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.
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.
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.
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
Unfortunately that's not quite true. It is true that very few people want war as an end in itself (though even then there are exceptions) but some people want something else (land, power, eliminating the infidels) for which they are willing to pay the price of war -- especially if they can coerce someone else to do the fighting on their behalf.
Exactly my thoughts. Now how could we replace overreliance on unrealistic uptime goals with scheduled maintenance?
I also was baffled about the results of the Turkish vote abroad. How is it possible that, in many EU states, they won which such a majority? I would have expected expats to be generally more liberal/globalist/progressive.
I'm not sure "expat" is the right term to designate the masses who responded to West Europe's call for more labor in the 70s. In the sense that they live outside of their native land, yes, they are expatriates. But, today, the term almost designates a wealthier group who are sent by their companies to work abroad now.
In any case, there's a big difference between the Turks in Europe (more than 60% of them voted for Erdogan) or, say, Turks who live in the US (only 15% of them voted for Erdogan). Their backgrounds are completely different. Most of the people who immigrated to Europe to satisfy the new labor needs came from rural areas, mostly from the central and eastern part of Turkey without even living in a sizable city in Turkey. That created a complete culture shock and great integration problems.
Turks in the US, on the other hand, came here mostly for college/university. They are highly educated and they've fully embraced the values of the nation because they had those values at heart even before they decided to live or study abroad.
I never completely understood this. I guess it's partly a kneejerk reaction to the nominally left-wing repressive regimes they left behind. Another component is probably a sudden immersion into a truly pluralistic society when coming from an intolerant and homogenous one. But still, I can't say I truly understand it.
I'm in my 30s and this is still a source of conflict between my family and me. They're lower-class "real people" who have a soft spot for despots on the Putin spectrum. Because while they're pro-democracy, they also think you need a "firm hand" to keep all "those people" in line, and by "those people" they mean people they can't or won't empathise with: poor black people, the stew of "educated degenerates" who refuse to have normal sexualities or lifestyles, muslims, and so on.
The reason they are against asylum seekers may be simpler as it seems: they know that the situation was going to create troubles and escalate, and therefore it will be blamed on the dark ones (the focus is on them). Can you distinguish a Turkish from a Syrian, for example? Furthermore, with this huge expenses for refugees, the social money is likely to be reduced, and I don't have the numbers, but many of them live off of the social security provided by the state. (without even considering the money they get for the kids)
I mean, I do understand their concerns, which is really sad...
Many dark foreigners have the same point of view. In such white countries, more dark foreigners mean more chance of troubles for them. Dark, slightly dark, black, etc, they all belong in one category: dark foreigners. Even Indians, who do not have absolutely anything in common with Africans, for example, still belong to the same category.
If an Indian does something bad, dark people will suffer from it.
Same for social security: they'll have less, considering that many (poor) foreigners will come, and they may have to share the resources.
It's all about survival...
Of course one explanation is:
"The people who cast the votes don't decide an election, the people who count the votes do."
Average Turk from Istanbul is way more western than the average labor migrant from 60ies-70ies. Mainly they came from rural areas and without much education to do manual labor (which was great IMO).
So "same" people that are now voting for Erdogan in said rural areas today.
2nd-3rd generation who grew up in Europe (local education etc.) don't even necessarily have right to vote in Turkish election.
Why don't we simply face the ugly truth that most people who voted for YES are the alpha-males, unable to speak the country language, living in parallel societies, who want submissive women?
That's the kind of stereotype that Erdogan wants. I mean, Kurds are nice people, but for some reason they need to be wiped out. Boh!?
Also, there was an article about learned helplessness, how to craft depression into animals by confusing their brain when searching for way to stop suffering. Very similar root cause.
Internet used to be a tool that enabled people all over the world to communicate. I wouldn't have spoken a word in English if it wasn't for internet.
Commercialization of the Web killed the globalization spirit of the internet.
There's no commercial value in connecting people who are in different markets.
