8 ms·

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 mad

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
    Turkey has had several coups. So I'd look at what happened after the previous ones.
    - barry-cotter 10y ago
      None of them bore any resemblance to Erdogan. All the previous ones were the army emerging from its barracks, deposing democratically elected and popular governments they thought too Islamic/not secular enough and returning to their barracks. The current political situation is a result of the increasing democratisation that the EU encouraged. Erdogan would never have been tolerated before.
      - andybak 10y ago
        In this case it's especially ironic. The Army regarded themselves as the guardians of Turkey's secular democracy - even if that meant acting anti-democratically. This is of course a problematic position. Now Erdogan - as a result of genuine democratic support- has gained enough power to make his move and has resolved to dismantle democracy and weaken certain factions in the Army to protect himself against any similar future coups.
        petre 10y ago
        Actually the kemalist factions in the army and police were the guardians of secularism (not quite a secular democracy but close) until Erdogan took care of them.
  - yawz 10y ago
    Well... It was properly executed and it has succeeded in giving Erdogan more power.
    - andybak 10y ago
      I asked a Turkish friend if she thought the coup being a false flag operation was an outlandish conspiracy theory and she strongly disagreed. Of course that means nothing other than "one specific liberal ex-pat Turk believe X was plausible" but it's one more data point.
- sorenjan 10y ago
  Real people rarely want war, they all want the same basic things: food and shelter, a good future for their kids, and to live in peace. This is universal over the whole world, unless they've had their minds poisoned by leaders with their own agendas, be it political or religious. However, most people also don't really care that much about other people, especially in other countries. So they elect people to handle that for them, and then believe what they're told. Mark Twain's quote "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness" seems fitting. With modern tech you can communicate with people all over the world without traveling (I'm in my underwear in Sweden right now for instance), which helps widening the gap between the "liberal elite" and the rest who feel left behind or that their country is taken away from them. One thing that contradicts that in a way is the fact that a majority of the expat Turks living in Europe voted for the new referendum giving Erdogan much more power. More than 63% voted yes in Germany for instance.
  - agumonkey 10y ago
    I have a lot to say to and ask you, but right now I'll say you're right. Nobody wants war, but in most context people don't feel the need to handle their lives either. Democracy re-emerges after wars because the people felt hard and had to suffer and wake up, so now it's obvious and easier to act for peace and democracy. Seems like societies just have a MTBF of 50 years and after that war acts as a reset button. ps: travel quote is neat
    - usrusr 10y ago
      > Seems like societies just have a MTBF of 50 years and after that war acts as a reset button. Exactly my thoughts. Now how could we replace overreliance on unrealistic uptime goals with scheduled maintenance?
      - agumonkey 10y ago
        Sure, but what we need right now IMO, is calming shock among populations to reduce pressure/heat/tension all over. Then we can start exchanging peacefully and efficiently, and discuss alternatives. We need to slow down the boat.
- kyriakos 10y ago
  Erdogan was democratically elected. He's not a dictator (even if he does act as one at this point) and judging from the referendum results, at least half of Turks seem to like his direction. It's easy to say those voters are uneducated or misguided but the fact is that this is how democracy works. Where I am going with this is that we should not blame just the leader but also the people who put him there.
  - vinay427 10y ago
    Blaming misguided voters only has merit when freedom of the press is available and people have access to news that does not have significant pro-government bias. Turkey was ranked #155 out of #180 evaluated countries on this year's RSF list [1]. If the government controls the information that the people have access to, it is a little difficult to expect a legitimate democracy, which requires more than simply valid elections. [1]: https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table
    - slowmotiony 10y ago
      Do the Turks in Germany also enjoy no freedoms? Because they actually support Erdogan more than Turks in Turkey.
      - markvdb 10y ago
