https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/jul/18/un-urged-to-ac...
Absolute power is dangerous and the mind starts to slip after a while.
The voters can also stop him. Instead, Turkish voters not only re-elected him multiple times, they even voted in one special election to give him even more power.
The Turkish people are getting the government they've voted for.
>Absolute power is dangerous and the mind starts to slip after a while.
Yes, but what can you do when a nation of people democratically decide to give someone absolute power? If you try to prevent this, then you're working against democracy.
As for repression, Erdogan didn't do that all by himself. Autocrats like that persist because they have a power structure under them that supports them and keeps them in power. In a democratic country like Turkey, this is supported by the people voting to keep these power structures in place. In short, the majority of the people there do support him. Yeah, it sucks that he repressed minorities, but that's one of the dangers of democracy: if the majority doesn't care about protecting minorities and their civil rights, then the minorities get stomped on. The only thing that makes a democratic system better than a completely autocratic system (like North Korea) is that at least in the democracy, there's a chance the majority will protect the minorities, and whatever institutions have been built in the system of government to do so and prevent leaders from having too much power. But as Turkey shows, and also in Germany in the 1930s, it sometimes falls apart, mainly because the people allow it to.
In turn, the religious cult was allowed (by Erdoğan, with the 2010 referendum) to colonize the military and the judicial system because previously they were colonized by hardliner modernists who had a history of doing coups or closing down political parties when someone they don't like come to power, and explicitly threatened Erdoğan[1][2].
[0]: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/ex-exam-chief-indicted-over...
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Justice_and_Development_P...
Ok, just so we're clear on this: that's ridiculous nonsense, conspiracy theories basically, but you're using it to justify the indefensible actions of a hard-line authoritarian ruler.
Turkey is the country that the term "deep state" was coined to describe. I don't know what to believe about the so-called coup.
Would really appreciate If you could explain what Gulenism is about and particular where it differs from the Erdoganian Muslim Brotherhood ideology.
> “The coup attempt was not initiated by the government. Before July 15 the government had already started a big purge so parts of the military thought they should do a coup quickly before it hit them too,” Kahl said.
In [0], Kahl dismisses the possibility that the Gülen movement did the coup. However, he fails to mention which other group in the military "feared" the purge and was big enough to attempt a coup.
If you combine that with: - the 2010-11 purge of nationalist-modernists from the army was directed by Gülen people[1][2] (and supported by Erdoğan[3]) - all 4 military schools were totally infiltrated by Gülenists[4]
you would see that the Gülen movement was certainly in the army, and after the purge of nationalist-modernists, there was no other group in the Turkish army big enough and pissed off with the govt enough to attempt a coup. The testimonies of suspected army officers[5] mentioning Gülen is no surprise at this point.
When I see the purge of Gülen supporters to be generalized to Erdoğan opponents, something goes off in my mind. People who are against both Erdoğan and Gülen weren't targeted for that purge. If anything, they were trusted more than before, because many pro-Erdoğan people could get into state positions using Gülen connections pre-2013.
A good guestion to ask here is why did Erdoğan facilitate Gülen's infiltration of the institutions in the first place. As I mentioned above, it was because he feared a Kemalist coup or party shutdown. So, if Turkey didn't have the habit of "fending off populists with coups", none of this would happen. Or maybe it would?
All in all, what I'm trying to say is that the whole issue is more complex than "autocrat bad punish opponents".
---
[0]: https://www.rt.com/news/381290-bnd-gulen-erdogan-coup/
[1]: http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/son-dakika-ergenekon-davas...
[2]: https://www.aa.com.tr/tr/15-temmuz-darbe-girisimi/balyoz-dav...
[3]: http://www.radikal.com.tr/politika/erdogan-evet-savciyiz-888...
[4]: https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2016/08/turkey-gu...
[5]: https://t24.com.tr/haber/15-temmuz-darbe-girisimi-ifadeleri-...
Also it's quite naive to assume that lifting the ban wasn't the government's intention, just days before European Court of Human Right's deadline to oversee the case.
https://explorer.ooni.org/search?test_name=web_connectivity&...
After 2.5 years... Let's not pretend like this is some major success. It's a failure by all accounts that luckily ended up OK.
Hopefully other nations follow their lead one day.
[0] https://www.hrw.org/news/2018/03/27/turkey-crackdown-social-...
Sure, after 2.5 years. And after being blocked in the first place.
