This to me again pushes the question when it's OK to overthrow a democratically elected government. All western governments and even the Turkish opposition came out against the coup because it was "undemocratic". However, I believe there is definitely a line somewhere that a democratically elected government cannot cross without losing legitimacy and making a coup the right thing to do regardless of the remaining popular support. Had Erdogan crossed that line? If so, what was that line? If he didn't cross it what would be that line.
I'm sure we all can agree that there is such s line since we probably all can agree that Hitler crossed it although I'm not sure in his case where exactly that line was either. Maybe when he dismantled the parliament? Maybe earlier?
Hitler crossed that line when he used the brown shirts to suppress the vote and intimidate any voices that were counter to theirs. That was years before they dissolved parliament.
I would say this reaction to the failed coup is probably too extreme, and is being used (similar to crystal nacht after a terrorist attack) to dismantle criticts of the govt.
The reaction isn't new this was happening to turkey for years now, post coup it just accelerated and now it's in swoops instead of a trickle.
Erdogan replaced a lot of the officers, judges and key figures in the educational and judicial system over the years, cracked down on the press which lead to closure of many independent news sources and really been acting like a dictator including attempts at altering the constitution Of the country completely.
> If a secular military coup looked likely to be successful, the west would be ecstatic.
What the West wants is a secular, pluralistic, economically and socially secure and stable Turkey under the rule of law. A military government might tick one or two of those boxes in the short term, but the rest (and all of them long term) can only be achieved via democracy.
China is a very scary socioeconomic engine rushing down the road, and it could slide off the road and crash and burn, and go fucking boom into something rather scary.
It's already very bad in certain things. Like freedom of the press (and other civil liberties). Putin's Russia is sort of arriving there with the new communications wiretapping requirements, whereas China has the Golden Shield Firewall operating for the past decade.
Russian prosecutors going rouge and openly ally with the mob? A new and scary thing. But we never even heard of Chinese prosecutors doing anything other than what the current state (and regional, and their own) interests demanded.
A train derailed and folks thought it'd be easier to bury it (as in put enough dirt on it to hide it) than to report it and face whatever consequences.
Russia annexed Crimea, China does nasty things in Tibet and thinks very hard about how to make Hong Kong bend its knee.
Industrial espionage is encouraged. Dumping too. (Ordering stuff from China is simply too cheap. The cost of international shipping is likely paid by the State.) Just as questionable loans to state-owned enterprises. And there are a lot of those.
Not to mention environmental and health concerns.
Sure, things are getting better for the average Chinese, but that's _very_ far from a success story.
Who thought this was orchestrated by another other islamist faction in the military? I never heard during any of the coverage that anyone thought the folks behind the coup weren't secular.
Hmm, I never heard this until a couple days into the coup, well after it was clear it was unsuccessful. Would be interesting to know what the US intelligence experts actually thought.
Hitler was democratically elected. If you oppose any coup that's undemocratic, then you necessarily have to oppose the attempted coups against Hitler. Hitler had great support among his people, even after he dismantled Parliament. After all, he was a strong leader for his country, and his people liked that, just like the Turkish people love Erdogan for the same.
As for as crossing a line, because he was democratically elected, there's two lines to cross: 1) when he makes death camps and starts gassing large numbers of his own people (probably minorities like the Kurds, or various secularists), and 2) when he invades some other country.
In WWII, other nations only finally did something after Germany invaded too many countries (they gave him a pass on Poland, saying "we'll have peace in our time!" by appeasing him). They didn't care about the death camps, until after they defeated Germany and then decided to punish them for those. Just like they didn't care about the genocide in Rwanda.
I imagine the situation with Turkey will be much the same.
>They didn't care about the death camps, until after they defeated Germany and then decided to punish them for those.
The allies didn't know about the death camps until 1942. They were already at war with Germany in 1942, and they issued a public condemnation of Hitler's attempt to exterminate the Jewish race at the end of that year.
>Hitler was democratically elected.
He wasn't elected, he was appointed Chancellor then used violence and intimidation to rise to power. Only about 1/3 of the population supported the Nazis in the elections before 1933. Later after the Reichstag fire, the government enacted emergency measures limiting left wing opposition parties and arrested many communist leaders. You can't call anything that happened after that a free and open election.
Hitler was democratically elected in the 1933 election with 43.9% of the vote (higher than the other 5 candidates). It doesn't matter if only 1/3 of the population supports a candidate; if your elections are first-past-the-post, then whoever wins the most votes wins the election. That's how democracy works. The US elections work much the same way now, with George W Bush winning the 2000 election with less than 50% of the vote (and if you believe Gore should have won, he again won less than 50% of the popular vote).
The simple fact is that Hitler did win the 1933 elections in a democratic system. And unlike sham elections like Saddam's where he won 99.9% of the vote, this isn't so obviously rigged.
This has nothing to do with first-past-the-post voting.
The vote that you are talking about happened after the Reichstag fire and Hitler was appointed (not elected) Chancellor. Opposition parties were suppressed, and the Nazi party "monitored" the election. Thousands of opposition party members were arrested before the election. In Prussia, 50,000 Nazis were appointed as auxcillary-police to monitor the elections and to intimidate voters.
>this isn't so obviously rigged.
If you don't think the March 1933 elections were rigged you haven't read enough about them.
The death camps also targeted e.g homosexuals, which the allies were fine with. The allies didn't have any moral objection to the death camps, only against them being used for certain classes of people (e.g. jews).
The allies weren't "fine with it". Homosexuals made up a small percentage of the total people in death camps, and the vast majority of the allies weren't even aware of them until the liberation.