        * Many of them identify with their (parents' or grandparents') conservative countryside roots. * A community so much oriented towards Turkey consumes a lot of Turkish (the country) and Turkish (the language) media. * Turkish country media are in Erdogan's pocket. There is not even a semblance of free press anymore in Turkey. * Turkish language media in the EU with an editorial line not pro-Erdogan have been threatened in every possible way, either directly from Turkey or indirectly. Many have ceased to exist. The best example: Zaman in .be and .nl. * Kurdish language media have always been under threat from the Turkish authorities. * The Turkish government has directly ordered the network of Turkish mosques ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Religious_Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Religious_Affair... ) abroad to create lists of Gülen supporters. Evidence of these practices has led to a diplomatic incident with at least Belgium. * You may also want to read about media repression inside Turkey like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today's_Zaman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today's_Zaman . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement#2013_corruption_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement#2013_corru... .
- mk89 10y ago
  I agree with you that we should stop communicating from the top - and this is what some politicians tried to do (at least what some European politicians did, like the Dutch ones before the elections, when things escalated). However, for business interests, you simply can't ditch a country like Turkey[1]. Let's not forget that Bush's grandfather was also funding Nazi [2] (I would like to focus primarily on the years before Americans joined WW2, basically, before they "knew" that Nazis were not yet official enemies) and he earned a lot of money out of it. Nowadays, a lot of companies do the same. And it will always be like this, unless such a country is recognized as an official "enemy" of the state, and you can't do business there. So, we have already 1 reason that you simply can't stop communicating from the top. Then, you have one more reason: immigrants. Europe has a bunch of Turkish people which, it seems, helped a lot during the elections - in some cases (Holland, Austria, and Germany) the "YES" to the referendum got more than 60% (in some cases 68%). This opens up a whole new bunch of questions we should ask ourselves (and people actually do, at least in Europe): - Why? - Why did these people vote for YES? - Don't these people value the freedom they have here (which they do have, unlike in the US - sorry guys, that's how we perceive it in Europe - where racism is much more common)? Questions which raise another question: - What did we as Europe (or West?) do wrong? This is somehow connected to your sentence: > 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. In my opinion there are too many things we did wrong and failed to do. One thing is to have expectations. In Europe, I can tell you that before the Turkish referendum there were a lot of people, mostly reporters and journalists, going out asking such "pro-YES" voters (they were grouping together for propaganda or for any other reason) whether they actually were aware of what Erdogan wanted to achieve with this referendum. Obviously, nobody actually knew all the points in it. The journalist was mentioning each point, and their faces were like "uh?", while, of course, some of them were bitten by the strong cognitive dissonance: "no, but this is what media here say...", or "no, but it's not as bad as it seems". This issue dates back to the beginning of immigration. People with low education came, and many of them simply didn't get further - meaning, 2nd, 3rd generations still striving to make it, or criminals, or simply living off of social money. Where can this lead to? Entire neighborhoods not accessible to the police, criminality rate super high, etc. People who cannot even talk the national language - forced, therefore, to watch their own news. Another issue: double citizenship. What is that? You live here, but you still have a voice in your country. Sorry, but no. After X years, as an immigrant you get citizenship from the country you live/pay taxes in. Further, you are born in this country, eventually (in some countries when you are 18) you get this country's citizenship. That's it. Either that, or the old one. Both? No. There is a sentence from a German author, Max Frisch, "We wanted a labour force, but human beings came" [3], which kind of explains what had really happened. And now? That's what we have. A huge mess, people creating parallel societies, and Erdogan that comes to Europe as a good politician to the majority of his people. Why good politician? Well, want it or not, it seems that during Erdogan's administration, Turkey's economy got better. [4] Does this justify the fact that this politician needs a crown and absolute power? [1]: http://aa.com.tr/en/europe/german-companies-investing-in-turkeys-future/751267 http://aa.com.tr/en/europe/german-companies-investing-in-tur... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworl... [3]: http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/735/3/the-end-of-multiculturalism-immigration-and-integration-in-germany-and-the-united-kingdom http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/735/3/the-end-of-mu... [4]: https://www.quora.com/Turkey-country-What-is-the-story-behind-Erdogans-Economic-Miracle https://www.quora.com/Turkey-country-What-is-the-story-behin...
