4 ms·

> Erdogan legitimately wins his elections It's very easy to win elections when you kill, imprison and lay off _hundreds of thousands_ of your "enemies" and hav

• mrtksn 7y ago
  See, these people are on a list because they were fast-tracked into the positions they got due to their affiliation with the people who organised the coup, back when the coup organisers and Erdogan were BFFs. It probably sounds like tin foil hat conspiracy theorists to people unfamiliar with the life in Turkey but in Turkey, there are religious cults that are good for networking and social support. Essentially, they will pay for your education and get you to the top places but expect you to report to them and take orders from them when it comes to. Like the Chinese Govt using its citizens employed in tech companies to steal secrets etc. This particular one was active since 30-40 years now and was able to scale its operations to enormous size, having people everywhere. The founder was the original podcaster and Youtuber, spreading its message through VHS tapes etc. later creating a business model based on subscription(literally, subscribing to their newspaper multiple times) and expanding into a business network where you get business but you also pay in some of your profits. So these guys were on the radar of the secularist for a long time and are routinely purged from a critical position up until Erdogan teamed up with them. At some point, they got into a fight and Erdogan won and Erdogan had a list of their names of those he directly enabled, the rest were deducted from there. Imperfect but very well educated guess of the cult members, let's say. Probably not too much off since he had at least 3 years before the coup to polish his list of Gulenits. After the coup, Erdogan gained unchecked power and this is scary stuff. He is trying to be influential leader over the whole region but I am not sure that he is smart enough to do that. BTW, Erdogan dropped the Islamist rhetoric after the coup. He is now on the nationalistic side of the things, having the support of the nationalist secularist. All those imprisonments of the Gulenists were a wet dream of any secular nationalist. The rhetoric about foreign powers trying to destroy Turkey, evil west etc. is also not stranger to the secular nationalist.
  • plumednom 7y ago
    You forgot the most important part: Gulen was Tayipp's closest friend, ally, and advisor .. until he wasn't. Gulen was a huge part of Gulen gaining power, and he used that network to his advantage. Go back to whatever it was called, Operation Sledgehammer. I was here during the fake coup, watching the f16s, watching Tayipp descend from his private jet like he was jesus, his arms stretched out, telling his people to come defend him, hoardes of nationalists swarming the tarmac to his defense. The whole time it seemed like bullshit. My friend's father, who is 80 and has experienced 5 or 6 coups, went fishing 5am saturday morning. When his children told him not to, he said, "I've been through this 5 times now, and I call bullshit. This isn't a coup, this is a theatrical rendition of 1984, and Gulen is Emmanuel Goldstein. Interesting anecdote: I met a Gulenist in Ukraine last month. I'm a US citizen living in Türkiye, working for an American firm, and was in Kiev meeting some contract programmers. One programmer, a Tatar from Russia, One found out I was living in Istanbul and approached me really excitedly. He wanted to tell me about the great Turkish organization which funded his education. I stopped him right there and told him that an in-law of mine was hurt in the fake coup and he would do well to end this line of conversation, but he persisted. When I suggested Gulen was a terrorist, he rather .. aggressively told me "No Erdogan is the Terrorist" and got in my face. I politely told him "Both can be true, have a nice night". The next day I had him removed from our account due to his actions, but in reality, due to his association with a terrorist group, and let my account manager know what was going on. He's no longer with that consulting company either.
    • diminish 7y ago
      unfortunately you wrote too much anecdotal gossip. gulenist islamist circles based in usa - were hinting that night and few months earlier and preparing and praising a military fascist islamist coup. it was a coup attempt by fethullah (imam of the universe) followers fearing a final purge from the military posts they occupied by faking the admission process and cheating in all the exams. Noone in turkey disputes that. The coup was supported by cold war remnants in washington and fake liberal circles in turkey. Period. Gulenists were purged, and politicians will lose power by elections and life will go on as usual. turkish people were so much disgusted by the gulenists that it's a gift that they got purged. now the rest is politics as usual.
• mclightning 7y ago
  Westerners nowadays... choose to hear a small fraction of the reality that fits into a short consumable news piece. /fixed-that-for-you Those thousands, you want to so call "enemies" are actual enemies of democracy, not to mention a shadow-secret cult. It is not like they're coming from an open ideology with open political goals. So we could understand and excuse the coup in some form as a revolution. Even that is questionable considerable ruthless shelling of unarmed civilians during the coup. This cult have been working on infiltrating military for many years. Only westerners like to omit this fact. Turkish public %100, both left, right all political factions are aware of this. I don't blame you for believing what you will. Because the narrative you speak of, have been pushed by giant main-stream news organizations in the west. No wonder Turks have a distrust towards "The West" Same west was not as vocal, when same cult were arresting/killing journalists in co-operation with Erdogan... This whole narrative is so ridiculous. Not only Turks but anyone who has been involved with Turkey for 5-6+ years are probably laughing at it.