Biden keeps Turkey out of ‘Summit of Republics’

By Costas Raptis

The official list of invited countries has not yet been made public – but information is already leaking in abundance. According to Politico on November 4, Tayyip Erdogan’s Turkey and Viktor Orban’s Hungary will not be invited to the “Democracy Summit” hosted by US President Joe Biden because “the leaders of the two “These countries have been undermining their democratic systems with their actions for years.”

The Democracy Summit is set to take place online on December 9 and 10 – and is Joe Biden’s top foreign policy initiative to strengthen the US relationship with old and new allies, to ideologize the neo-Cold War conflict with “Eurasianism”. “, namely the Chinese and Russian rivals of the declining American power, and to consolidate a” values-based “new definition of the” international community “.

It is no coincidence, in particular, that Russian diplomacy has launched, through Vladimir Putin and Sergei Lavrov themselves, preemptive rhetorical attacks on this new conception, complaining that instead of the current United Nations architecture, which is dominated by World War II and the principle of equal participation of Member States on the basis of universally applicable rules of international law promotes a narrower conception that .

According to Russian argument, in the name of “democracy” within countries, a non-democratic hierarchy between countries is justified and the necessary reform of the United Nations is prevented by the creation of a non-inclusive substitute where the clear rules of international law will be reinterpreted. they try it.

Beijing, on the other hand, is playing the cultural role, arguing that there is not a single model of democracy, but many, with unequal efficiency and varying degrees of response to the peculiarities of different cultures, some of which have been tested over time. It is the reverse attempt to ideologize the neo-Cold War tensions on the part of those who appear as bearers of “traditional values”.

“Semi-dictators”

Be that as it may, the primary at this stage is how Joe Biden’s America defines the camp of democracies, which also has the initiative of the event. And in this sense, the “snobbery” towards Erdogan and Orban is a resounding message, especially if we consider that their countries are members of NATO and have joined or aspire to join the EU, which are also referred to as “communities of values”. “.

In other words, Erdogan and Orban are treated as semi-dictators and as leaders with a deadline.

Non-governmental organizations such as Freedom House, which in its annual report for 2021 placed Turkey in the “Non-Free” countries, play a crucial role in the gradual transformation of Erdogan into a pariah, characterizing the neighbor as one of the most problematic places in European area for the exercise of the right to free expression.

Of course, what is unfolding in Turkey and, to a lesser extent in Hungary, in terms of freedoms, the rule of law or respect for minorities is far from the liberal democratic “rule”. Especially in the case of Turkey, the power structure refers to an alliance of Erdogan’s “Islamocrats” with the once rival “deep state” and the (reformed and purged) army.