Another recent trip reflection: Turkey and the EU.

When Europeans I know start complaining about Turkey possibly joining the EU and talking about this abstruse policy stuff against it, I just say that I think it would be a wonderful personal growth experience for them, and then when they say that Turkey is almost fascist and not a real democracy -- there's some recent controversy I hadn't heard of where Turkey asked Denmark to shut down the satellite-using Kurdish television station there, otherwise they'd veto the Danish candidate for some organization that they all belong to; the people I know are like, "Turkey isn't a real democracy," or, "They think about government and power in ways that are different from us" -- I'm like, "Well, it would be a personal growth experience on both sides".