7 ms·

I find Turkey and its government are behaving like an authoritarian regime, much alike Saudi Arabia. I don't understand how invading another country's territory

by mtw 7y ago

I find Turkey and its government are behaving like an authoritarian regime, much alike Saudi Arabia. I don't understand how invading another country's territory is accepted in 2019. On the other side, the Kurds have lost thousands to fight ISIS (on the behalf of the West), have strong equality men/women etc. We should support the Kurds and cut connections to Turkey

m00dy 7y ago
First of all, Turkey is not invading any country. This is just a military offence for securing our borders. It is a basic instinct that every state has nowadays. It is like border that US is now building on Mexico. Just imagine bunch of mexican gangs trespassing your US border and make some unrest. This is almost same situation. Turkey is the country that killed most ISIS fighters. Having strong equality between man/women shouldn't be the only parameter when you are picking up your allies. US and Turkey are member of NATO and we have operations together since then. (Including Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq). Situation for Syria is a little bit different here. Because, it is too close to Turkey. If you cut connections to Turkey, it will cost you more.
- _ink_ 7y ago
  Turkey is stealing a 30km wide coridor from a different country. If they want a safe zone, they could implement it on their side of the border.
  - m00dy 7y ago
    Turkey has been fighting with PKK for than 30 years now. I can say that having a safe zone within our borders didn't work so far.
    - jacobush 7y ago
      And this magically will?
      - m00dy 7y ago
        yes, according to famous book 'Art of War by sun tzu', you have to defeat the enemy at his place. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War
        jacobush 7y ago
        The enemy is in the heart of Erdogan. It’s corrupt and vile.
  - ramphastidae 7y ago
    I’m not condoning Turkey’s actions, but this reasoning only works assuming there is a functioning government capable of securing its own territory on the other side of the border and that is not currently the case. If hostile paramilitary forces were organizing attacks on the other side of the Mexican border at a time when the Mexican government and military itself had collapsed, I can promise you the US would have no problem establishing a safe zone beyond its formal borders.
- johnchristopher 7y ago
  Regardless of wether you are wrong or right I believe you shouldn't be downvoted since your comment serves as a different point of view.
  - megous 7y ago
    The comment should be downvoted for inacurracy. "Turkey is the country that killed most ISIS fighters." This is very doubtful and should either be supported by some facts or retracted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict#2013_Turkey%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict#2... vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_military_intervention_against_ISIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_military_interve... Coalition killed ~80,000 vs Turkey killed ~6,000.
  - dfasdfasd 7y ago
    It's not _just_ a different point of view though. It's Turkish propaganda and even includes a "hordes of others" reference which comes from an ultra-nationalist viewpoint that is incompatible with modern values. Furthermore, no one is censoring them beyond their comment getting a bit more gray, downvotes are not the end of the world. We don't need a community of people justifying massacres because they're scared of retaliations from the same foreigners they're subjecting to brutal oppression.
  - alkonaut 7y ago
    I think ”not invading another country” is factually misleading. It’s not another point of view. There is no difference between “invading a country” and “establishing a security zone inside another country”.
  - iiv 7y ago
    There is no inherent value in having a different view. There's value in having a different view that has some value.
    - johnchristopher 7y ago
      I find value in taking notes of different views, wether or not I or others grant them values (which in itself is of value to me).
- TheArcane 7y ago
  > Having strong equality between man/women shouldn't be the only parameter when you are picking up your allies It does become a lot easier for them to qualify as allies if they share core western values
  - m00dy 7y ago
    Oh really ? How about political view of PKK/YPG ? Do you think they embrace western values as well ? They are Marxist–Leninist Communist.
    - NoGravitas 7y ago
      Not exactly. I'm not going to go too much into the distinction between the PKK and the YPG, but they are not the same organization. The correction I want to make is to note that the official ideology of the YPG is [Democratic Confederalism][0]. It is a form of libertarian socialism, strongly influenced by the ideas of Murray Bookchin. A brief quote from the Wikipedia article: Democratic confederalism is a "system of popularly elected administrative councils, allowing local communities to exercise autonomous control over their assets, while linking to other communities via a network of confederal councils." Decisions are made by communes in each neighborhood, village, or city. All are welcome to partake in the communal councils, but political participation is not mandated. There is no private property, but rather “ownership by use, which grants individuals usage rights to the buildings, land, and infrastructure, but not the right to sell and buy on the market or convert them private enterprises.” The economy is in the hands of the communal councils, and is thus (in the words of Bookchin) ‘neither collectivised nor privatised, it is common.’ Feminism, ecology and direct democracy are essential in democratic confederalism. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan#Democratic_confederalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan#Democrati...
      - m00dy 7y ago
        "There is no private property, " looks like very American to me.
- dmix 7y ago
  The only good argument IMO is that the Kurd's YPG won't distance themselves from the (actual) PKK terrorists. If they made steps to do so then Turkey wouldn't have nearly as good of a justification and I wonder if this would be different. Although I'm doubtful Turkey would still make that distinction. The border security argument is a bit weak. You shouldn't need to cross a border to defend a border.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    YPG would still be mainly Kurds. So Erdogan would find a reason to kill them.
  - p4bl0 7y ago
    The fact that the PKK is a terrorist organization is not at all a given. It is propaganda pushed by the Turkish government. The US government follows and so NATO too but without real ground for it (other than disliking communists a lot, I mean). The UN does not consider the PKK as a terrorist organization, and the EU Court ruled that it should be removed for the terrorist organizations list.
    - dmix 7y ago
