alexandria and I believe several Roman statesmen visited that burial site. Though since then we kinda lost track of where exactly it was supposed to be, some suspect that he was retombed and some think he's somewhere under Alexandria.

[Loben The 2nd]

Do the Macadon's possess secret ancient manuscripts about defeating a nuclear armed country?

do they at least have the budget to rearm their military for NATO Standards?

Well unfortunately no, they do not meet NATO spending standards as of the latest numbers I can find (2017). Only spending 1.09% That is bad because we have way too many sub 2% freeloaders in the organization.

It was more a political than military decision of course.

a foolhardy one to be sure.

[Novus America]

Well unfortunately no, they do not meet NATO spending standards as of the latest numbers I can find (2017). Only spending 1.09% That is bad because we have way too many sub 2% freeloaders in the organization.

It was more a political than military decision of course.

a foolhardy one to be sure.

I am not sure. Would we gain more by vetoing their membership vs letting it go through?
That is the big question. Although I do think all future applicants should be required to meet the spending requirements before applying.

[Nakena]

a foolhardy one to be sure.

I am not sure. Would we gain more by vetoing their membership vs letting it go through?
That is the big question. Although I do think all future applicants should be required to meet the spending requirements before applying.

Who know if there will be any. What currently is, may not be there anymore in a post-corona world.

[Aureumterra]

Good, the more the merrier

Eh NATO works on consensus. Most big decisions require unanimous support. In such a system larger can become unwieldy. I do not think this is that great or bad. It is not very consequential beyond demonstrating they are getting on better with Greece now.

Me being from a small country, NATO is one of the only forums where Iceland’s voice actually matters, and the more countries it matters to, the better in my eyes

[Novus America]

I am not sure. Would we gain more by vetoing their membership vs letting it go through?
That is the big question. Although I do think all future applicants should be required to meet the spending requirements before applying.

Who know if there will be any. What currently is, may not be there anymore in a post-corona world.

True, but in case there are it seems weird to me to let in people who do not meet the requirements. In theory I guess we say “but they say they will try to meet them eventually” but in reality they rarely do.

[Novus America]

Eh NATO works on consensus. Most big decisions require unanimous support. In such a system larger can become unwieldy. I do not think this is that great or bad. It is not very consequential beyond demonstrating they are getting on better with Greece now.

Me being from a small country, NATO is one of the only forums where Iceland’s voice actually matters, and the more countries it matters to, the better in my eyes

Well of course because Iceland has a veto power over all major NATO decisions it dies give Iceland a lot of power despite its size.
The issue becomes as a group based on consensus gets bigger, gridlock gets more likely, and meaningful reform and improvements less likely.

Because everyone has to agree, the more people who have to agree, the more difficult agreement becomes. If an organization like that becomes too big or just gets one very uncooperative member it becomes unmanageable.