- fulafel 10y ago
  This is putting your head in the sand. The problem is the people, the voters, who put Putin and Erdogan in office and kept voting for more autocracy instead of democracy. Those presidents are just manifestations, symptoms. There's always going to be a candidate like that to vote for, and democracy can only survive as long as voters prefer candidates who uphold democracy.
  - vojnovski 10y ago
    Not necessarily. Both Putin and Erdogan (many others as well, Orban, Gruevski, to name a few), were elected under promises to bring prosperity through democracy. Carefully targeting vulnerable groups with PR and economic engineering has proven itself a great tactic for achieving their autocratic vision. edit: spelling.
- kalmari 10y ago
  thats what the un is partly about.
pps43 10y ago
> what are we supposed to do about it? Kick Turkey out of NATO first. If things get worse, impose sanctions.
- sremani 10y ago
  Nope, US needs more Turkey, not less. Erdogan is democratically elected leader, and yes, he is changing and breaking things, but he is still ELECTED. Turkey is going through transformation, and it will come out of it stronger and mostly becoming pillar of Middle East. In an already chaotic part of the world, pushing Turkey to brink to satiate your "bleeding heart" will cause more death and destruction not less.
  - Larrikin 10y ago
    Isn't this the same argument for leaving Assad alone in Syria?
    - sremani 10y ago
      Of course, it is. If Assad loses Chrisitians and Alawites will be massacred in Syria. A more honest assessment is, Gaddaffi, thanks to regime change, you have slave trade live and well in Libya. Pick your poison. Its always easy to say, replace this.. but it much harder to replace it with what? Middle East is not a choice about good and evil, it always present two bad choices, I choose the ones in which fewer people die.
  - PythonicAlpha 10y ago
    >Turkey is going through transformation, and it will come out of it stronger and mostly becoming pillar of Middle East. Like Nazi Germany grew stronger and stronger and grew to be the leader of Europe (+)? ((+) until it was vanquished of course by democratic countries -- but where do you find democratic countries, when you need one?)
    - sremani 10y ago
      Every strongman is not a hitler, mao or stalin. Especially, when they come through with largely "free" elections. Abuse of power as President is different from putting 6 million people in gas chambers and marching around and being responsible for deaths to 10s of millions of people. Lets have some perspective here, Please!
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djonil 10y ago
I think its easy to make the mistake that replacing the guy at the top solves the problem. Isn't there enough history to suggest that is not how things work? Trump could have a heart attack tomorrow but his fan club is still going to be around. They will just prop someone else up. Same goes for Ergodan. This is not a problem that gets solved by dropping a bomb or making a kill list or a wikileak or a tahrir square or a Jon Oliver skit. Unfortunately the current instant gratification generation produced and conditioned by silicon valley is in total delusion when it comes to this fact. This is a multi generational problem and we could be working towards a solution if we weren't wasting our time with all the above "well intentioned", "quick fix" distractions.
- beagle3 10y ago
  Yes and no. There were wannabe dictators in turkey before erdogan, but the army had removed them, which is why erdogan essentially neutered the army (in multiple ways and through quite a few years) to allow him his current level of control. Turkey didn't change as much as they guy in charge was persistent, smart and popular enough to do things his predecessors didn't. It is possible a different ruler would have done the same, but it is also possible that without Erdogan, turkey would still be democratic.
BurningFrog 10y ago
> He holds Europe hostage by threatening to release large amounts of refugees into Europe This is one of the key facts of the situation. Logically then, if the Syria disaster is solved, Erdogan loses a lot of his power. Or in other words, the crackdown of Turkey is part of the Syria conflict.
petre 10y ago
> he made several speeches where he called the politicians of multiple countries "descendants of nazis" Whoever cries wolf is a wolf himself.