      I follow this stuff pretty closely. Any organization that suicide bombs civilian areas is a terrorist IMO. The EU, NATO, Japan, etc didn't start using that designation for nothing. PKK also had an estimated 3000 child soldiers which were also used for terror operations and in combat in Syria: https://hrwf.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Child-soldiers-in-ISIS-PKK-Boko-Haram….pdf https://hrwf.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Child-soldiers-in...
      - lostlogin 7y ago
        Both sides are using terrorism on civilians but the label doesn’t stick when the explosives come from a plane or gun barrel. Both sides are US allies and this can be solved with pressure from other states too.
        7y ago
zmix 7y ago
> I find Turkey and its government are behaving like an authoritarian regime They are an authoritarian regime. Turkey is similar to Hungary in so far, that there is a cosmopolitan capital and the rest is rural. While the cosmopolits want a liberal democracy, the rural people usually don't want it. So, whatever democracy there is, the majority will vote non-democratic regimes.
- throwaway5752 7y ago
  Economic growth that favored urban areas created a social wedge that was exploited by a coordinated international operation. It's the same pattern, and even a lot of the same people in Brazil, the UK, Hungary, Turkey, and the US. It is simple to manipulate angry people with nationalist propaganda. You appeal to a sense of aggrievement to create unity among a marginalized group, manufacture an enemy to exploit fear and anger, and associate adversaries with that enemy to override rational behavior. Then exploit the divisions that creates in your enemy. Facebook is the greatest gift to authoritarians in the history of humanity. It may be that a few hundred people will control the world at this rate.
buboard 7y ago
That presumes syria is a sovereign. Its not, its a mess that will be redefined.
A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago
I am hesitating to respond as it may derail conversation from the actual subject at hand, but various territories have been annexed ( Crimea ) some of those annexations recognized ( Golan ) with comparatively little consequence. Add to that Chinese creating their own islands. 2019 is all about grabbing as much as you can. It may be wrong, but this is basically the world we live in.
- 99052882514569 7y ago
  This is the sad reality. An international world order in which borders are somehow sacrosanct was a nice feel-good fiction, but ultimately if it cannot be enforced, it's not real. Not to mention that, like you said, long before Crimea there was Golan, Kashmir, etc.
sremani 7y ago
>> I don't understand how invading another country's territory is accepted in 2019. On the other side. What is special about 2019 ? Borders move, countries expand and contract. New countries form, old countries disappear. Happens all the time. The areas that are being occupied by Turkey have been under ottaman rule since 1500s to WW-I, and only the last 100 years or so they were not! Countries like Syria, Iraq etc have borders that were drawn on maps by people who did not live there. So, long story short expect many countries in Middle East to reconfigure their borders, new autonomous regions spurt and old regions disappear. Border changes happened all the time but the two world wars and the subsequent world order and bloc politics have frozen these changes. Now that post-war order is slowly crumbling so are the dynamics in various parts of the world.
researcher1 7y ago
I would like to point out one detail which is the fact that these forces has been killing our civillians and soldiers even before I was born. They claim that these territories (East part of Turkey) should be governed by them thus they perfectly find it acceptable to kill "enemy soliders and civillians" and then uplaod every single video of their "operation" to their website and demonsrate their "great" achivements which is simply what we call as Terror. I am completely fine with creating their own governments outside of our territory but sir/madam, trust me if someone likes to invade your country and start killing your people you will not welcome them. Seek out more info? PKK (and possible links with YPG) Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party PKK Website: http://pkk-online.com/en/index.php http://pkk-online.com/en/index.php PKK Guerilla TV (This is where they put online videos of their terrorism in our territory, killing our people): http://gerilatv.com/ http://gerilatv.com/
- lostlogin 7y ago
  The kill ratio is roughly 5 Kurds for each Turkish death. The cost to turkey has been hundreds of billions of dollars too. The reports from international human rights organisations like Amnesty International are grim. Turkey is using murder and torture systematically. While what I can see likely has bias, if you are in Turkey it is far harder and possibly dangerous to get good information due to state censorship and oppression. Almost any other way of handling this situation would be better, but I haven’t the faintest idea what the average Turkish citizen could do to help this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish–Turkish_conflict_(1978–present) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish–Turkish_conflict_(19... https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia/turkey/report-turkey/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia...
  - researcher1 7y ago
    Thanks for pointing out the wiki regarding kurdish-turkish conflict. I will be doing further reading on overall conflict just to inform myself even further. I also would like to make a point on something but in order to do that first I invite you to imagine how is it like to fear just to travel some of your own country cities because when you are travelling there is a possibility of rocket or bomb ambush among the mountains. Imagine, teachers in those cities are captured and killed in your schools. Imagine regular people doing their job get rocket attacks thus get killed on a monthly basis. Imagine many more things like that could happen on a monthly basis in your very own country. Finally, imagine that this is going on for over 30 year and all of those attacks performed by single terrorist organization with ultimate purpose of taking control of approximately 1/4 of your country. Now, do you think after thousands of death happend in your country for over 30 years, bombs detonated in your home cities. Would that death ratio still make sense while all of these events possibly still going on to you? If still you think 1-5 ratio still make sense and we should stop defending ourselves against terrorists, I encourage you to do this mental exercise of imagining all of those events one more time and possibly see what are the typical reaction of countries towards this kind of hostility in their own lands. (Although I haven't done comprehensive research on 11/11 event, I think it possibly has potential to demonstrate how could one country go further when it faces with such terrorist attacks to stop it.)

