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I'm a canuck who has worked with Turks and has visited Turkey. They're a wonderful people from a beautiful country with a real problem of a person in power. T

• RcouF1uZ4gsC 10y ago
  I think a major issue with Turkey is that there is a large non-secular voting bloc. Historically, that has been kept in check by periodic coupes by the Kemalist military. However, Erdogan has succeeded in taming the military (as demonstrated vividly by the failed coupe). Thus, the non-secular voting bloc has escaped the historic check. I am afraid, Turkey will become less secular in the next few years. In addition, there is not much we can do externally, as evidenced by the latest referendum, Erdogan has the support of a majority of voters.
  • denzil_correa 10y ago
    Bingo! It also seems that the quantity of secular bloc is lesser than that of the non-secular bloc. Apart from the military, Erdogan has also tamed the judicial system.
  • hollander 10y ago
    Well it seems the majority is not that big. He won by a small margin, while controlling all the media. If it had been a true free election, I bet he would have lost this referendum. And if you look at the demographics, people in cities voted against, countryside pro. Turkish people living abroad voted pro Erdogan. I bet most of those people came from the countryside in Turkey.
    • ardaozkal 10y ago
      > while controlling all the media It's much, much more than that. Every single billboard and half the TV ads before referendum were ads telling people to vote "yes". People didn't even know what they were voting for.
      • isostatic 10y ago
        People trust him. He provides "Stong and Stable Leadership", he's built roads and delivered on his promises. He then says "I need you to vote for this to give me extraordinary powers", and people trust him - especially as the opposition is in disarray Hopefully people will see this for what it is and not vote Tory on June 8th.
        • Al-Khwarizmi 10y ago
          Whenever I see a politician calling for strong and stable leadership (happens in Spain, too), I know that's a politician I'm not going to vote.
    • pikzen 10y ago
      Win with 75% and everyone knows you cheated. With 51%, you leave just enough doubt for it but to be obvious.
  • campuscodi 10y ago
    He does not. He falsified votes.
  • angry_octet 10y ago
    The majority of rural voters anyway. In the latest voting he had low support in major centres. His control of the media is key to controlling the public vote, especially in rural areas. So supporting the free press, and anti-censorship technology, is a great way to support democracy in Turkey.
• NumberCruncher 10y ago
  >> People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on [whatever] regime. Yep, because that is what happened with the Eastern-Europian regimes in 1956 and 1969. History repeats itself.
  • nebabyte 10y ago
    It's this mode of thinking that tbh kills democracies, both internally and externally. The idea that just because you're struggling, your problems are someone else's problems. We see it here (and elsewhere) with people continually calling for and hoping for politicians to "do the right thing" rather than organize themselves (unless it's to do something easy like stand around holding signs) and think through new reforms to then push for (we even have the article 5 mechanism designed explicitly for that); we see it elsewhere with "Where is the West, why isn't anyone helping" as they forget we have literally neither mandate nor motive to solve their problem for them, and problems of our own besides. Yes, we will likely intervene on certain actions anyways to preclude all-out wars if they loom. But if it gets to that point it will only be insofar as it protects us or defuses that war; liberation and organization is still ultimately a people's own problem we literally have no business butting into.
• Curnee 10y ago
  I play video games from a young Turkish woman. She goes to gigs, nightclubs, drinks and socialises. She hits on guys and they hit on her. She is indistinguishable from any western 20something. I was on a voice call with her the night of the supposed coup, and listened to her and her family angrily lemmenting the administration. It seemed even on the night of they knew something was fishy. She lives in Istanbul, and is educated, so maybe I don't get a full picture of the Turkish opinion. Maybe others elsewhere support the government and its actions, blindly. She'd love to move to the UK, and would fit in well with our culture. Yet a part of the Leave campaigns was about how Turkey would one day join the EU, and then we'd have Turkish people flooding here too!!! Shock horror. It's becoming a self fulfilling prophecy by the west at this point, to turn Turkey from what it is, to what they think it is.
  • politicalthrow 10y ago
    Let me see if I can follow the logic. There are people in turkey that are more western. These people would leave turkey if possible, but they can't. This is making turkey less western? Wouldn't that have the opposite effect? The west is generally responsible for the brain drain in less successful countries. Throwing borders up will keep those people who share our views in those countries. It's a fair bet that those people will be the force for good change in their governments more likely within their country than outside it.