A Web enterprise does not benefit by showing its customers that they might be holding the wrong opinion.
Echo chambers bring loyal customers.
Globalization dies a little bit every time a curious teenager sees an error saying: "this content is not available in your country".
You are not an average internet user if you talk to the people on a different cohort, you are an elite and elites have always been communicating with the elites.
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.
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.
No, that's a common misconception.
Democracy isn't characterised only by the vote, but also by liberal values. We call it liberal democracy.
I'm from Romania btw and until 1989 we've had communism / stalinism. Guess what - we had votes then too. It was all arranged of course, party members didn't dare going against the dictators, everybody was dancing on the same music, etc.
In other words, everything is up for vote except for the liberal values that make democracy work. Without those liberal values, you don't have a democracy.
And to put this in perspective: you cannot claim that a popular vote is legit without freedom of speech, because in that case people can be coerced or manipulated by those in power, without the opposition being able to fight back at all. How many people has Erdogan imprisoned? You also cannot attest the legitimacy of the vote when you don't have separation of power in the state, because you no longer have a functioning judicial branch.
All famous autocrats in history achieved power through popular support.
But here's where it actually hurts: it's easy to vote an autocrat into power, it's hard to vote him out.
Turkey's economy will suffer, tourism is already going down the drain, other countries will slow down trade with Turkey due to political instability. Erdogan, like all populists before him, will end up pushing more and more nationalistic messages, blaming the Occident for his own fuckups, threatening with conflict because that's what populists do when they lose support.
Either way, I'm fairly confident at this point to say that Turkey is no longer a democracy.
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.
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.
Of course that means nothing other than "one specific liberal ex-pat Turk believe X was plausible" but it's one more data point.
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-tur... [2]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworl... [3]: http://www.inquiriesjournal.com/articles/735/3/the-end-of-mu... [4]: https://www.quora.com/Turkey-country-What-is-the-story-behin...
http://www.spiegel.de/panorama/justiz/nordrhein-westfalen-po...
https://www.derwesten.de/politik/in-problemvierteln-fuerchte...
All these are areas where policemen are afraid to work because they may get suddenly surrounded by 40-50 people. It's true, you can still access them, but then it doesn't mean you get out easily, hence they are not accessible.
People react in fear and absolutes, but things are fixable.
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.
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.
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.
Kick Turkey out of NATO first. If things get worse, impose sanctions.
But yes, I agree we should refuse to be blackmailed by Erdogan, although I'd not go as far as to kick him out of Nato.
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.
FYI: in democratic elections, you don't put the opposition in jail first and control the media in a way that the ones you've left don't even get a chance to reach the population or tell them in a honest way what is currently happening. I'm sure all those vote manipulations are also part of democratic elections in your eyes eh?
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?)
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!
I don't think, that every despot is similar to Hitler, but still it is a despot.
BTW: How do you recognize a despot: He behaves like one. Just open your eyes!
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.
Whoever cries wolf is a wolf himself.
It's much, much more than that. Every single billboard and half the TV ads before referendum were ads telling people to vote "yes".
People didn't even know what they were voting for.
He then says "I need you to vote for this to give me extraordinary powers", and people trust him - especially as the opposition is in disarray
Hopefully people will see this for what it is and not vote Tory on June 8th.
I think people in the West who follow these things pretty much uniformly dislike Erdogan and his throwing the journalists in jail type activities but the Turks vote for him. I'm not sure what we're supposed to do about it.
There were always way too many violations in the vote process. e.g. people who voted multiple times, militaries who were forced to vote in the right way. God damn it, even 146% of a votes sum translated on federal TV channels [1]. Nobody even tries to hide violations anymore.
A lot of people simply don't believe there is anything they can do about it. They just wait the people in charge will be gone.
Plus add massive brainwashing, threatenings like "without <put the name> the country will fall into chaos", active opposition mortification by government.
And here we are.
