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Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall. People protesting against that by b

Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall. People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests. This is a general problem I have with such active counter-protests, be they to stop a station from being built (Stuttgart 21, [0]) or to block a legitimate demonstration of right-wing idiots. The rights to free speech, to assemble and to demonstrate are important, but in my opinion the right to demonstrate/protest in a specific location does not trump the right of the majority to implement a democratically made decision or the right of a minority to voice their opinion. That said, there are obviously cases were a small minority has the right to (even violently) protest a decision made by the majority[1], but building a shopping mall in a park is not one of them. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21 [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution , e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision?

carbocation 13y ago
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests. I think this is getting at the heart of civil disobedience: the violation of laws or decrees considered unjust. I know nothing about the Turkish protests, but another example of civil disobedience is Martin Luther King, Jr. He committed crimes, technically, as he protested. But I don't think that it makes sense to say that MLK's protesting == overturning democracy in America. By analogy, it's hard to imagine civil disobedience in Turkey to be overthrowing democracy there.
- claudius 13y ago
  First let me clarify that instead of ‘overturn’, ‘ignore’, ‘overrule’ or ‘disregard’ might have been better, as I wanted to say that such protests overrule one particular democratic decision and not necessarily the whole form of government. Then, as I said, the matter is difficult – essentially you have to weigh the predictable functioning of the democratic process against the damage that can be done to people if this process ‘goes wrong’. Unfortunately, this has a whole bunch of problems: - we do not have a universal definition of when a democratic decision is so wrong it is acceptable for someone to stand up against it - that someone has to judge objectively whether his rights were violated in such a way that he is justified to stand up against the democratic will - in many cases, we do not know what the majority ‘really’ wants - even if a given system/constitution has securities that allow people to stand up against democratically made decisions, these might be seen as either too lax or too restrictive. For example, the German constitution would allow the people to overthrow a democratic government that wants to cut back on social security in such a way as to violate article 20 of the Basic Law[0] – in the US, on the other hand, people apparently sometimes feel obliged to oppose a government that wants to introduce such social security. If even two relatively similar western societies cannot agree on when it is acceptable to overrule a democratic decision, how can we expect to find universal rules for that on a global scale? In essence, it is a philosophical discussion on how much you respect democratic decisions as compared to the rights of individuals, and whether or not you only accept positive law or also include some ‘natural’ law in your decision-making. I tend to like both democracy and positive law, but YMMV, of course. :) [0] It defines Germany as a ‘social federal state’, does not allow to change that definition, and allows everyone to take up arms against those trying to change it, provided that all other means have been exhausted.
  - carbocation 13y ago
    I don't really see cause for surprise that the US and Germany are politically different. Without commenting on the merits of either, you described Germany as a social federal state, while the US is not that (and is known for staunch proponents of individuality). In that framework I don't find it surprising that people protest on opposite sides of an issue in the two countries. (This is meant to be something of a logical statement, not a political one.) I don't think that the nature of civil disobedience is disregarding laws. To the contrary, I think it can be found in regarding laws very carefully and choosing when and how to break such laws for maximum impact; then, by freely suffering the consequences for even greater impact. (This is a general point; I do not mean to imply that the Turkish protests are civil disobedience; I don't know enough yet to judge.)
rjd 13y ago
While I understand your point, and can agree in part I don't think it applies here. Reading what I've read today its not about single incidents, its about continuous incidents by a government that doesn't resonate with the people. And infact what is considered a growing fascist dictatorship in guise of a government that is routinely commented on for its human rights abuses. I'd bet that the reason this has grown so quickly doesn't have much to do with individual gripes but that lack of trust and a feeling of disenfranchisement from that government. Compounded with rumours that government they don't have faith in could very well be going to war against a country with stock piles of nerve gas capable of hitting major settlements. Offering the crowds some security within themselves that the government is no longer emanating. Ask yourself in that scenario, with the risk of sarin gas hitting your home, families home, government cold and distant,would you also go protest? I know I would.
zalew 13y ago
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests. how so? democracy is not limited to counting votes and stfu until the next election. it's not like authorities haven't been removed from office before and decisions haven't been changed due to public disapproval. getting into office is not a free pass for half a decade. acta protests were anti-democratic too?
- claudius 13y ago
  I have absolutely no problems with people protesting, I have a problem with ‘protesters’ forcing their opinion on the rest by use of passive (standing in front of a bulldozer) or active (undermining a railroad track carrying nuclear waste containers) violence. And yes, if ACTA protests had cut other people’s telecom lines to the US or some such thing, I would have called them anti-democratic, too. To me, a decent society is based on (among others) the state’s monopoly on the use of force, with the legally acceptable force limited to implement decisions made by the legislative (and judiciary). Random guy simply has no right to ‘protest’ against something by force. (Also your shift key is a little broken, it appears, making it somewhat difficult to read your post.)
  - gcb0 13y ago