It seems easy from the outside, but it isn't.
In an even freer country, it would not have happened in the first place.
What am I supposed to be impressed by?
It took 2 and half years for this to happen. That does not sound like a nation of laws to me.
Imagine if this happened in America. Would you be making apologist arguments, in that situation?
You don't have to defend them. Just say that they did a bad thing and call it a day.
This decision should read "Erdogan orders the Constitutional Court to restore access to Wikipedia".
The general point here is that, no, Turkey is not, in fact, a banana republic, but ultimately a pretty normal enlightenment-ideas-based country which is dealing with a leader that tries to stretch everything it can find to give himself more unrestrained power. That should unfortunately be pretty familiar to people who live in the US at this point.
It's a rhetoric question. There is nothing "enlightened" about modern Turkey: it is a de facto military dictatorship, belligerent and militaristic, that relishes its self-chosen role as the regional bully in the Eastern Mediterrannean and the Near East. It was like this before Erdogan (with Turgut Ozal) and it will be like this after Erdogan, and for a long time still.
But perhaps I'm just blinded by prejudice having lived most of my life in Greece, which is right next door to Turkey. Perhaps you -presumably not living so close to Turkey- may have a broader perspective that I am missing.
In that case, can you name one time in the last 45 years when Turky has actively promoted peace and stability in the regions it borders? (I'm leaving out 1974, the year of the invasion of Cyprus, to make it easier).
Up until 1851 the largest minority in the Empire were Muslims at 45% of the population, followed by Christians at 35%. You could argue that it's an unbroken lineage because 35% of the population still followed Roman law which was still valid and in full force, or you could argue that the most populous minority didn't, therefore a broken lineage.
In either case, the reality is more shades of grey, of course: all jurisdictions of accepted law evolved side by side with some crosstalk over time. Ultimately though, Turkey terminated the application of muslim law, removed it entirely from its code and completely switched to a western code after World War I, roughly coincident with the collapse of the Empire and the foundation of the current, modern Republic.
It's subject to both European Court of Justice, and the European Court of Human Rights as the ultimate courts of appeal, both of which, I believe, have some presiding Turkish judges.
(My knowledge in this field is very superficial — if someone knows better, please feel free to correct!)
Do you know how this worked with disputes between people of different religions?
They are both institutions of the state and since the Ottoman Empire was an Islam state, they were obviously Islamic. But, Divan-i Humayun's decisions were "Sultan's Word" so they had to be fair. The usual/accepted route is to go Kadi first and then you can appeal to Divan-i Humayun. But it's seen im records that sometimes non-Muslims directly went to Divan-i Humayun because they believed that they wouldn't be treated fair at Kadi.
The judicial system of this empire was quite accommodative for an Islamic system. It had Islamic courts which were the primary courts and they formed the cornerstone of administration in the empire. But there were also other courts that were not based on Sharia law and were meant for the interpretation of the law as understood by non-Muslims who were part of the empire. They included Jews and Christians who had been welcomed to the empire and lived in groupings called millets. But the Jews and Christians had the freedom to take their cases to the Islamic courts if they wanted to and many did as a way of giving judicial credence to their cases, given the immense unofficial respect that was given to the Islamic courts. It should be noted that this recognition was informal and any decision from the other courts were equally respected in the empire.
The third type of courts was the trade/commercial/industrial or business courts. In these courts, disputes emanating from business within the empire were solved. The parties involved determined the inclination and sometimes, both Islamic law experts and Christian and Jewish judicial officers would sit side by side and decide a case. They were more concerned with securing justice and fairness and religion was never a key consideration. New laws into the three types of courts came from the top leadership as well as the judicial experts of the three courts.
Is this level of trolling even considered trying? Trump has done very little to expand the powers of the US presidency.
Beautiful strawman here. Let's let Turkey go on denying genocide, murdering Kurds, destabilizing the region, and arresting political opponents and holding them without charges, because gosh darn it, they let wikipedia in.
Your takeaways:
1) Turkey has a Constitutional Court.
2) Turkey has a constitution.
3) The court makes rulings and they are carried out.
4) Erdogan did something and it was "checked" and "balanced."
Sounds an awful lot like a nation of laws, ruled by principles and such. Courts always take a while to catch up, just like e.g. investigations and pretty much every process governed by facts. But yeah, cause for some optimism. Lot of yelling here today about the block - guys it was lifted. After a ruling by a court.