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
  Turkey has had several coups. So I'd look at what happened after the previous ones.
  - barry-cotter 10y ago
    None of them bore any resemblance to Erdogan. All the previous ones were the army emerging from its barracks, deposing democratically elected and popular governments they thought too Islamic/not secular enough and returning to their barracks. The current political situation is a result of the increasing democratisation that the EU encouraged. Erdogan would never have been tolerated before.
    - andybak 10y ago
      In this case it's especially ironic. The Army regarded themselves as the guardians of Turkey's secular democracy - even if that meant acting anti-democratically. This is of course a problematic position. Now Erdogan - as a result of genuine democratic support- has gained enough power to make his move and has resolved to dismantle democracy and weaken certain factions in the Army to protect himself against any similar future coups.
      - petre 10y ago
        Actually the kemalist factions in the army and police were the guardians of secularism (not quite a secular democracy but close) until Erdogan took care of them.
- yawz 10y ago
  Well... It was properly executed and it has succeeded in giving Erdogan more power.
  - andybak 10y ago
    I asked a Turkish friend if she thought the coup being a false flag operation was an outlandish conspiracy theory and she strongly disagreed. Of course that means nothing other than "one specific liberal ex-pat Turk believe X was plausible" but it's one more data point.
sorenjan 10y ago
Real people rarely want war, they all want the same basic things: food and shelter, a good future for their kids, and to live in peace. This is universal over the whole world, unless they've had their minds poisoned by leaders with their own agendas, be it political or religious. However, most people also don't really care that much about other people, especially in other countries. So they elect people to handle that for them, and then believe what they're told. Mark Twain's quote "Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness" seems fitting. With modern tech you can communicate with people all over the world without traveling (I'm in my underwear in Sweden right now for instance), which helps widening the gap between the "liberal elite" and the rest who feel left behind or that their country is taken away from them. One thing that contradicts that in a way is the fact that a majority of the expat Turks living in Europe voted for the new referendum giving Erdogan much more power. More than 63% voted yes in Germany for instance.
- agumonkey 10y ago
  I have a lot to say to and ask you, but right now I'll say you're right. Nobody wants war, but in most context people don't feel the need to handle their lives either. Democracy re-emerges after wars because the people felt hard and had to suffer and wake up, so now it's obvious and easier to act for peace and democracy. Seems like societies just have a MTBF of 50 years and after that war acts as a reset button. ps: travel quote is neat
  - usrusr 10y ago
    > Seems like societies just have a MTBF of 50 years and after that war acts as a reset button. Exactly my thoughts. Now how could we replace overreliance on unrealistic uptime goals with scheduled maintenance?
    - agumonkey 10y ago
      Sure, but what we need right now IMO, is calming shock among populations to reduce pressure/heat/tension all over. Then we can start exchanging peacefully and efficiently, and discuss alternatives. We need to slow down the boat.
kyriakos 10y ago
Erdogan was democratically elected. He's not a dictator (even if he does act as one at this point) and judging from the referendum results, at least half of Turks seem to like his direction. It's easy to say those voters are uneducated or misguided but the fact is that this is how democracy works. Where I am going with this is that we should not blame just the leader but also the people who put him there.
- vinay427 10y ago
  Blaming misguided voters only has merit when freedom of the press is available and people have access to news that does not have significant pro-government bias. Turkey was ranked #155 out of #180 evaluated countries on this year's RSF list [1]. If the government controls the information that the people have access to, it is a little difficult to expect a legitimate democracy, which requires more than simply valid elections. [1]: https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table https://rsf.org/en/ranking_table
  - slowmotiony 10y ago
    Do the Turks in Germany also enjoy no freedoms? Because they actually support Erdogan more than Turks in Turkey.
    - markvdb 10y ago
      * Many of them identify with their (parents' or grandparents') conservative countryside roots. * A community so much oriented towards Turkey consumes a lot of Turkish (the country) and Turkish (the language) media. * Turkish country media are in Erdogan's pocket. There is not even a semblance of free press anymore in Turkey. * Turkish language media in the EU with an editorial line not pro-Erdogan have been threatened in every possible way, either directly from Turkey or indirectly. Many have ceased to exist. The best example: Zaman in .be and .nl. * Kurdish language media have always been under threat from the Turkish authorities. * The Turkish government has directly ordered the network of Turkish mosques ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Religious_Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidency_of_Religious_Affair... ) abroad to create lists of Gülen supporters. Evidence of these practices has led to a diplomatic incident with at least Belgium. * You may also want to read about media repression inside Turkey like https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today's_Zaman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Today's_Zaman . https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement#2013_corruption_scandal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/G%C3%BClen_movement#2013_corru... .