    Spoken like a true majority. my bet of the little i worked on politics is that someone have campaign money, got the park land in return. I highly doubt there was much calls for discussion on the mater. This happened in Germany some time ago. The plebiscity for demolishing the park was voted against twice, then they came up with a third voting in the middle of a holiday, with 8h of warning or something similar. When the bulldozers came to the park people were still believing they were there illegally because the permit was not voted for.
    - claudius 13y ago
      > This happened in Germany some time ago. I don’t know to which event exactly you’re referring, but I can assure you that > 8h of warning or something similar. this is most certainly false. Could you elaborate a bit?
galactus 13y ago
I personally find thousands of people trying to defend a public park much more democratic than business lobby groups with unlimited resources influencing the policy makers.
jules 13y ago
It's hard to call this a democratic government given that they control the press and the corruption. Do you really think the people wanted the park to be turned into a shopping mall, or is perhaps a better explanation that a handful of rich people with political connections wanted that?
- claudius 13y ago
  > Do you really think the people wanted the park to be turned into a shopping mall, or is perhaps a better explanation that a handful of rich people with political connections wanted that? I really don’t know. One of the confusing (to me) things here is that Erdogan, i.e. the prime minister of the whole of Turkey, appears to control both whether the mall is being built and the local police force, or, in other words, apparently the whole country (as opposed to a local district) can decide on whether to build a mall in some place or not. And then I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of the rural and likely conservative population of Turkey actually wants to move into what they think is the 21st century.
  - jules 13y ago
    He doesn't officially control that, but through party connections he controls a lot of things, and that's not how it should be, but it is. The more important issue is that he controls the press, which generally isn't great feature to have as part of a democracy. No doubt he really is popular, and not just with the rural population, but that doesn't mean that he or others in the AKP makes decisions such as whether or not to build a shopping center for the benefit of the people. It's a favor to the contractor who is going to build the shopping mall, or the guy who is going to own it, or something like that. That's just how it works: favors in return for favors, i.e. corruption. He was democratically elected (at least as far as that's possible while you control the press and corruption runs through the party structure), but that doesn't mean that these kind of decisions are made in the name of the general population.
justsee 13y ago
> Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall. No, it appears rampant corruption in the construction industry (with the perception it is privately benefiting the Turkish PM and his political party) led to a decision not 'in the name of the people'. [1] > People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests. If we assume the reporting so far is reasonably accurate, they are protesting against the erosion of democracy by an increasingly authoritarian PM and corrupted political party which he leads. It is darkly ironic that you'd attempt to portray their efforts as anti-democratic. [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/01/erdogan-grip-turkey-istanbul-expansion http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/01/erdogan-grip-tur...
honzzz 13y ago
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process I think this is serious misunderstanding of what is now going on in Turkey. The 'mall in park' thing was just a trigger. I understand that you are somehow comparing this to Stuttgart protests but from what I read about it I think this is totally different situation. Example: I was born in a country occupied by Russians. And there were some protests (even violent) triggered by things like our hockey team beating Russian team at the Olympics. Of course that this had nothing to do with ice hockey and everything to do with the tension and unhappiness that builds up for years.
- claudius 13y ago
  I agree that there is more[0] to it now than a few people wanting to keep a park, yet the comment I originally replied to was: > This is disgusting, the "right" to profit/property is the least important thing, it should never trump people's well-being or the environment. which I interpreted as just that. [0] Whether that ‘more’ is better is, given the levels of violence, rather subjective.
eatitraw 13y ago
> Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall. So what? If yours "democratically-elected government" orders you("in the name of the people", of course) to kill jews, will you comply? > are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests. So what? When majority votes, does it protect personal interests of someone else? > e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision? You have so much subordination to government-made law, so even if you would really want to overthrow tyrannic government, you would stop because there is no law allowing you to revolt?
mcintyre1994 13y ago
I feel I'm missing something from your comment. Are you suggesting anybody democratically elected get their personal views ("in the name of the people") backed by that democracy? I don't think getting elected means that the people deem you infallible for your term in your typical democracy?
berkay 13y ago
The protest to protect the park is nothing more than a trigger. In fact there are even reports that suggest that there is some misinformation and there is no currently approved project to build a shopping center. Still not clear what the facts are since media is not doing its job. Initial protest was quite small and not many people paid attention to it until the police used ridiculous level of force to disperse the protesters. That's the action that triggered mass protests all over the country.
antihero 13y ago
Except democracy is often false, and essentially a duopoly. Take here in the UK for example - there are two main parties, Labour and Conservative, which are varying degrees of right wing neoliberal. I don't doubt either of them would have supported this project because councils are full of careerists who owe favours. We can try to elect a "better" party (we tried with Lib Dems) but that goes tits-up, and we could start a much better left wing party (Green Party), but it's insanely hard to get any real power due to a variety of factors such as the media, ingrained ideas, gerrymandering, etc. So true democracy is a bunch of people who stand up for their community, or at least that is far less flawed or corrupt than the system as it stands. As for the right wing idiot thing - I disagree. I love the place I live in, if some arseholes come along and threaten, intimidate people here, then of course I think it just to counter-protest, vastly outnumber them, and make it clear that they are not welcome.