Homosexual survivors were treated horribly because homosexuality was still a crime in Germany and most of the Allied countries after WWII. But the western allies weren't "fine" with systematically exterminating homosexuals or any other group--as evidenced by the fact that they ended the practice.
The allies discovered a bunch of gays locked up in concentration camps under a 1935 Nazi-enacted law, didn't repel that article similarly to e.g. laws against Jews when WWII ended and supported their re-imprisonment, nor did they make their times in the concentration camps count against their "crimes".
Granted saying they were "fine with it" might be a bit of an exaggeration. But I don't think it's unreasonable in the face of historical evidence to think that the concentration camps would have been treated vastly differently by the allies if the only prisoners were homosexuals, given how the allies treated those prisoners upon their release.
Which I think goes to show that the allied forces didn't have an intrinsic objection to what went on in the concentration camps, they just minded the target audience the Nazis picked.
Not legalizing homosexuality isn't the same having no intrinsic objection to exterminating homosexuals.
>they just minded the target audience the Nazis picked
This makes no sense. Most of the allied countries had a long history of antisemitism. If anything, targeting the Jews should have made it less objectionable.
No, I think they objected to killing millions of men, women, and children, using a horrific modern factory style process. No normal human (who wasn't slowly conditioned to accept it) who saw the result of those concentration camp could possibly have no intrinsic objection. The visceral reaction to seeing the bodies and the emaciated survivors would be the same whether the victims were Jewish or homosexual.
My understanding was that the invasion of poland coincided with readiness to respond to a countermeasure by England. And that England called it war pretty much immediately and started mobilizing right then.
Seeing all the treaties that don't get enforced, I'm led to believe that England didn't have to attack.
The invasion of Poland was over in weeks, it took England a while to mobilize troops, and what they did to reinforce France were inadequately positioned to then repel the invasion of France.
Remember that England and France thought it would be crazy for another war after WWI that Germany really wouldn't invade Poland. And likewise, Germany/Hitler were surprised that England and France really did draw a line at Poland.
To be fair though, Turkey doesn't have any countries around it that it can invade without getting stomped by either Russia or the rest of NATO.
IMO, a coup can be justified if those that carry it out a) will be better governors than those they overthrew and b) they have popular legitimacy. By that standard, a Reichswehr coup in 1933 would have been justified, but the half-assed Turkish coup that has just happened wouldn't.
A client state of Russia and a client state of the United States, respectively, which is why neither is a country Turkey can invade without repercussions from Russia or "the rest of NATO" (or, at least, the US, which is pretty much the bulk of the military power of NATO.)
And while Iraq's status as a US client state may seem somewhat questionable, Iraqi Kurdistan is more tightly aligned with the US than the central government is, and may well vote soon on independence and is the part -- for both geographic and political reasons -- that one is talking about when one talks about Turkey invading Iraq.
>I imagine the situation with Turkey will be much the same.
Highly doubtful. Turkey is a NATO member who's entire defense strategy hinges on that alliance. We don't live in the 20th century anymore. Countries are far too interdependent for a war of territorial aggression to be effective.
For certain definitions of effective. Sure, Crimea was certainly a victory (but only because they had very high on-the-ground public support), and denying vital industrial regions to Ukraine could be construed as a victory, but OTOH having a lawless, war-torn region ruled by right wing wannabe Stalinists on its borders isn't exactly a win for Russia.
Punish the smartest of your population and good luck creating an economy that is built on any form of scientific progress. Utter sadness to watch a man destroy a country so he can consolidate power while destroying that which he wants power over.
Atatürk must be turning in his grave. Can any Turks comment on this whole thing?
EDIT: from DominikR, it seems the Turkish government is encouraging others to report online posts of anti-government sentiment. Be careful to post anonymously if you are willing to post from within Turkey.
We were first confused about why coup was incredibly terrible. Starting it with a tank on the Istanbul bridge instead of easily picking up Erdogan from the hotel he is staying in a vacation town; Not destroying Erdogan's palace; Doing some symbolic things on prime time hours instead of 2am; Having no direction or aim other than making some show with tanks and airplanes.
Now, it is very clear to everyone that it was a fake coup. So that Erdogan can do his regime change without getting any resistance. Anyone who is against is a coup supporter and will be dumped to tens of thousands of people on the prisons, after getting beaten up by Islamist running around.
One of the significant changes he has made was to make mosques a part of the new regime. Mosques are now doing they have never done since the establishment of republic 90 years ago. The mosques are now constantly making announcement and telling Erdogan's people to "go outside and hunt coup supporters for the love of god".
A civil war has started but we don't know it yet. I hope I am wrong.
It's not a civil war unless two groups of people are clashing. In this case it seems that the opposition has been dismantled and it's members are being hunted down. What's the response from the opposition parties?
I hope you are already planning to leave the country cause from what you're saying it's going to get uglier.
I've been out-of-country for a while, but my (very anti-islamist) family is basically saying "best hope is ending up like Iran, worst hope is Syria". There are continuing widespread, scary daily rallies of Islamist-supporters whipping up a frenzy, and secularists are completely cowed with no way forward. The secularist state is being completely dismantled.
Approximately 10 years ago a colleague of mine said, "Visit Turkey now, it's headed towards Iran. All the business people are visiting Mosques to get blessings on their deals." It seemed alarmist, and for much of the past 10 years I laughed at how wrong he was. Whoops!
The Turkish government has already called for reporting to the police (with screenshot) all anti-government statements on Twitter and Facebook by Turks. So yes, I expect that many dissenting civilians will get into trouble.