[1]: http://netbespredelu.ru/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/656886.jp...
And I agree with the brainwashing, we have that in the uk right now
From what I see, there are two Turkeys - the liberal Turkey which resides in cities like Izmir and the conservative ones which come from places like Bursa or Gaziantep. Currently, there are fewer liberal Turks than the conservative ones.
> People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on Erdogan's regime
On this point, I've always found it amazing how most of my American friends/colleagues have little idea about what's happening outside the USA. I get that most news is local and all that but sometimes there are impactful events around the world which would be difficult to miss. Most times, they haven't even heard about the event let alone know about it.
If the majority of Turks are brainwashed enough to support a dictator, mass incarceration and ties of their government to terrorist organisations in order to appease their xenophoby towards the Kurdish minority, then make sure it's their problem and not the EU.
The only thing EU must do is make sure it doesn't blow up their way. When (not if) Turkey starts their civil war, just make sure you don't allow them in the EU after they willingly destroyed their own country after decades of EU trying to help them solve their internal problems by increasing democratic institutions there (and pouring a lot of money), but they very stubbornly resisting it and actually going the opposite way.
The world must stop looking at EU like they are the fireman of the world and at fault for all the arsonists the population keeps electing in Africa, the Middle East and even some parts of Eastern Europe.
The other half is much worse than what most western people who are familiar with the Turkish resorts imagine.
It's like looking at SF or SV and extrapolating from it the mindset of the Bible Belt.
Erdogan has support of at least half of the Turkish population and in many ways when compared to the more extreme mindset of it he's a moderate.
On top of that, the last election (the turn the President into Sultan) had massive fraud and any critical media has been jailed.
> Every single billboard and half the TV ads before referendum were ads telling people to vote "yes".
> People didn't even know what they were voting for.
absolutely true! Which says a lot about those people who voted for him.
I'd say the majority of your view is true, but in my guess-timation, about half of them are fundamentalists, who still treat Kurds like third-class citizens, who want to turn Hagia Sophia, a cultural epicenter and museum back into a Mosque, who helped vote Ergodan in in the first place. The people you are talking about never wanted him.
A funny parallel, if you read HN, you could draw the same conclusion about America -- it sounds like most everyone is against Trump and are reasonable people, but 48.5% of the country still voted him in, and of that 48.5% half think he's doing a 'wonderful job'
These people don't stay in power by chance. America -- take note.
At this point at least we know Erdogan's issues stay inside Turkey. If someone unsuccessfully tries to overthrow him no one can predict what his reaction will be. From invading Greece to a civil war that will end with hundreds of thousands dead.
If he is successfully overthrown, we'll have a new Iraq for a decade before the area stabilizes. Either way there's no clean solution.
Ukraine is the only example where an autocrat was removed from power without the entire country falling into chaos. They were fortunate to lose control over just Crimea and the eastern zone.
Please stop this nonsense of trying to pretend it's always somebody else's fault other than the majority of the Turks. They choose to transform their country in the mess it became.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/referendum-in-tu...
There are people in turkey that are more western.
These people would leave turkey if possible, but they can't.
This is making turkey less western?
Wouldn't that have the opposite effect? The west is generally responsible for the brain drain in less successful countries. Throwing borders up will keep those people who share our views in those countries. It's a fair bet that those people will be the force for good change in their governments more likely within their country than outside it.
51 won and this happened.
The problem there I suppose would be neutral arbitration. sigh
The ability to enact drastic change with a minimal majority like in Turkey (or the UK...) is terribly dangerous.
Call me naive, but is this actually a problem? I'm fairly secular and don't know much about how 'Muslim states' operate, but if they're producing alcohol, for it's population who drinks and and doesn't care, what is the actual problem here? Shouldn't the government reflect the values of the people (which has seemingly fine with alcohol consumption)?
One other exception is if you live in Aceh. It is a special region in Indonesia which implements Islamic law to the tee.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/November_2016_Jakarta_protests
2) Not wanting a military coup does not make one a supporter of Erdogan.