carbocation 13y ago

> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests. I think this is getting at the heart of civil disobedience: the violation of laws or decrees considered unjust. I know nothing about the Turkish protests, but another example of civil disobedience is Martin Luther King, Jr. He committed crimes, technically, as he protested. But I don't think that it makes sense to say that MLK's protesting == overturning democracy in America. By analogy, it's hard to imagine civil disobedience in Turkey to be overthrowing democracy there.

claudius 13y ago
First let me clarify that instead of ‘overturn’, ‘ignore’, ‘overrule’ or ‘disregard’ might have been better, as I wanted to say that such protests overrule one particular democratic decision and not necessarily the whole form of government. Then, as I said, the matter is difficult – essentially you have to weigh the predictable functioning of the democratic process against the damage that can be done to people if this process ‘goes wrong’. Unfortunately, this has a whole bunch of problems: - we do not have a universal definition of when a democratic decision is so wrong it is acceptable for someone to stand up against it - that someone has to judge objectively whether his rights were violated in such a way that he is justified to stand up against the democratic will - in many cases, we do not know what the majority ‘really’ wants - even if a given system/constitution has securities that allow people to stand up against democratically made decisions, these might be seen as either too lax or too restrictive. For example, the German constitution would allow the people to overthrow a democratic government that wants to cut back on social security in such a way as to violate article 20 of the Basic Law[0] – in the US, on the other hand, people apparently sometimes feel obliged to oppose a government that wants to introduce such social security. If even two relatively similar western societies cannot agree on when it is acceptable to overrule a democratic decision, how can we expect to find universal rules for that on a global scale? In essence, it is a philosophical discussion on how much you respect democratic decisions as compared to the rights of individuals, and whether or not you only accept positive law or also include some ‘natural’ law in your decision-making. I tend to like both democracy and positive law, but YMMV, of course. :) [0] It defines Germany as a ‘social federal state’, does not allow to change that definition, and allows everyone to take up arms against those trying to change it, provided that all other means have been exhausted.
- carbocation 13y ago
  I don't really see cause for surprise that the US and Germany are politically different. Without commenting on the merits of either, you described Germany as a social federal state, while the US is not that (and is known for staunch proponents of individuality). In that framework I don't find it surprising that people protest on opposite sides of an issue in the two countries. (This is meant to be something of a logical statement, not a political one.) I don't think that the nature of civil disobedience is disregarding laws. To the contrary, I think it can be found in regarding laws very carefully and choosing when and how to break such laws for maximum impact; then, by freely suffering the consequences for even greater impact. (This is a general point; I do not mean to imply that the Turkish protests are civil disobedience; I don't know enough yet to judge.)