  • forvelin 10y ago
    There is a 49% in Turkey, and then there is 51%. 51 won and this happened.
    • nebabyte 10y ago
      We need to introduce some sort of minority action in democracy. The smaller pluralities should not be powerless against the majority... The problem there I suppose would be neutral arbitration. sigh
      • mercer 10y ago
• fulafel 10y ago
  The voters elected and support an autocratic leader, however wonderful people they may be. It's not just about Erdogan.
  • ardaozkal 10y ago
    Reposting my comment from another place here, as it kinda applies to this too, especially the second sentence: > Every single billboard and half the TV ads before referendum were ads telling people to vote "yes". > People didn't even know what they were voting for.
    • fulafel 10y ago
      But they voted him many times before, it was apparent where he was heading.
    • mk89 10y ago
      > People didn't even know what they were voting for. absolutely true! Which says a lot about those people who voted for him.
  • Eupolemos 10y ago
    Turkey has a very harsh rural/cosmopolitan split, just like the US has. On top of that, the last election (the turn the President into Sultan) had massive fraud and any critical media has been jailed.
• pizza 10y ago
  FWIW, here is a map of US military bases in the region https://www.antiwar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1.-us-bases-in-the-middle-east-a.jpg https://www.antiwar.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/12/1.-u...
  • fapjacks 10y ago
    This is a great map. However it doesn't include "minor" bases and classified installations, FWIW. It appears to be a map of unclassified bases with air operations capabilities, e.g. an unclassified base you could fly into and out of.
• lubonay 10y ago
  Isn't it kinda undemocratic for "the West" to go in and overthrow an, ironically enough, democratically elected dictator?
  • _Adam 10y ago
    It's also destabilizing. Look at Libya, Iraq, 1970s Iran, etc. Ukraine is the only example where an autocrat was removed from power without the entire country falling into chaos. They were fortunate to lose control over just Crimea and the eastern zone.
    • mkempe 10y ago
      Germany, 1945
      • duncanawoods 10y ago
        It required killing 7 million Germans, 10% of the population. I guess if you kill enough people, that does reduce certain types of chaos... but a world war is basically peak chaos.
        • mkempe 10y ago
          Did these Germans die because Hitler was in power, or because he was removed from power?
  • kyriakos 10y ago
    As someone living in Cyprus an island who has serious issues with Turkey, overthrowing Erdogan scares me more than Erdogan being a dictator. At this point at least we know Erdogan's issues stay inside Turkey. If someone unsuccessfully tries to overthrow him no one can predict what his reaction will be. From invading Greece to a civil war that will end with hundreds of thousands dead. If he is successfully overthrown, we'll have a new Iraq for a decade before the area stabilizes. Either way there's no clean solution.
  • minusSeven 10y ago
• hd4 10y ago
  You seem to be implying that because they're Muslim but not really Islamic and very western that it's somehow not desirable for them to become more Islamic. How about you let them decide what's good for themselves? Why is it scary just because it's Islamic? I detect racist undertones in your post. And I don't think much of Erdogan at all, and how he thinks censorship is cool. But you don't get to start deciding what's good for a nation unless you're happy for others to decide what's good for Canada too.
  • _Adam 10y ago
    Well, for starters they didn't decide for themselves. It was decided for them: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/world/europe/turkey-referendum-is-haunted-by-allegations-of-voter-fraud.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/18/world/europe/turkey-refer... The greater issue though, is that it seems the "majority" is now imposing their religious ideals on a "minority". That is an unacceptable violation of the basic right to religious freedom. Sadly Turkey is far from the first country in the Middle East to do this. There's a guy in Saudi Arabia on death row because he admitted to being atheist on his blog / social media.
    • pbhjpbhj 10y ago
      >The greater issue though, is that it seems the "majority" is now imposing their religious ideals on a "minority". That is an unacceptable violation of the basic right to religious freedom. // But that violent subjugation of non-Muslims is a central part of Islam (as practiced and preached by Mohammed). Become a Muslim, if you're "people of the book" pay jizra, or die. That's the only way for an Islamic majority to stay true to Mohammed's injunctions. Unless Islam turns is back on Mohammed and the Koran it can't become accepting of our Western concept of human rights in this way. Muslims whom I know are thankfully just not practicing this party of their religion and not emulating Mohammed in this way; but suggestion they are not being true to Mohammed and his ideals would nonetheless be a massive affront to them. I see no way to fit Mohammedism in to a peaceful world.