mk89 10y ago
I agree with you that we should stop communicating from the top - and this is what some politicians tried to do (at least what some European politicians did, like the Dutch ones before the elections, when things escalated). However, for business interests, you simply can't ditch a country like Turkey[1]. Let's not forget that Bush's grandfather was also funding Nazi [2] (I would like to focus primarily on the years before Americans joined WW2, basically, before they "knew" that Nazis were not yet official enemies) and he earned a lot of money out of it. Nowadays, a lot of companies do the same. And it will always be like this, unless such a country is recognized as an official "enemy" of the state, and you can't do business there. So, we have already 1 reason that you simply can't stop communicating from the top. Then, you have one more reason: immigrants. Europe has a bunch of Turkish people which, it seems, helped a lot during the elections - in some cases (Holland, Austria, and Germany) the "YES" to the referendum got more than 60% (in some cases 68%). This opens up a whole new bunch of questions we should ask ourselves (and people actually do, at least in Europe): - Why? - Why did these people vote for YES? - Don't these people value the freedom they have here (which they do have, unlike in the US - sorry guys, that's how we perceive it in Europe - where racism is much more common)? Questions which raise another question: - What did we as Europe (or West?) do wrong? This is somehow connected to your sentence: > 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. In my opinion there are too many things we did wrong and failed to do. One thing is to have expectations. In Europe, I can tell you that before the Turkish referendum there were a lot of people, mostly reporters and journalists, going out asking such "pro-YES" voters (they were grouping together for propaganda or for any other reason) whether they actually were aware of what Erdogan wanted to achieve with this referendum. Obviously, nobody actually knew all the points in it. The journalist was mentioning each point, and their faces were like "uh?", while, of course, some of them were bitten by the strong cognitive dissonance: "no, but this is what media here say...", or "no, but it's not as bad as it seems". This issue dates back to the beginning of immigration. People with low education came, and many of them simply didn't get further - meaning, 2nd, 3rd generations still striving to make it, or criminals, or simply living off of social money. Where can this lead to? Entire neighborhoods not accessible to the police, criminality rate super high, etc. People who cannot even talk the national language - forced, therefore, to watch their own news. Another issue: double citizenship. What is that? You live here, but you still have a voice in your country. Sorry, but no. After X years, as an immigrant you get citizenship from the country you live/pay taxes in. Further, you are born in this country, eventually (in some countries when you are 18) you get this country's citizenship. That's it. Either that, or the old one. Both? No. There is a sentence from a German author, Max Frisch, "We wanted a labour force, but human beings came" [3], which kind of explains what had really happened. And now? That's what we have. A huge mess, people creating parallel societies, and Erdogan that comes to Europe as a good politician to the majority of his people. Why good politician? Well, want it or not, it seems that during Erdogan's administration, Turkey's economy got better. [4] Does this justify the fact that this politician needs a crown and absolute power? [1]: http://aa.com.tr/en/europe/german-companies-investing-in-turkeys-future/751267 http://aa.com.tr/en/europe/german-companies-investing-in-tur... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworl... [3]: http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/735/3/the-end-of-multiculturalism-immigration-and-integration-in-germany-and-the-united-kingdom http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/735/3/the-end-of-mu... [4]: https://www.quora.com/Turkey-country-What-is-the-story-behind-Erdogans-Economic-Miracle https://www.quora.com/Turkey-country-What-is-the-story-behin...
fulafel 10y ago
This is putting your head in the sand. The problem is the people, the voters, who put Putin and Erdogan in office and kept voting for more autocracy instead of democracy. Those presidents are just manifestations, symptoms. There's always going to be a candidate like that to vote for, and democracy can only survive as long as voters prefer candidates who uphold democracy.
- vojnovski 10y ago
  Not necessarily. Both Putin and Erdogan (many others as well, Orban, Gruevski, to name a few), were elected under promises to bring prosperity through democracy. Carefully targeting vulnerable groups with PR and economic engineering has proven itself a great tactic for achieving their autocratic vision. edit: spelling.
kalmari 10y ago
thats what the un is partly about.