rjd 13y ago

While I understand your point, and can agree in part I don't think it applies here. Reading what I've read today its not about single incidents, its about continuous incidents by a government that doesn't resonate with the people. And infact what is considered a growing fascist dictatorship in guise of a government that is routinely commented on for its human rights abuses. I'd bet that the reason this has grown so quickly doesn't have much to do with individual gripes but that lack of trust and a feeling of disenfranchisement from that government. Compounded with rumours that government they don't have faith in could very well be going to war against a country with stock piles of nerve gas capable of hitting major settlements. Offering the crowds some security within themselves that the government is no longer emanating. Ask yourself in that scenario, with the risk of sarin gas hitting your home, families home, government cold and distant,would you also go protest? I know I would.

zalew 13y ago

> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests. how so? democracy is not limited to counting votes and stfu until the next election. it's not like authorities haven't been removed from office before and decisions haven't been changed due to public disapproval. getting into office is not a free pass for half a decade. acta protests were anti-democratic too?

claudius 13y ago
I have absolutely no problems with people protesting, I have a problem with ‘protesters’ forcing their opinion on the rest by use of passive (standing in front of a bulldozer) or active (undermining a railroad track carrying nuclear waste containers) violence. And yes, if ACTA protests had cut other people’s telecom lines to the US or some such thing, I would have called them anti-democratic, too. To me, a decent society is based on (among others) the state’s monopoly on the use of force, with the legally acceptable force limited to implement decisions made by the legislative (and judiciary). Random guy simply has no right to ‘protest’ against something by force. (Also your shift key is a little broken, it appears, making it somewhat difficult to read your post.)
- gcb0 13y ago
  Spoken like a true majority. my bet of the little i worked on politics is that someone have campaign money, got the park land in return. I highly doubt there was much calls for discussion on the mater. This happened in Germany some time ago. The plebiscity for demolishing the park was voted against twice, then they came up with a third voting in the middle of a holiday, with 8h of warning or something similar. When the bulldozers came to the park people were still believing they were there illegally because the permit was not voted for.
  - claudius 13y ago
    > This happened in Germany some time ago. I don’t know to which event exactly you’re referring, but I can assure you that > 8h of warning or something similar. this is most certainly false. Could you elaborate a bit?

galactus 13y ago

I personally find thousands of people trying to defend a public park much more democratic than business lobby groups with unlimited resources influencing the policy makers.

jules 13y ago

It's hard to call this a democratic government given that they control the press and the corruption. Do you really think the people wanted the park to be turned into a shopping mall, or is perhaps a better explanation that a handful of rich people with political connections wanted that?