by mtw 7y ago

m00dy 7y ago

First of all, Turkey is not invading any country. This is just a military offence for securing our borders. It is a basic instinct that every state has nowadays. It is like border that US is now building on Mexico. Just imagine bunch of mexican gangs trespassing your US border and make some unrest. This is almost same situation. Turkey is the country that killed most ISIS fighters. Having strong equality between man/women shouldn't be the only parameter when you are picking up your allies. US and Turkey are member of NATO and we have operations together since then. (Including Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq). Situation for Syria is a little bit different here. Because, it is too close to Turkey. If you cut connections to Turkey, it will cost you more.

_ink_ 7y ago
Turkey is stealing a 30km wide coridor from a different country. If they want a safe zone, they could implement it on their side of the border.
- m00dy 7y ago
  Turkey has been fighting with PKK for than 30 years now. I can say that having a safe zone within our borders didn't work so far.
  - jacobush 7y ago
    And this magically will?
    - m00dy 7y ago
      yes, according to famous book 'Art of War by sun tzu', you have to defeat the enemy at his place. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Art_of_War
      - jacobush 7y ago
        The enemy is in the heart of Erdogan. It’s corrupt and vile.
- ramphastidae 7y ago
  I’m not condoning Turkey’s actions, but this reasoning only works assuming there is a functioning government capable of securing its own territory on the other side of the border and that is not currently the case. If hostile paramilitary forces were organizing attacks on the other side of the Mexican border at a time when the Mexican government and military itself had collapsed, I can promise you the US would have no problem establishing a safe zone beyond its formal borders.
johnchristopher 7y ago
Regardless of wether you are wrong or right I believe you shouldn't be downvoted since your comment serves as a different point of view.
- megous 7y ago
  The comment should be downvoted for inacurracy. "Turkey is the country that killed most ISIS fighters." This is very doubtful and should either be supported by some facts or retracted. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict#2013_Turkey%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkey%E2%80%93ISIL_conflict#2... vs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_military_intervention_against_ISIL https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_military_interve... Coalition killed ~80,000 vs Turkey killed ~6,000.
- dfasdfasd 7y ago
  It's not _just_ a different point of view though. It's Turkish propaganda and even includes a "hordes of others" reference which comes from an ultra-nationalist viewpoint that is incompatible with modern values. Furthermore, no one is censoring them beyond their comment getting a bit more gray, downvotes are not the end of the world. We don't need a community of people justifying massacres because they're scared of retaliations from the same foreigners they're subjecting to brutal oppression.
- alkonaut 7y ago
  I think ”not invading another country” is factually misleading. It’s not another point of view. There is no difference between “invading a country” and “establishing a security zone inside another country”.
- iiv 7y ago
  There is no inherent value in having a different view. There's value in having a different view that has some value.
  - johnchristopher 7y ago
    I find value in taking notes of different views, wether or not I or others grant them values (which in itself is of value to me).
TheArcane 7y ago
> Having strong equality between man/women shouldn't be the only parameter when you are picking up your allies It does become a lot easier for them to qualify as allies if they share core western values
- m00dy 7y ago
  Oh really ? How about political view of PKK/YPG ? Do you think they embrace western values as well ? They are Marxist–Leninist Communist.
  - NoGravitas 7y ago
