To join Core is to import its rules, finds Turkey
■"Turkey's Law Overhaul Overwhelms Courts and Citizens: Sweeping Changes Are Creating Havoc," by Susan Sachs, New York Times, 24 October 2004, p. A3.
Interesting story on how Turkey is adopting all these legal rules regarding the court system in order to gain Europe's approval to join the EU. A big new rule set is "family court" and the requirement that women have the same rights as men in marriage. Think that doesn't shake Turkey up quite a bit?
Family courts are just one product of the sweeping changes that have both transformed and swamped Turkey's legal system. An avalanche of new laws, geared to bring the nation closer to European Union norms, has altered the way the state treats everything from police brutality and juvenile delinquents, to commercial transactions and industrial pollution.
Again, my basic point that connectivity requires code. You want equal rights for women? You want better care of the environment? You want an end to repressive police tactics? Then invite Gap nations into your political and economic unions! Invite them into the party so long as they're willing to synchronize their internal rule sets with that of the Core. Development will bring pollution, stress on families, and corruption, but the lure of economic integration with the Core brings legal rule sets, and those rules create the possibility of environmentalism, women's rights, and whistle-blowing in general.
You want the Gap to remain the Gap? Then make unreasonable demands that countries there find some way to develop economically without damaging the environment. Or pretend they can somehow skip the factory-based abuse of workers that the Old Core went through. Or pretend that a perfectly operating democracy on par with Vermont is required before they can join our "club."
You can't demand the code before offering the connectivity—it's really that simple.
That's why the EU better damn well deliver membership soon to Turkey, which is jumping through hoops as fast those rule-obsessed Europeans can throw them.