WESTERNERS CRY, BRITONS WEEP Telegraph: EU myth of a great power shattered by Erdogan's victory

SARAJEVO, (Patria) - After Recep Tayyip Erdoğan won the presidential elections in Turkey and entered his third decade of rule, numerous reactions to his re-election continue. The British The Telegraph discussed Erdogan's victory in the presidential race against Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu through the global position and power of the European Union.

Telegraph's Defence Editor, Con Coughlin, states in his analysis that all pretensions the European Union may have of being a great power in world affairs have been realistically and completely exposed by the re-election of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as President of Turkey.

After all, as stated, it was not so long ago that Brussels was trying to persuade Turkey to become a member of the EU. The country is still officially considered a candidate for membership, although Ankara has made hardly any progress in implementing the necessary institutional reforms since 2004.

According to Erdoğan, Turkey still yearns for EU membership, and the Turkish leader emphasized at a meeting of EU ambassadors in the Turkish capital last year that EU membership remains a strategic priority for Turkey. The reality, however, is that as long as Erdoğan is in power, Turkey has about the same chance of joining the European bloc as Russia under Vladimir Putin, the author states.

It is not only Erdoğan's increasingly autocratic style of governance during his 20 years in power, with drastic restrictions imposed on parliament, the judiciary, and the media, that makes him an 'outcast'. His support for the Islamist faith – likely referring to an Islamist conception and interpretation of the Muslim religion – one that completely rejects the liberal freedoms advocated by the West, makes his viewpoint anathema. He is, after all, as Coughlin points out, a politician who began his re-election campaign by evoking the Ottoman conquest of the Byzantine Empire in 1453.

In such circumstances, Erdoğan's narrow electoral victory, securing just over 52 percent of the vote against secularist rival Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, means that Turkey's EU membership ambitions will be unattainable in the near future, leaving Brussels to regret the day of imagined Turkish membership in a European bloc where it could have been a viable proposition.

Erdogan's re-election for another five-year term, one in which he will likely expand his autocratic tendencies at the expense of the country's democratic institutions, certainly represents a significant challenge for the EU, a challenge that seriously questions its ambitions to position itself as a soft power superpower equal in size to the US and China.

The EU's credibility was already under intense scrutiny due to its unconvincing response to the Ukrainian crisis. There have been deep divisions between some major powers, such as Germany, France, and Italy – which seek to adopt a less confrontational stance towards Moscow – and emerging Eastern European powers like Poland, which argue that the continent's long-term security requires Russia to suffer a comprehensive and unambiguous defeat on the Ukrainian battlefield.

The EU can no longer afford to maintain an ambivalent, peculiar approach to Ankara. At one moment, Brussels offers a huge bribe to stop the wave of illegal migrants flooding Europe, and then condemns Turkey for its close ties with Russia, an alliance that the EU High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, recently called a "cause for concern".

As reported by Jutarnji, for Erdoğan, the good relationship he has with the Kremlin is a salvation for the Turkish economy. The economic crisis affecting Turkey, with inflation currently exceeding 40 percent, would be significantly worse if it weren't for Russian tourists flocking to the country, thus avoiding EU sanctions.

Given the EU's previous unfortunate episodes in relations with Erdoğan, few Europeans will have significant confidence that the European bloc can persuade Ankara to abandon its support for Russia in order to establish closer ties with Brussels.