The government is still scared. Currently the gates of military bases and entrance to the parliament is closed with tractors and construction vehicles. They think that a second wave can occur at any moment.
Sadly, this could have been avoided 20-15 years ago when Turkey was pretty liberal and aproaching the EU. This has been the biggest mistake of the EU history: letting the right declare it a christian club, and thus losing both a moderate islamic country and a bridge to the middle east.
Erdogan understood long ago that Turkey would never be accepted in the EU (even with big pressure coming from USA and UK) and has used the EU membership as a bargaining chip.
Now the membership option is openly dead, and Erdogan can proceed with his fundamentalist agenda.
Also, having been clearly betrayed by EU and OTAN in this military coup, he really has nothing to worry about anymore. Turkey will be out of NATO soon, and it will become a Russia ally.
What a blunder the west is playing: only 25 years after the URSS collapse, and instead of integrating Russia into the global institucions, the USA decided to proffit the strategic advantage to expand and provoke. We have managed to turn the possibility of true global integration, collaboration and progress into a new cold (actually warm and soon hot) war.
> This has been the biggest mistake of the EU history
Turkey was never "liberal",the majority of Turkish people were always "conservative" Muslims. Istanbul doesn't represent all Turkey .this is a fantasy invented by the people who wanted Turkey in the EU. It's not the EU's fault if Turkey ends up like yet another dictatorship in the middle east. So stop blaming the EU for that. That's a lie.
> But fundamentalism was a declining ideology. The EU gave it renewed strength.
No it wasn't. what gave you this impression? It has never declined, not in 80's, not in 90's not in the 2000's. You're like one of those people that look at pictures of Teheran,Iran or Kabul, Afghanistan in the 70's and say "Look at these women without hijab, these countries were liberal back then". Off course not, the majority of the population was still extremely conservative back then.
Turkey is no different. The EU did absolutely nothing and had no influence on the strength of fundamentalism in Turkey. Turkey has nobody but itself to blame for that.
36 years ago we had a military coup in my country (Spain). We overcame the situation, in part because the King (I am fiercely anti-monarquic, but whatever), opposed the coup.
We were obviously the same country, but if the King had supported the coup, I can assure you Spain would be much different (maybe in ruins).
That was an internal issue, but this would have worked the same with external signals. Keeping with Spain: if the allies would have interferred in the spanish dictatorship at the end of WWII, we would have spared us a couple of decades of Franco.
And so on. Dont try to make me believe that external events do not have any effect.
Or, put another way: what would have happened if EU and USA would have supported military coup last friday? (Impossible, I know, since both wouldn't have risked falling on the wrong side, but I digress)
> Dont try to make me believe that external events do not have any effect.
Nobody here is trying to make you believe that. Perhaps fundamentalism in Turkey was helped along in political power (but not popular support--it's always been strong in rural areas) but EU rejection, but "fundamentalism was going down before the EU blew it up" is a statement without support, since in most of the places where fundamentalism has grown strongest the EU has zero influence.
> Turkey is no different. The EU did absolutely nothing and had no influence on the strength of fundamentalism in Turkey. Turkey has nobody but itself to blame for that.
It won't be easy for Turkey to become a Russian ally. For one, the Armenia-Azerbaijan conflicts have to be resolved once and and for all, Russia has to drop Armenia, or Turkey has to drop Azerbaijan. None of the above is likely at this point. For another, either Turkey has to drop the "moderate Islamist" rebels in Syria or Russia has to drop the Assad government and Iran. Again, neither is likely to happen.
So for the time being they're on their own. Hell, they can't even ally with most Sunni governments in the region because they've pissed all of them off by supporting the Muslim Brotherhood.
Turkey has a lot of rubbing points with the west and that has not prevented it to be a NATO member for decades. You need to compromise and obviate issues, and this can happen between Turkey and Russia.
Turkey had one rubbing point with NATO (Cyprus), and with a minor and not very well regarded member at that (Greece). There weren't any major points of contention with the United States.
Not an expert, but I would say Kurds, Iran, Israel, Egypt are all points were Turkey and USA do not align very well. By the way, even USA and EU do not allign perfectly in all issues. And even the EU has a lot of differing opinions, which does not prevent them to collaborate (except brexit UK)
And what's with Cyprus? According to some coments it is the main reason why Turkey is not EU member, but according to you it's just a minor issue? I am confused.
Kurds -- not an issue until Daesh became a problem, very recently, thanks to AKP
Iran -- the US dislikes Iran (less and less every day), Turkey is neutral, no big disagreements there
Israel -- historically not an issue, only an issue now due to AKP government
Egypt -- Not an issue, until recently when the MB government got couped
All of those disagreements were nonexistent or of negligible importance until recently, when they were aggravated by actions of the AKP government. The EU and US have their problems, but they don't extend to geopolitics; it's not like the two have sponsored opposing factions in a war before, with the possible and very brief exception of Germany/Croatia vs US/Bosnia in the 90s. Turkey's problems with Russia are much larger in scope and severity than anything that has ever happened within NATO or the EU.
I did not say that Cyprus was a minor issue. It's a major issue with one member of NATO (Greece) whom the other members don't respect very much. The other members do not consider it much of an issue at all.
Not necessarily. Turkey's just playing both sides. Why wouldn't they? Russia wants free military transit for their warships of the Turkish Straits (which it has to clear with Turkey right now [1]) and it would vastly prefer not to have to go through a NATO country. It would also appreciate another large ally in that region, or maybe another naval base and airfield.