      • deleted 10y ago
        [deleted]
• sorenjan 10y ago
  Plenty of people care, but what are we supposed to do about it? Here in Europe Erdogan makes the headlines from time to time, right before the referendum he made several speeches where he called the politicians of multiple countries "descendants of nazis" and similar. Everybody knows that he cares more about suppressing the Kurds than ISIS. He holds Europe hostage by threatening to release large amounts of refugees into Europe, not dissimilar to what Qaddafi did. We've been hearing about the increasing religiosity pretty much since he took office. It's one more example of a common pattern where the rural and the urban population disagrees, due to globalization, increased liberal ideas in cities, and a switch from manufacturing to service jobs. It seems to be universal that the rural population is more religious, less prepared for a global economy, and in general more backwards, yearning for times that aren't here anymore.
  • agumonkey 10y ago
    I think we should stop communicating from the top. Many problems right now are because heads of state, not necessarily people. Erdogan, Putin ... We should try to get real people to talk, about who they are, what they want (peace ? surely .. war ? not so sure). So peoples in every nation start to avoid the national/patriot filter when thinking and voting.
    • jstanley 10y ago
      > I think we should stop communicating from the top. Many problems right now are because heads of state, not necessarily people. Damn right. If the people in charge could stop trying to exercise power and just leave everybody alone, we'd all be much better off.
    • oxide 10y ago
      Imagine the Turkish coup was organized and executed properly and they succeeded. Who takes power? Does it create a vacuum? A civil war? I often ponder these "alternate history timelines" and try to imagine what the world might be like.
      • toomanybeersies 10y ago
• tim333 10y ago
  >People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on Erdogan's regime I think people in the West who follow these things pretty much uniformly dislike Erdogan and his throwing the journalists in jail type activities but the Turks vote for him. I'm not sure what we're supposed to do about it.
  • avaika 10y ago
    > but the Turks vote for him. "Vote". I'm not quite sure about Turks, but in Russia "vote" is a fake. As Stalin once said "It's not about who votes, it's all about who counts the votes". There were always way too many violations in the vote process. e.g. people who voted multiple times, militaries who were forced to vote in the right way. God damn it, even 146% of a votes sum translated on federal TV channels [1]. Nobody even tries to hide violations anymore. A lot of people simply don't believe there is anything they can do about it. They just wait the people in charge will be gone. Plus add massive brainwashing, threatenings like "without <put the name> the country will fall into chaos", active opposition mortification by government. And here we are. [1]: http://netbespredelu.ru/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/656886.jpeg http://netbespredelu.ru/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/656886.jp...
    • isostatic 10y ago
      Much of the urban population rose up in support of Erdogan during the attempted coup. And I agree with the brainwashing, we have that in the uk right now
      • markvdb 10y ago
        The urban population rose up in support of democracy, not Erdogan.
• agumonkey 10y ago
  Yet so many people are rooting for Erdogan... to the point of fighting tanks bare hands. People say erdogan managed to improve some things and now people are all praising him madly...
  • mercurial 10y ago
    1) There is a conservative majority in Turkey, which has flourished under Erdogan, both economically and societally. They have no reason to stop supporting them. 2) Not wanting a military coup does not make one a supporter of Erdogan. But yeah, the secularist block seems to be powerless to do anything (and not even talking about the Kurds).
    • agumonkey 10y ago
      I would be hard pressed to believe the people pushing out tanks that night were just anti-coup.
      • isostatic 10y ago
        Nor were they rural farmers
• denzil_correa 10y ago
  > Turkey is nothing like the common stereotypes we have of it in the West From what I see, there are two Turkeys - the liberal Turkey which resides in cities like Izmir and the conservative ones which come from places like Bursa or Gaziantep. Currently, there are fewer liberal Turks than the conservative ones. > People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on Erdogan's regime On this point, I've always found it amazing how most of my American friends/colleagues have little idea about what's happening outside the USA. I get that most news is local and all that but sometimes there are impactful events around the world which would be difficult to miss. Most times, they haven't even heard about the event let alone know about it.