    Not exactly. I'm not going to go too much into the distinction between the PKK and the YPG, but they are not the same organization. The correction I want to make is to note that the official ideology of the YPG is [Democratic Confederalism][0]. It is a form of libertarian socialism, strongly influenced by the ideas of Murray Bookchin. A brief quote from the Wikipedia article: Democratic confederalism is a "system of popularly elected administrative councils, allowing local communities to exercise autonomous control over their assets, while linking to other communities via a network of confederal councils." Decisions are made by communes in each neighborhood, village, or city. All are welcome to partake in the communal councils, but political participation is not mandated. There is no private property, but rather “ownership by use, which grants individuals usage rights to the buildings, land, and infrastructure, but not the right to sell and buy on the market or convert them private enterprises.” The economy is in the hands of the communal councils, and is thus (in the words of Bookchin) ‘neither collectivised nor privatised, it is common.’ Feminism, ecology and direct democracy are essential in democratic confederalism. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan#Democratic_confederalism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdullah_%C3%96calan#Democrati...
    - m00dy 7y ago
      "There is no private property, " looks like very American to me.
dmix 7y ago
The only good argument IMO is that the Kurd's YPG won't distance themselves from the (actual) PKK terrorists. If they made steps to do so then Turkey wouldn't have nearly as good of a justification and I wonder if this would be different. Although I'm doubtful Turkey would still make that distinction. The border security argument is a bit weak. You shouldn't need to cross a border to defend a border.
- jacobush 7y ago
  YPG would still be mainly Kurds. So Erdogan would find a reason to kill them.
- p4bl0 7y ago
  The fact that the PKK is a terrorist organization is not at all a given. It is propaganda pushed by the Turkish government. The US government follows and so NATO too but without real ground for it (other than disliking communists a lot, I mean). The UN does not consider the PKK as a terrorist organization, and the EU Court ruled that it should be removed for the terrorist organizations list.
  - dmix 7y ago
    I follow this stuff pretty closely. Any organization that suicide bombs civilian areas is a terrorist IMO. The EU, NATO, Japan, etc didn't start using that designation for nothing. PKK also had an estimated 3000 child soldiers which were also used for terror operations and in combat in Syria: https://hrwf.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Child-soldiers-in-ISIS-PKK-Boko-Haram….pdf https://hrwf.eu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/Child-soldiers-in...
    - lostlogin 7y ago
      Both sides are using terrorism on civilians but the label doesn’t stick when the explosives come from a plane or gun barrel. Both sides are US allies and this can be solved with pressure from other states too.
      - 7y ago

zmix 7y ago

> I find Turkey and its government are behaving like an authoritarian regime They are an authoritarian regime. Turkey is similar to Hungary in so far, that there is a cosmopolitan capital and the rest is rural. While the cosmopolits want a liberal democracy, the rural people usually don't want it. So, whatever democracy there is, the majority will vote non-democratic regimes.

throwaway5752 7y ago
Economic growth that favored urban areas created a social wedge that was exploited by a coordinated international operation. It's the same pattern, and even a lot of the same people in Brazil, the UK, Hungary, Turkey, and the US. It is simple to manipulate angry people with nationalist propaganda. You appeal to a sense of aggrievement to create unity among a marginalized group, manufacture an enemy to exploit fear and anger, and associate adversaries with that enemy to override rational behavior. Then exploit the divisions that creates in your enemy. Facebook is the greatest gift to authoritarians in the history of humanity. It may be that a few hundred people will control the world at this rate.

buboard 7y ago

That presumes syria is a sovereign. Its not, its a mess that will be redefined.

