🔴STARTING NOW!!!

Join the #VIADUCT_EU Guest Lecture on the results of the December European Council, with @UniCologne's Wolfgang Wessels and @SenemAydnDzgit from
@sabanciu 💪

Join in on #Zoom now or otherwise follow along here for some highlights!

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On Dec. 10-11, the European Council met, discussing among other topic, EU-Turkey relations in light of recent developments and the October conclusions.

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In October, the Council concluded that they would pursue better EU-Turkey relations

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Since then, the international community has been outraged by Turkish actions in Cyprus, France has withdrawn its diplomatic actors from Turkey, and #Erdogan has signalled opposition to "overt attacks on our nation"

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The scene has been set, now meet our speakers: @SenemAydnDzgit from @sabanciu and @ipc_ipm, and Wolfgang Wessels from @UniCologne, who is Project Coordinator of #VIADUCT_EU

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"One major assumption on which Turkish foreign policy in the East Mediterranean builds on is the assumption that EU cannot act as a whole, and that the EU is not yet ready to burn all bridges with Turkey"

- @SenemAydnDzgit from @sabanciu/@ipc_ipm

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"The EU can act, but sometimes it takes time to build up this action over time. Therefore there is possibility for the situation to escalate further throughout 2021"

- @SenemAydnDzgit from @sabanciu/@ipc_ipm

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"The EU will work with the new administration in the USA, highlighting that Turkey will be a key factor in the renewed EU-US relations in the context of a #Biden administration"

- @SenemAydnDzgit from @sabanciu/@ipc_ipm

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"My analysis is short: let's meet again in March, because very little has changed"

- Wolfgang Wessels, #VIADUCT_EU Project Coordinator, @UniCologne

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"The most important thing was the request of work from the HR/VP to investigate the prospects of relations. When you don't want to take a decision, you ask someone to produce a study."

- Wolfgang Wessels, #VIADUCT_EU Project Coordinator, @UniCologne

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After these initial contributions from our two speakers, we now move to a Q&A Session

Get your questions in to the #Zoom Chat!

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After an interesting and dynamic Q&A session, this #VIADUCT_EU comes to an end

Thank you to our participants @SenemAydnDzgit from @sabanciu/@ipc_ipm and Wolfgang Wessels from @UniCologne

On 17 December, tune in for another Guest Lecture!

/ENDS
@threadreaderapp please unroll

More from Politics

THREAD:
Good afternoon, followers of frivolous election litigation. There's a last-minute entry in the competition for dumbest pre-inauguration lawsuit - a totally loony effort to apparently leave the entire USA without a government.

We'll start with the complaint in a minute.

But first, I want to give you a quick explanation for why I'm going to keep talking about these cases even after the inauguration.

They're part of an ongoing effort - one that's not well-coordinated but is widespread - to discredit our fundamental system of government.

It's a direct descendent, in more ways than one, of birtherism. And here's the thing about birtherism. It might have been a joke to a lot of people, but it was extremely pernicious. It obviously validated the racist "not good enough to be President" crowd. But that wasn't all.

Don't get me wrong, that was bad enough. Validating racism helped put the kind of shitbird who would tweet this from an official government account into power. But it didn't stop


(Also, if you agree with Pompeo about multiculturalism - the legendary melting pot - not being what this country is all about, you need to stop following me now. And maybe go somewhere and think about your life choices and what made you such a tool.)
"3 million people are estimated not to have official photo ID, with ethnic minorities more at risk". They will "have to contact their council to confirm their ID if they want to vote"

This is shameful legislation, that does nothing to tackle the problems with UK elections.THREAD


There is no evidence in-person voter fraud is a problem, and it wd be near-impossible to organise on an effective scale. Campaign finance violations, digital disinformation & manipulation of postal voting are bigger issues, but these are crimes of the powerful, not the powerless.

In a democracy, anything that makes it harder to vote - in particular, anything that disadvantages one group of voters - should face an extremely high bar. Compulsory voter ID takes a hammer to 3 million legitimate voters (disproportionately poor & BAME) to crack an imaginary nut

If the government is concerned about the purity of elections, it should reflect on its own conduct. In 2019 it circulated doctored news footage of an opponent, disguised its twitter feed as a fake fact-checking site, and ran adverts so dishonest that even Facebook took them down.

Britain's electoral law largely predates the internet. There is little serious regulation of online campaigning or the cash that pays for it. That allows unscrupulous campaigners to ignore much of the legal framework erected since the C19th to guard against electoral misconduct.

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