  • Altay- 10y ago
    >From what I see, there are two Turkeys - the liberal Turkey which resides in cities like Izmir and the conservative ones which come from places like Bursa or Gaziantep. Currently, there are fewer liberal Turks than the conservative ones. The people you think are liberal are anything but. They used military might to maintain control since the founding of the Republic. They have never won a single election. Every free election has gone to the conservative/Islamist parties. Until AKP in 2002, those parties were all removed by the military. Sometimes their leaders got executed in the process. So if you want to know why the PEOPLE support Erdogan, its because the alternative to an Islamic Democrat isn't a Western Liberal Democrat. It's a secular Dictator like Assad/Saddam/Al-Sisi If you think (half-halfheartedly) blocking random websites and a few dozen journalists in prison is bad, why don't you do some research on what life was like when the secular Turks ruled (CHP) Here's a few fun facts: -Calling yourself a Kurd got you jailed. -Speaking Kurdish was a crime. -Having foreign currency in your pocket landed you in jail. -Standard Old Socialist Econ Policies: Price Controls, High Tariffs, long lines for Butter, coupons for food, etc. -Couldn't wear headscarf to school/court/etc. -A female MP who wore her headscarf to parliament was arrested, stripped of her Turkish Citizenship, and exiled. I could go on, but the point is: Zero freedom of expression or religion in Turkey when the 'liberal' Turks were in charge.
  • sanderjd 10y ago
    I don't understand why Altay's comment is dead. I found it interestingly and informative. Unpopular opinions reasonably expressed should not be killed.
• madeofpalk 10y ago
  > Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, yet they produce alcohol and tolerate its consumption within their borders, even by their own people. Let that fact sink in for a moment. Call me naive, but is this actually a problem? I'm fairly secular and don't know much about how 'Muslim states' operate, but if they're producing alcohol, for it's population who drinks and and doesn't care, what is the actual problem here? Shouldn't the government reflect the values of the people (which has seemingly fine with alcohol consumption)?
  • ivanbakel 10y ago
    The point is that there's no problem at all. The standard for many Islamic countries to introduce parts of Islamic law as state law, such as the forbidding of alcohol or the veiling of women. By contrast, Turkey is much more secular in its government.
    • isostatic 10y ago
      People who haven't travelled read Islamic and think Saudi Arabia. Go to Indonesia and you'll find cheap beer and the only reason women wouldn't drive is the traffic is really bad.
      • slowmotiony 10y ago
        What is the legal punishment for leaving or insulting islam in Indonesia?
        • Permagate 10y ago
          People can sue you for insulting religion, there is a law for it (not specific to Islam, but religion in general). 99% of the times, this is a non-issue. People just don't care enough to bring the issue to court. However, if politic is involved, this can be used as a ground to discredit a politician. It is a hot topic this year before our capital's election, where one of the frontrunners was sued for allegedly insulting al-qur'an[1] One other exception is if you live in Aceh. It is a special region in Indonesia which implements Islamic law to the tee. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2016_Jakarta_protests https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2016_Jakarta_protests
• jbmorgado 10y ago
  Seriously, stop trying to spread that notion that EU has to take care of everyone's problems. It doesn't! If the majority of Turks are brainwashed enough to support a dictator, mass incarceration and ties of their government to terrorist organisations in order to appease their xenophoby towards the Kurdish minority, then make sure it's their problem and not the EU. The only thing EU must do is make sure it doesn't blow up their way. When (not if) Turkey starts their civil war, just make sure you don't allow them in the EU after they willingly destroyed their own country after decades of EU trying to help them solve their internal problems by increasing democratic institutions there (and pouring a lot of money), but they very stubbornly resisting it and actually going the opposite way. The world must stop looking at EU like they are the fireman of the world and at fault for all the arsonists the population keeps electing in Africa, the Middle East and even some parts of Eastern Europe.
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• dogma1138 10y ago
  You are describing the more modern half of Turkey aka the vacation belt. The other half is much worse than what most western people who are familiar with the Turkish resorts imagine. It's like looking at SF or SV and extrapolating from it the mindset of the Bible Belt. Erdogan has support of at least half of the Turkish population and in many ways when compared to the more extreme mindset of it he's a moderate.
