>>109928Saying this as a Turk,
I don’t think anything east of Poland is considered western. The political and cultural differences are too much and at this point I don’t think most Balkans, Eurasians, and Caucasians want to be a part of the “West” anymore, barring weird outliers like Georgia and Ukraine.
The proverbial western ship has long sailed for most of these countries (Kazakhstan, Armenia, Turkey, Azerbaijan, Bosnia, Serbia, Albania). It also becomes a slippery slope for the west if these countries ever join.
Western Europeans may become closer together, but the overall distance with the rest of the surrounding non-EU regions is likely to
increase.
Turkey has already been fully “westernized” to the maximum extent but in the end it only went so far. It didn’t result in our cultural norms matching anywhere in Europe, and over time the lack of acceptance by Europeans has made Turks move more in the opposite direction. This applies to neighboring Balkans, Armenia and Azerbaijan as well. The similarities with Europe are only skin deep at this point and the Turkish government is now actively seeking to start de-westernizing its culture after a 100 year project of trying to become European. It won’t be immediate but its reflective of a general trend. Turkey being the largest and strongest in the eurasian region, its likely azerbaijan and kazakhstan would follow, while balkan countries would seek to curry favor and benefit with turkey instead of with far away western europe.