claudius 13y ago
> Do you really think the people wanted the park to be turned into a shopping mall, or is perhaps a better explanation that a handful of rich people with political connections wanted that? I really don’t know. One of the confusing (to me) things here is that Erdogan, i.e. the prime minister of the whole of Turkey, appears to control both whether the mall is being built and the local police force, or, in other words, apparently the whole country (as opposed to a local district) can decide on whether to build a mall in some place or not. And then I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of the rural and likely conservative population of Turkey actually wants to move into what they think is the 21st century.
- jules 13y ago
  He doesn't officially control that, but through party connections he controls a lot of things, and that's not how it should be, but it is. The more important issue is that he controls the press, which generally isn't great feature to have as part of a democracy. No doubt he really is popular, and not just with the rural population, but that doesn't mean that he or others in the AKP makes decisions such as whether or not to build a shopping center for the benefit of the people. It's a favor to the contractor who is going to build the shopping mall, or the guy who is going to own it, or something like that. That's just how it works: favors in return for favors, i.e. corruption. He was democratically elected (at least as far as that's possible while you control the press and corruption runs through the party structure), but that doesn't mean that these kind of decisions are made in the name of the general population.

justsee 13y ago

> Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall. No, it appears rampant corruption in the construction industry (with the perception it is privately benefiting the Turkish PM and his political party) led to a decision not 'in the name of the people'. [1] > People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests. If we assume the reporting so far is reasonably accurate, they are protesting against the erosion of democracy by an increasingly authoritarian PM and corrupted political party which he leads. It is darkly ironic that you'd attempt to portray their efforts as anti-democratic. [1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/01/erdogan-grip-turkey-istanbul-expansion http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/01/erdogan-grip-tur...

honzzz 13y ago

> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process I think this is serious misunderstanding of what is now going on in Turkey. The 'mall in park' thing was just a trigger. I understand that you are somehow comparing this to Stuttgart protests but from what I read about it I think this is totally different situation. Example: I was born in a country occupied by Russians. And there were some protests (even violent) triggered by things like our hockey team beating Russian team at the Olympics. Of course that this had nothing to do with ice hockey and everything to do with the tension and unhappiness that builds up for years.

claudius 13y ago
I agree that there is more[0] to it now than a few people wanting to keep a park, yet the comment I originally replied to was: > This is disgusting, the "right" to profit/property is the least important thing, it should never trump people's well-being or the environment. which I interpreted as just that. [0] Whether that ‘more’ is better is, given the levels of violence, rather subjective.

eatitraw 13y ago

> Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall. So what? If yours "democratically-elected government" orders you("in the name of the people", of course) to kill jews, will you comply? > are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests. So what? When majority votes, does it protect personal interests of someone else? > e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision? You have so much subordination to government-made law, so even if you would really want to overthrow tyrannic government, you would stop because there is no law allowing you to revolt?

mcintyre1994 13y ago

I feel I'm missing something from your comment. Are you suggesting anybody democratically elected get their personal views ("in the name of the people") backed by that democracy? I don't think getting elected means that the people deem you infallible for your term in your typical democracy?

berkay 13y ago

The protest to protect the park is nothing more than a trigger. In fact there are even reports that suggest that there is some misinformation and there is no currently approved project to build a shopping center. Still not clear what the facts are since media is not doing its job. Initial protest was quite small and not many people paid attention to it until the police used ridiculous level of force to disperse the protesters. That's the action that triggered mass protests all over the country.

antihero 13y ago

Except democracy is often false, and essentially a duopoly. Take here in the UK for example - there are two main parties, Labour and Conservative, which are varying degrees of right wing neoliberal. I don't doubt either of them would have supported this project because councils are full of careerists who owe favours. We can try to elect a "better" party (we tried with Lib Dems) but that goes tits-up, and we could start a much better left wing party (Green Party), but it's insanely hard to get any real power due to a variety of factors such as the media, ingrained ideas, gerrymandering, etc. So true democracy is a bunch of people who stand up for their community, or at least that is far less flawed or corrupt than the system as it stands. As for the right wing idiot thing - I disagree. I love the place I live in, if some arseholes come along and threaten, intimidate people here, then of course I think it just to counter-protest, vastly outnumber them, and make it clear that they are not welcome.