pps43 10y ago

> what are we supposed to do about it? Kick Turkey out of NATO first. If things get worse, impose sanctions.

sremani 10y ago
Nope, US needs more Turkey, not less. Erdogan is democratically elected leader, and yes, he is changing and breaking things, but he is still ELECTED. Turkey is going through transformation, and it will come out of it stronger and mostly becoming pillar of Middle East. In an already chaotic part of the world, pushing Turkey to brink to satiate your "bleeding heart" will cause more death and destruction not less.
- Larrikin 10y ago
  Isn't this the same argument for leaving Assad alone in Syria?
  - sremani 10y ago
    Of course, it is. If Assad loses Chrisitians and Alawites will be massacred in Syria. A more honest assessment is, Gaddaffi, thanks to regime change, you have slave trade live and well in Libya. Pick your poison. Its always easy to say, replace this.. but it much harder to replace it with what? Middle East is not a choice about good and evil, it always present two bad choices, I choose the ones in which fewer people die.
- PythonicAlpha 10y ago
  >Turkey is going through transformation, and it will come out of it stronger and mostly becoming pillar of Middle East. Like Nazi Germany grew stronger and stronger and grew to be the leader of Europe (+)? ((+) until it was vanquished of course by democratic countries -- but where do you find democratic countries, when you need one?)
  - sremani 10y ago
    Every strongman is not a hitler, mao or stalin. Especially, when they come through with largely "free" elections. Abuse of power as President is different from putting 6 million people in gas chambers and marching around and being responsible for deaths to 10s of millions of people. Lets have some perspective here, Please!

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djonil 10y ago

I think its easy to make the mistake that replacing the guy at the top solves the problem. Isn't there enough history to suggest that is not how things work? Trump could have a heart attack tomorrow but his fan club is still going to be around. They will just prop someone else up. Same goes for Ergodan. This is not a problem that gets solved by dropping a bomb or making a kill list or a wikileak or a tahrir square or a Jon Oliver skit. Unfortunately the current instant gratification generation produced and conditioned by silicon valley is in total delusion when it comes to this fact. This is a multi generational problem and we could be working towards a solution if we weren't wasting our time with all the above "well intentioned", "quick fix" distractions.

beagle3 10y ago
Yes and no. There were wannabe dictators in turkey before erdogan, but the army had removed them, which is why erdogan essentially neutered the army (in multiple ways and through quite a few years) to allow him his current level of control. Turkey didn't change as much as they guy in charge was persistent, smart and popular enough to do things his predecessors didn't. It is possible a different ruler would have done the same, but it is also possible that without Erdogan, turkey would still be democratic.

BurningFrog 10y ago

> He holds Europe hostage by threatening to release large amounts of refugees into Europe This is one of the key facts of the situation. Logically then, if the Syria disaster is solved, Erdogan loses a lot of his power. Or in other words, the crackdown of Turkey is part of the Syria conflict.

petre 10y ago

> he made several speeches where he called the politicians of multiple countries "descendants of nazis" Whoever cries wolf is a wolf himself.