4 ms·

> 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 politi

> 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.