EU wants to be friendly with Turkey because it's the only other route for oil/gas pipelines towards the Middle East that doesn't involve Russia. EU is already heavily dependent on Russian natural gas, and has been seeking solutions [2] to remedy this, which Russia understandably machinates against [3][4].
NATO wants Turkey as a hedge against Russia, as a detente for Greek-Turkish disagreements, and a foothold in the Middle East.
Turkey could very well be in a position to court both NATO and Russia and see what it can get. This may not imply shifting alliances, just trying to get incentives from all parties.
The missile shield in Poland was only begun years after Russia had made it very clear that it was uninterested in participating in any international institutions that would restrict its autonomy in any way.
The choice between global integration and conflict is a false dichotomy. There are many other options: political decentralization and autonomy, linked by mutually beneficial and voluntary trade arrangements, for example.
Besides, historically, the integration of diverse societies with vastly different cultural norms and expectations can only be done through the use of overwhelming force. It has never worked any other way.
> after Russia had made it very clear that it was uninterested in participating in any international institutions that would restrict its autonomy in any way
Exactly! The USA was leading by example (Kyoto, International Court of Justice, ...) and Russia said “me too“.
And the USA, feeling unchallenged, dared put offensive/defensive military infraestructure on the door to Russia.
At first you said that Russia wanted to join international organizations and integrate with the world, but couldn't because the US was somehow actively blocking Russia from joining.
Now you are saying that the US itself didn't join certain international organizations, which encouraged Russia to also actively reject membership in international organizations.
Which is it? These are two very different and opposite arguments.
> What a blunder the west is playing: only 25 years after the URSS collapse, and instead of integrating Russia into the global institucions, the USA decided to proffit the strategic advantage to expand and provoke. We have managed to turn the possibility of true global integration, collaboration and progress into a new cold (actually warm and soon hot) war.
I stand by that: if the west (read USA) had lead by example, by transfering power to international organizations, truly independent, that would have reassured other parties to follow.
I think it's much more likely that Russia would have interpreted any voluntary surrender of power by the US to international organizations as a sign of weakness, which would only have emboldended it even further and sooner into aggressive expansionism. Russian culture is both profoundly averse to the existence of any foreign influence over Russia, and very expansionist.
At the end of the cold war, Russia was very weak economically, and its leaders were fairly internationalists. There was a window of oportunity to strengthen the UN, but the USA just wanted a an American empire.
Foreign influence? Can you tell me once when the USA has submitted its interests to the will of the international community?
Expansionist? The USA has military presence all around the world, and has interferred politically and/or military everywhere, including central and south america, middle east, europe, and far east.
The USA does not annex countries because its strategy is different: invade and destroy country, plant friendly regime, build economic ties (corruption at highest levels) and profit. No need to be running countries when your puppets do it for you.
You're attempting to change the discussion from an analysis of Russia's historic motives in specific situations into an generalized anti-American polemic, because your analysis of Russia's motives was shown to be incorrect.
The people who seemed to be internationalists in Russia in the early 1990s were extremely weak and never actually in charge of the country. They couldn't have brought Russia into any sort of internationalist regime even if they had wanted to. They were totally unable to contain the criminal syndicates within Russia who actually ran things during their nominal rule, and then they were totally unable to avoid their own removal from power by Putin.
The United Nations is a joke. It has been an utter failure from the start. Countries large and small, powerful and weak, ignore it with impunity whenever they feel like it. It is little more than a debating society for intellectual bureaucrats who like to make themselves feel important by issuing thousand page reports that nobody ever reads except other UN bureaucrats.
Why on earth would the US, Russia, or anyone else want to strengthen that mass of bureaucratic dysfunction?
Fantasies of a worldwide internationalist government are long dead, and for good reason.
Sure it is, since my argument for weakening of international institutions is that the USA did not lead by example.
My analysis of russisn motives was pretty much “they did what they did because the USA prooved that they were an expansionist empire, with the goal of extending their influence on the world by expanding their area of influence without compromising ideologically“
I hold the USA to a highest standard, first because they have the means to lead, and second because they have extracted enough value from the world that a bit of compromising is just fair. But even though I feel that the USA are expected to be better than the rest, they never deceive in being much worse than anybody else: military interventions, lies, wars, political medling, ... everything goes.
The UN is indeed a joke, and the USA is mainly to blame. You are happy about it, and I think it's just a pitty.
What do you expect the world to look like in 200 years? Do you really buy that nonsense about perfectly isolated national identities, hapily trading with each other? How do you solve “tragedy of the commons“ kind of problems, without a supranational authority strong enough to force solutions on members? Or is the market fairy working for you there too?
Unless the Strategic Rocket Forces were in much worse condition in 2003 than everyone thought, the idea that a few interceptors in Poland threatened Russian strategic deterrence in any way was laughable. In all likelihood the object was a screen for other concerns such as NATO expansion.
The signal value was, at best, an extremely minor signal. The shield was never a significant military threat to Russia, which was obvious and well known to both the US and Russia at the time.
The only information it carried was that Poland was choosing the US over Russia, which had also been extremely obvious to everyone for a long time, since they had been announcing it to anyone who would listen for years.
The shield was thus of utterly insignificant value as a signal in terms of Russia's decision to join or not join international organizations. It was a signal to Poland, not to Russia.
We could have had collaboration without submission, which is what Russia would have accepted, but the USA wanted to abuse its temporary strategic supremacy to force long term submission.
