It was no more obviously a troll move than seeing if they could join the EU. If they had been given a “Yes”, even with many, many conditions they’d probably have jumped at it. The prospect of EU membership was a big enough carrot for the Turkish military to relinquish control of the state to the electorate. NATO and EU membership? That would have been massive. Even EFTA membership would have been enormous. There was a brief period when Russia and its leadership sure looked like they wanted to be a normal country. Could have been a con. If not it was an enormous squandered opportunity.
Both of those were troll moves. They don’t come close to meeting or being on track to meet the requirements for either. Their goal is to trick you, personally, into making comments like you just made.
Most of the countries are pretty high on Democracy index. Some higher than US.
Turkey comes to mind as the only standout. There is a general trend towards autocracy in the last years in places like that.
Which is sad and a threat to the world imho.
But even Turkey (which is probably the least democratic nato member?) isn't comparable to Russia. looking at a map the rest of NATO all fits in the green shade on the democracy index.
And also just the basic membership requirement: consensus vote by existing members.
So kind of pointless it's trolling from the start.
Plus respecting borders one of the founding principles lol.
Could look at civ control of military too. turkey is super complicated there. the autocrat definitely does not have control, the opposite. Unlike putin. But in turkey that's also scary and no so comforting for collaboration.