A4ET8a8uTh0 7y ago

I am hesitating to respond as it may derail conversation from the actual subject at hand, but various territories have been annexed ( Crimea ) some of those annexations recognized ( Golan ) with comparatively little consequence. Add to that Chinese creating their own islands. 2019 is all about grabbing as much as you can. It may be wrong, but this is basically the world we live in.

99052882514569 7y ago
This is the sad reality. An international world order in which borders are somehow sacrosanct was a nice feel-good fiction, but ultimately if it cannot be enforced, it's not real. Not to mention that, like you said, long before Crimea there was Golan, Kashmir, etc.

sremani 7y ago

>> I don't understand how invading another country's territory is accepted in 2019. On the other side. What is special about 2019 ? Borders move, countries expand and contract. New countries form, old countries disappear. Happens all the time. The areas that are being occupied by Turkey have been under ottaman rule since 1500s to WW-I, and only the last 100 years or so they were not! Countries like Syria, Iraq etc have borders that were drawn on maps by people who did not live there. So, long story short expect many countries in Middle East to reconfigure their borders, new autonomous regions spurt and old regions disappear. Border changes happened all the time but the two world wars and the subsequent world order and bloc politics have frozen these changes. Now that post-war order is slowly crumbling so are the dynamics in various parts of the world.

researcher1 7y ago

I would like to point out one detail which is the fact that these forces has been killing our civillians and soldiers even before I was born. They claim that these territories (East part of Turkey) should be governed by them thus they perfectly find it acceptable to kill "enemy soliders and civillians" and then uplaod every single video of their "operation" to their website and demonsrate their "great" achivements which is simply what we call as Terror. I am completely fine with creating their own governments outside of our territory but sir/madam, trust me if someone likes to invade your country and start killing your people you will not welcome them. Seek out more info? PKK (and possible links with YPG) Wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdistan_Workers%27_Party PKK Website: http://pkk-online.com/en/index.php http://pkk-online.com/en/index.php PKK Guerilla TV (This is where they put online videos of their terrorism in our territory, killing our people): http://gerilatv.com/ http://gerilatv.com/

lostlogin 7y ago
The kill ratio is roughly 5 Kurds for each Turkish death. The cost to turkey has been hundreds of billions of dollars too. The reports from international human rights organisations like Amnesty International are grim. Turkey is using murder and torture systematically. While what I can see likely has bias, if you are in Turkey it is far harder and possibly dangerous to get good information due to state censorship and oppression. Almost any other way of handling this situation would be better, but I haven’t the faintest idea what the average Turkish citizen could do to help this. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish–Turkish_conflict_(1978–present) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish–Turkish_conflict_(19... https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia/turkey/report-turkey/ https://www.amnesty.org/en/countries/europe-and-central-asia...
- researcher1 7y ago
  Thanks for pointing out the wiki regarding kurdish-turkish conflict. I will be doing further reading on overall conflict just to inform myself even further. I also would like to make a point on something but in order to do that first I invite you to imagine how is it like to fear just to travel some of your own country cities because when you are travelling there is a possibility of rocket or bomb ambush among the mountains. Imagine, teachers in those cities are captured and killed in your schools. Imagine regular people doing their job get rocket attacks thus get killed on a monthly basis. Imagine many more things like that could happen on a monthly basis in your very own country. Finally, imagine that this is going on for over 30 year and all of those attacks performed by single terrorist organization with ultimate purpose of taking control of approximately 1/4 of your country. Now, do you think after thousands of death happend in your country for over 30 years, bombs detonated in your home cities. Would that death ratio still make sense while all of these events possibly still going on to you? If still you think 1-5 ratio still make sense and we should stop defending ourselves against terrorists, I encourage you to do this mental exercise of imagining all of those events one more time and possibly see what are the typical reaction of countries towards this kind of hostility in their own lands. (Although I haven't done comprehensive research on 11/11 event, I think it possibly has potential to demonstrate how could one country go further when it faces with such terrorist attacks to stop it.)