What on Earth are you talking about. Let's presume you are right and Turkey wasn't being kept out for things like, oh as another pointed out, an occupation of Turkey and Cyprus, how does blocking them from joining the EU make them less moderate? Does the EU have magic dust that effects religious outcomes?
I dont know. They were moderate, we said they dont belong to EU because they are muslim (lots of people said that), and they became fundamentalist.
It is true that fundamentalism is on the rise worldwide (also in christian countries) but my impression is that, in Turkeys case, it was the EU attitude which caused lots of turkish people to vote for a strong islamic president.
> it was the EU attitude which caused lots of turkish people to vote for a strong islamic president.
Or it was just a temporary aligning of views that Erdogan and AKP initially seemed to be moderates, but it turned out that the sheep is actually a wolf with a sheepskin. It happened in history already a few times.
Also, diluting the progressive thought of the EU would likely have prevented it from being an effective counterforce to radicalization. (Though it could have moderated things a bit in Turkey.)
It doesn't, but it can help. Anyway, in case of Hungary, they have already been warned by the EU a couple of times. Time will tell how this evolves, but weakening the project as UK has done will for sure reduce the incentives to return to a more moderate path.
These free-market types, they are really wreaking the world. The 1% capitalism we have reached is putting a death sign in the fundamentalist market ideology, but they are for sure going down with a bang.
Turkey invaded Cyprus in 1974 and is still holding 1/3 of northern part of the island. In the meantime 300000 settlers from Turkey were placed in the occupied areas changing its demographics (who are basically now more than the Turkish Cypriots the invasion was supposed to protect). Turkish Cypriots are culturally different from mainland Turks (they are described as the most progressive Muslim population in the world). The island's internationally recognised government in the south (the Republic of Cyprus) is a full member of the EU since 2003 and can veto Turkey's accession. In the meantime Turkey does not recognise the Republic of Cyprus and that's one of the reasons negotiations with EU have been on halt for years now.
The EU in particular waited until it was pretty clear that the coup was going to fail before siding with “turkish democracy“. The dramatic events taking place in Turkey were received with silence for over 4 hours from the EU. Clearly, they were hoping that the coup would prove succesful to drop annoying Erdogan.
The USA, experienced as they are, were more nuanced, siding with democracy early on, without clearly specifying what they meant.
Nobody explicitely defended the elected government until the coup was obviously failing. Pretty oportunist if you ask me:
"Democracy is like a tram. You use it to get to you destination, and then you get off" - Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The West was seriously duped by this guy. I remember The Economist's self-deluded/deceitful decade-long, apologetic editorial line, never letting a mention of the islamist AKP go unqualified with the adjective "mildly" (read: "market friendly"), and it is ironic that one of the most effective Brexit camp scare tactics was Turkish EU accession, when it was Britain under Blair and Cameron who were the most vociferous advocates of the policy in the first place.
The fix is in. This "coup" is a transparent manipulation by Erdogan so that he might grab absolute power. Who knows what havoc he will now wreak in the region, and in Europe, with it.
The West has also spent the past decade and a half fawning over the genius of the Chinese Communist Party and the PLA for the same reason. Look into their glorious human rights record, or the level of inequality there for that matter. Makes the USA look like an egalitarian utopia.
Dubai is another one. Look at those skyscrapers! What a dynamic economy! Never mind the slave labor and the caste system.
I'd throw Singapore in too. They're nowhere near as bad as the PLA or Dubai in practice but they are essentially totalitarian at heart. But the numbers look good and the streets are clean so it's okay.
Side note:
One thing that's disillusioned me about libertarianism is that the past 30-ish years of history seem to have proven that capitalism and economic health are absolutely compatible with totalitarianism. IMHO the Randian notion that the two are at odds and that a dynamic economy requires freedom and justice has been empirically proven wrong. Slave states work. GDP goes up. What's not to like?
>Slave states work. GDP goes up. What's not to like?
They work when they're sitting on a mountain of oil, or Singapore's equivalent: a shipping bottleneck. Sort-of, at some point corruption becomes intolerable, or the oil runs out (or becomes too cheap to pay for the oppression).
That said, the Singapore comparison may be a little far-fetched, they resemble the West far more than the totalitarian Middle East states.
Pretty sure Singapore gives the death penalty to drug dealers. Maybe even drug users, but I do know at some point the minimum punishment for any drug dealing was death.
You're going to have to provide a lot more than that one example to show me that Singapore is a "totalitarian" state. Just recently the entire State of Louisiana's "Justice" system was shown to be in cahoots with the private prison industry, for example. And judging by the "Making a Murderer" documentary, our entire judicial process resembles a totalitarian police state circus much more than any other developed nation. Singapore is a "totalitarian" state? Fine, by your standards, the US is a 2nd rate Banana Republic.
The more your economy relies on creativity and education of the workforce the less productive a slave will become compared to a free man.
So yes, economies relying on slave labor can outcompete our economies in sectors where masses of low skilled labor are required (because of the lower price), but once these economies move up and require highly skilled labor they'll usually get into trouble.
There's an easy solution to that: create a caste system and ensure that knowledge workers (who are willing to tow the line) belong to the upper caste. Of course it's a Faustian bargain, but just make sure it's a cushy enough deal with the devil and nobody complains.
It need not be codified into law. It can be accomplished by way of a severe wealth disparity, a glass ceiling, stratification of housing, stratification of education, etc., and a legal system that treats upper class people significantly better than lower class ones. Everyone is technically a citizen subject to the same laws but in practice a different set of laws apply to you based on your wealth, occupation, connections, and what neighborhood you live in.
Edit: yes the US is a bit like this, but you can take it a lot further.