• sorokod 10y ago
  Aren't you oversimplifying things? Wasn't Erdogan democratically​ elected and later democratically increased?
  • aluhut 10y ago
    There is nothing democratic about a election in a country where the ruling party has demonized the opposition in such a way that people are afraid to vote for them...
• slowmotiony 10y ago
  You do realize they voted him in? They specifically chose him to be his leader and continue to do so. Why should the West "wake up"? What do you propose the west does? Should we send the militaty and overthrow him?
  • namlem 10y ago
    In a referendum with tons of irregularities and many reports of government thugs intimidating voters.
    • slowmotiony 10y ago
      Did you reply to the wrong post or something?
    • jbmorgado 10y ago
      Please give me a break, the great majority of the Turks living in Germany (just as an example) not only voted yes in the referendum but after it won there were major celebrations on the streets of a lot of big German cities by Turks living there. Please stop this nonsense of trying to pretend it's always somebody else's fault other than the majority of the Turks. They choose to transform their country in the mess it became. http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/referendum-in-turkey-the-bizarre-behavior-of-turkish-german-voters-a-1143735.html http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/referendum-in-tu...
      • namlem 10y ago
        In Germany sure, but not in most countries. http://www.unzcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/map-turkey-referendum-2017-nine6s1.png http://www.unzcloud.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/04/map-turke...
• namlem 10y ago
  I don't think it's that no one cares, it's that he is very difficult to stand up to. The EU needs him because Turkey is the only thing holding back a flood of 2 million refugees. They can't threaten sanctions without risking the floodgates being opened. The US has had a long relationship with Turkey and doesn't want to terminate it unless it has to. Turkey also has the second largest standing army in NATO and is a regional rival of Russia, which is convenient for us.
• treehau5 10y ago
  I'm a greek who's grandmother has a view of Turkey within their back yard. I'd say the majority of your view is true, but in my guess-timation, about half of them are fundamentalists, who still treat Kurds like third-class citizens, who want to turn Hagia Sophia, a cultural epicenter and museum back into a Mosque, who helped vote Ergodan in in the first place. The people you are talking about never wanted him. A funny parallel, if you read HN, you could draw the same conclusion about America -- it sounds like most everyone is against Trump and are reasonable people, but 48.5% of the country still voted him in, and of that 48.5% half think he's doing a 'wonderful job' These people don't stay in power by chance. America -- take note.
• Bombthecat 10y ago
  In germany, we Germans know. But as Merkel put it : erdogan is a democrat in a democracy. Nothing we can do here.
  • kem 10y ago
    I guess that's the thing: from what I can tell, Turkey ceased being a democracy with Erdogan. I do not believe anything pertaining to votes in Turkey for some time, since the time Erdogan was first elected. That vote was suspect, and so has everything that's happened since then. In certain ways, what I find so disturbing about what's been happening in Turkey is how readily everyone seems to accept the official account of major events. The vote that initially established him, the "coup," the most recent vote... Things seem to be accepted at face value by the west without questioning it, even when major red flags are everywhere. Erdogan isn't just a despot, he's a liar. And the West, especially Western journalism, seems to turn a blind eye. Even if a large proportion of Turkey supports Erdogan, it doesn't mean a majority do. Even if Erdogan's government says a majority does, doesn't mean it actually does. And when a government establishes itself by subverting democratic or constitutional processes, it's not a democratic government anymore.
    • Bombthecat 10y ago
      Well, he or the situation is often compared to Hitler. I think for good reason...
• Kenji 10y ago
  >People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on Erdogan's regime. There's some seriously scary stuff happening because of this guy. I am wide awake but I am not one of the idiot Turks who voted for this guy. What am I supposed to do if a foreign nation turns itself into an islamofascist dictatorship?
• KON_Air 10y ago
  I'm Turk and living in Turkey and I can't name single positive thing about "that guy" or political islam in general.
• appetizer 10y ago
  People care, like watching a child throw a tempter tantrum in a restaurant kind of care. Us in the core west know we can shut it down if it ever becomes convenient to, so its just amusing to watch.
• shouldbworking 10y ago
  > Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, yet they produce alcohol and tolerate its consumption within their borders, even by their own people. Let that fact sink in for a moment I don't think this is something to be proud of. The US is majority Christian and they tolerate satanism