But yeah, the secularist block seems to be powerless to do anything (and not even talking about the Kurds).
I am wide awake but I am not one of the idiot Turks who voted for this guy. What am I supposed to do if a foreign nation turns itself into an islamofascist dictatorship?
Yep, because that is what happened with the Eastern-Europian regimes in 1956 and 1969. History repeats itself.
We see it here (and elsewhere) with people continually calling for and hoping for politicians to "do the right thing" rather than organize themselves (unless it's to do something easy like stand around holding signs) and think through new reforms to then push for (we even have the article 5 mechanism designed explicitly for that); we see it elsewhere with "Where is the West, why isn't anyone helping" as they forget we have literally neither mandate nor motive to solve their problem for them, and problems of our own besides.
Yes, we will likely intervene on certain actions anyways to preclude all-out wars if they loom. But if it gets to that point it will only be insofar as it protects us or defuses that war; liberation and organization is still ultimately a people's own problem we literally have no business butting into.
But as Merkel put it : erdogan is a democrat in a democracy.
Nothing we can do here.
In certain ways, what I find so disturbing about what's been happening in Turkey is how readily everyone seems to accept the official account of major events. The vote that initially established him, the "coup," the most recent vote... Things seem to be accepted at face value by the west without questioning it, even when major red flags are everywhere.
Erdogan isn't just a despot, he's a liar. And the West, especially Western journalism, seems to turn a blind eye.
Even if a large proportion of Turkey supports Erdogan, it doesn't mean a majority do. Even if Erdogan's government says a majority does, doesn't mean it actually does. And when a government establishes itself by subverting democratic or constitutional processes, it's not a democratic government anymore.
I think for good reason...
I don't think this is something to be proud of. The US is majority Christian and they tolerate satanism
If that bundles up as "more Western" then so be it. These are the values I hold dear. I want more of the world to be liberal democracies and I an unhappy when a nation retreats from that.
The greater issue though, is that it seems the "majority" is now imposing their religious ideals on a "minority". That is an unacceptable violation of the basic right to religious freedom.
Sadly Turkey is far from the first country in the Middle East to do this. There's a guy in Saudi Arabia on death row because he admitted to being atheist on his blog / social media.
But that violent subjugation of non-Muslims is a central part of Islam (as practiced and preached by Mohammed). Become a Muslim, if you're "people of the book" pay jizra, or die. That's the only way for an Islamic majority to stay true to Mohammed's injunctions.
Unless Islam turns is back on Mohammed and the Koran it can't become accepting of our Western concept of human rights in this way.
Muslims whom I know are thankfully just not practicing this party of their religion and not emulating Mohammed in this way; but suggestion they are not being true to Mohammed and his ideals would nonetheless be a massive affront to them. I see no way to fit Mohammedism in to a peaceful world.
"I'm sorry, but we've decided you're not a cultural fit" is a reasonable response to Turkey wanting to join the EU in its current state IMO.
"The army" that would defend him are countrymen; the wealthy who help maintain the status quo are a much wider group of individuals whose interests can be led to differ from his own.
That said, I do not think it should have to come to violence. If "the 49%" are steadfast and "the 51%" are beginning to doubt, calls could be organized for another referendum or neutral third party arbitration or such. The EU or UN would at minimum have something to justify a closer look. Though I haven't been following this too closely, so maybe it's too late idk.
Turkey is nothing like the common stereotypes we have of it in the West, but Erdogan is a guy who, I think, wants to change that. A wonderful human being who I've had the privilege of knowing is currently in prison in Turkey on absolutely baseless accusations[1]. Nobody in Canada gives a damn because he was an "Imam", and that's a scary word apparently.
People in the West need to wake up and do their due diligence on Erdogan's regime. There's some seriously scary stuff happening because of this guy.
[1]http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/calgary/davud-hanci-turkey-cou...