> ensure that knowledge workers (who are willing to tow the line)
If you're a semi-meritocratic secular authoritarian state like China that isn't too difficult. If you're a religious conservative authoritarian state, that's close to impossible. Knowledge workers are willing to live with authoritarianism as long as it doesn't overly restrict their personal lives and interactions, and religious conservatism is all about restricting personal lives and interactions.
"Ankh-Morpork had dallied with many forms of government and had ended up with that form of democracy known as One Man, One Vote. The Patrician was the Man, he had the Vote." (Mort, Terry Pratchett)
I've mostly heard it in echoes referring to later events, and am not clear on the origins, but intuitively it makes the most sense as a statement by the opponents of decolonialization commenting on the likely results of democratic elections after the departure of the colonial authorities, so it makes sense for it to be the colonialists rather than the anti-colonialists.
I agree Erdogan is using this as an excuse to seize complete control, but I don't buy the fake coup conspiracy theory. The military had no reason to agree to help Erdongan do something like that, and who would volunteer to get tried for Treason?
The military never liked Erdogan and he's been locking up military leaders for 'plotting' against him for years. Some of them finally got fed up with him, but made a mess of it.
the theorists are saying something more subtle happened. Either of:
a) A coup-credible general or two or three, would have been bribed to trigger it, so that Erdogan could identify his enemies red-handed. The rest of the plotters in the army would have been under the impression a real coup was happening. This would explain the quick surrender of the bridge soldiers without a fight, because the horrible reality that they had been duped would have dawned upon them.
Or possibly more likely:
b) Noises and rumours were discretely circulated by his agents that Erdogan was preparing a large purge. This is credible because it is reported the list of all the 3000 judge firings, for example, was pre-prepared (as you would expect with such a large number). Tactical leaks to the right people of would have forced an immature half-baked coup plan hastily and prematurely to be executed, in panic and to protect themselves pre-emptively from said purge. This is the scenario where Erdogan basically raised the stakes in order to call their bluff, and thus flushed his enemies out into the open.
Personally I find the consequences of this "coup" to be much too neatly convenient for Erdogan, the purge too pre-meditated in appearance and logistically well organised, for the finger of prime suspicion not to point directly at him.
Erdogan has been terrified there might be a coup for years. The idea that he'd deliberately manipulate part of the army into actually trying to overthrow him seems very thin because he'd be far too worried the coup would actually work. Could he really trust the instigators of the fake coup to back him and not go for a real coup? There's no way he'd ever take that risk, he doesn't trust anyone in the military. It's like asking someone with a pathological terror of guns to play Russian roulette. Yes you could win big, but consider the down side.
The Middle East is full of conspiracy theories like this. Pretty much everything that ever happens is either an Israeli or American plot or both. I get that there are actually a lot of conspiracies and plotting going on in the region. But sometimes a failed coup is just a failed coup.
I can kind of buy the big purge theory, but Erdogan would have had big lists of political enemies anyway whether he was actively plotting a purge or not. In fact hundreds of military personnel have already been tried an jailed for plotting and disloyalty over the years. Along with stripping opposition politicians of immunity and planning to try them for treason, he was already carrying out a step-by-step purge anyway. I don't think the coup plotters had any need to know about or believe in anything more in order to see what was happening and decide a coup was worth a shot.
It is clear to me that the West wanted Erdogan gone (for good reasons) although I'm not insinuating that the US had any part in the failed coup.
But after these extensive purges it will be basically impossible to remove the elite that rose with Erdogan for the next decades, of that much I'm sure.
History has shown again and again that purges are a cruel but still extremely effective tool. After this there will be no opposition left.
I even expect that Turkey will leave NATO within the next years and get closer to Russia/China/Iran.
Also, I didn't know about this, but I guess I should be prepared for even more of it:
> President Recep Tayyip Erdogan clashed with academics earlier this year, when more than 1,000 of them signed a petition calling for peace in the southeast and criticizing the government’s handling of the state’s long-running battle with its Kurdish population centered there. Many ended up on trial, while others lost their jobs.
"Plomo o plata" is still technically a choice you're "asking" someone to make, and I don't get the sense that protection against coercion is a big thing right now for old Recep.
I think the loss of civil liberties in Poland are worse than any kind of Brexit in a sense. Though both signal a fucked up populace. Just as submitting to a supernatural being that so far provided 0 bit of its existence.
Eventually things will have to give. Navigating our increasingly global, complex, many-faceted, and all in all stranger world requires firm roots in rationality, of course, only if one wants to really get somewhere not just hide from the hard problems of life.
So far, it seems, we have billions of people very much reluctant to face this reality. Fighting tooth and nail against every kind of revelation, instead butchering reality to make it fit to their worldview.
This is a particularly bad sign, and one that seems to support the worst fears about the future of Turkey. Ousting judges and other powerful figures in the government and military makes a certain ruthless sense, but intellectual purges seem to always be the ultimate canary in the social coalmine.
Working on reintroducing the death penalty is another.
Its saddening to see how the large secular part of the population that has no desire to live in an Islamic state has little recourse but to keep quiet and hope nobody points a finger in their direction.
The USA and Europe should welcome them. The American Century was in many ways built on brain drain from totalitarian regimes. When Germany went insane we got quite a bit of the cream of the crop of German intellectuals including many of history's greatest physicists, the Bauhaus School of design, etc.
I've been living in Germany for less than a quarter of my life but in the recent years I started feeling more German than Turkish and that is while my German is still far from perfect and having way less friends here than I do back in İstanbul (and yes, never switched my keyboard layout too).
I'm actually thinking to apply for a citizenship - I think I may be eligible after 7 years here.
My point is, yes, leaving is the right thing for most of the people who don't feel like they belong there.
Also, I think that will also help Turkey too. A very large group of like-minded people will (I guess) live up to their choices and they become very successful and everyone is happy or it all crashes and burns, hopefully leading to a story about successful recovery like Germany.
Preventing emigration is rare for non-Soviet-descended governments, even the most authoritarian ones. Most governments are pretty happy when dissidents leave.
> has the means to leave
Not everyone, but as the Syrian and Afghan refugees that were formerly pouring out of Turkey illustrate, if you are in decent health, have 2 feet and have a way of acquiring sustenance along your way, you don't need much means to leave. Most people are kept back by attachments to community and property, not a lack of means.
The situation is bad, yes, but not war-zone-bad. Borders are open and non-political actors (well, most of them) get to keep their passports and freedom of mobility (obviously not all freedoms).
Maybe, but I'm not sure I see it likely with the current political mood that a wave of political refugees from an advancing Islamist movement in a country in that region will be welcomed with open arms in the USA. Just, you know, judging from recent history.
It's not the canary, it's the death-by-poison. By the time this happens, it's too late. The idea of the canary is that when it dies, you still have a bit of time to leave.
Viktor Orbán's Hungarian dream! In his case he doesn't even have a majority, simply a plurality. But it was enough to purge the press and neuter the judiciary.
Imagine to sit in such a parliament, and the vote for the reintroduction of the death penalty comes up. Do you vote for it? If you don't vote for it- you surely get on El presidents list. If you vote for it, you might get on that list... later.
Imagine one would send out a fake "purge" list with nearly everyone in parliament on it. Robespierre rule ended that way.
This entire thread and the common trends in western media makes me think that Turkey will be soon destroyed, and will be joining other failed countries. Clearly not by raw force since this military coup failed to achieve his goals. I will always be amazed how the west manage to slaughter third world countries and still has political support from the people.
Your last sentence has an implied assumption that 'third world countries' have no independent agency, that their success or failure is derived primarily from 'the West'.
Isn't it possible that the more direct cause of success or failure are the circumstances and choices made by the people within these countries?
What you are saying is definitely true. People in third world countries made over the past many bad decisions, and I think that is mostly due to the lack of education, and an absence of honorable ruling class. But still the west is playing a big role in that matter too. those countries are still maintaining bad influence over their colonies or areas of interest. Draining at the same time human and financial wealth crucial for these countries to rise as decent nations. Mallence give an interesting talk on that matter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_pvNp9gHjfk
Pol Pot also didn't like the intellectuals. In general, the intelligentsia is always troublesome for Despots. They're usually one of the first groups to be purged.
Turkey is firmly bent on following Iran's lead.
Ladies and Gentlemen - Ayatollah Supreme Leader Sultan Erdogan I, The Glorious, The Ever-Wise, Founder of the Modern Islamic Republic of Turkey!
Seems potentially useful in some cases but overall obvious as to how it would garner false positives. Basically limits things to 1 comment per person who upvoted.
Erdoğan has been pushing primary education in Turkey to become more Islamic. Is this part of that?
Turkey may be headed down the Islamic rathole. No country with an Islamic education system is very successful, because Islamic education doesn't teach useful skills. Some of the oil states survive by bringing in outsiders to do the work, but that only lasts until the oil runs out. Then they become failed states like Egypt and Syria.
I can't speak to the quality (or lack thereof) of Islamic education. But I feel this generally holds true for any fundamentalist religion-based education.
Catholic schools tend to be decent. In Puerto Rico for example, the best schools I could ever go to were Catholic. When I moved from PR to Florida I was being taught material I had already learned in Puerto Rico. Edit: That is, in Public Schools I was being taught things I already learned in Spanish.
Catholic schools are (by definition) not "fundamentalist" by the narrow original definition, and usually not "fundamentalist" by the broader, common modern definition.
I qualified my post with "fundamentalist" for that reason. Catholic schools (in the US) tend to be far from fundamentalist. They still have a religious component, but my experience has been that they generally refrain from introducing that into their science and history classes to any great extent.
Catholicism, for all its many faults, is not a fundamentalist religion. There's no conflict between their theology and the scientific method, evolution, etc. It's various Protestant sects that are fundamentalist and deny evolution, think dinosaurs were on Noah's Ark, etc.
The day I realized this was the day my Theology professor in high school asked us, "Why wasn't the Big Bang just God pressing play?"
Jesuits will survive and prosper long after movements like Quiverfull because they actually attempt to integrate modern scientific knowledge into their theology, instead of saying "well, the jury's still out on science."
I don't think Catholicism could ever have been called a fundamentalist religion. It isn't completely based on one holy book (the Bible), it's always integrated other sources and teachings, such as the bit about Popes being infallible when making certain proclamations. As such, it's always evolving as a religion. Even more, Catholicism has always taken the stance that the Bible isn't something to be read and interpreted by regular people, and that only Church authorities can really interpret it correctly, which is why they always kept Masses in Latin and never translated the Bible to other languages. This was one of the issues in the Protestant Reformation, and why the King James Bible was such an important book at the time: it was the first time commoners were able to read it in their own language.
>it's almost like it takes a 1000 years, give or take, for a religion to blow off its steam and become reasonably peaceful.
Fundamental attribution error. It took Catholicism 1000 years to blow off that steam. That does not imply that the theology of Islam will ever move past barbarism.
It's more of a time management problem than a theology problem. There are schools that teach All Religion All the Time. Islamic madrassas and Jewish yeshivas do that. People come out of them without the skills to do anything useful.
The problem for him is that Turkish nationalism is a good tool for internal control, but it doesn't help at all if the goal is to gain influence in the Middle East.
Turks are not Arabs after all. Islam on the other hand is quite influential und universal in the Middle East.
I guess he wants more influence in the Middle East instead of trying to influence some Turkish minorities in China and a few minor Central Asian nations. (good luck trying that against China)
> No country with an Islamic education system is very successful, because Islamic education doesn't teach useful skills.
I'm not sure what you mean by "Islamic education system", but many important contributions [0] have been made by individuals from what would appear to be such a system.
For one, they're separated by a few hundred years? What "education system" can we even speak of, when "education system" in our current context is an artifact that is from late-19th Century Europe? Were there learned people back then? Of course! But an education system in the modern sense? Laughable.
If you're going to bring the "Islamic Golden Age" up, maybe we should discuss how to improve our diplomatic relations with Sparta and the Scythians, as well?
It just seems to me that what is being called "Islamic education system" is likely not a monolithic institution. Is the system coordinated across countries and sects? What is the commonality between them? Is there a more specific definition of what constitutes such an education system or are there more specific details about where this system exists and who the (specific) people are who are being educated by it?
In the name of the general welfare, to protect the people's security, to achieve full equality and total stability, it is decreed for the duration of the national emergency that:
Point One. All workers, wage earners and employees of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall not leave nor be dismissed nor change employment, under penalty of a term in jail. The penalty shall be determined by the Unification Board, such Board to be appointed by the Bureau of Economic Planning and National Resources. All persons reaching the age of twenty-one shall report to the Unification Board, which shall assign them to where, in its opinion, their services will best serve the interests of the nation.
Point Two. All industrial, commercial, manufacturing and business establishments of any nature whatsoever shall henceforth remain in operation, and the owners of such establishments shall not quit nor leave nor retire, nor close, sell or transfer their business, under penalty of the nationalization of their establishment and of any and all of their property.
Point Three. All patents and copyrights, pertaining to any devices, inventions, formulas, processes and works of any nature whatsoever, shall be turned over to the nation as a patriotic emergency gift by means of Gift Certificates to be signed voluntarily by the owners of all such patents and copyrights. The Unification Board shall then license the use of such patents and copyrights to all applicants, equally and without discrimination, for the purpose of eliminating monopolistic practices, discarding obsolete products and making the best available to the whole nation. No trademarks, brand names or copyrighted titles shall be used. Every formerly patented product shall be known by a new name and sold by all manufacturers under the same name, such name to be selected by the Unification Board. All private trademarks and brand names are hereby abolished.
Point Four. No new devices, inventions, products, or goods of any nature whatsoever, not now on the market, shall be produced, invented, manufactured or sold after the date of this directive. The Office of Patents and Copyrights is hereby suspended.
which part of the 73 page absurdly boring John Galt monologue do you want me to quote to prove you wrong?
also, I don't care if you don't believe me. if you were really randian you would know that reality exists regardless of your belief in it, or to quote her quote of Socrates, "A is A."
I've also read and own literally every book she published, and a few published posthumously by leonard peikoff. I've considered her views extensively to see if they can coexist with mine.
You clearly misunderstood moron, I said I don't believe you because reading that book once is a painful exercise why the hell would someone that didn't like it read it multiple times? Keep your lies in check and maybe you will be convincing.
Hard? Where did I say hard? Reading for challenge is understandable, reading a bad book multiple times is just retarded. And Atlas Shrugged isn't a hard book.
It's kinda unfortunate that this is the top comment. Couldn't we talk about Turkey instead of quoting books that are at best marginally related to the present situation?
it appears your point, while well made, is covered by Point Eight. "All cases arising from and rules not specifically provided for in this directive, shall be settled and determined by the Unification Board, whose decisions will be final."
This would work. I don't understand why people shrug away these types of ideas.
EDIT: This was an ironic statement meant to reference Atlas Shrugged. I'm sure most people caught it, but its definitely interesting to see how primed up people are to voice an opinion. Its a good thing, if you take your time to understand what the other person has said.
I believe is this a great representation of what is currently happening on both the left and right. People go straight for their opinions and demonize others without taking the brief moment to listen and think.
> All workers, wage earners and employees of any kind whatsoever shall henceforth be attached to their jobs and shall not leave nor be dismissed nor change employment, under penalty of a term in jail.
So if you're a doctor but actually discover one day you'd much rather be a musician and actually you eventually hate being a doctor, you just have to suck it up?
Sounds like Point Four needs to be extended far beyond "no new devices, inventions, products, or goods of any nature whatsoever" to include "no new ideas, thoughts, emotions, or any cognitive state of any nature whatsoever" to get the kind of static state they're seeking.
Also, how do you operate the world's largest prisons without hiring additional wardens and guards?
So if you're a doctor but actually discover one day you'd much rather be a musician and actually you eventually hate being a doctor, but you do not suck it up, be a musician, and you may need to learn to keep yourself in prison.
I started with wardens, but the whole ecosystem would cause a chain reaction that would just cause extreme disorder.
I keep thinking and more ridiculous scenarios pop-up in my mind but I don't want to ruin the potentially fun game of finding them for everyone else.
I'm sure we all can agree that there is such s line since we probably all can agree that Hitler crossed it although I'm not sure in his case where exactly that line was either. Maybe when he dismantled the parliament? Maybe earlier?