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Comment by Animats | Hacker News Reader

There's a military coup underway in Turkey right now.[1]

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12103575

I hope they will fail. The worst democratic government is many times better than military rule.

Turkey is a little different here. Their military is supposed to take power when the president gets too radical. They're then supposed to run an election for a new president. AFAIK this has happened a number of times in their history.

I lived 2 military coups in Turkey, your explanation kinda glosses over the horrible pains they bring.

Sorry, I didn't mean to do that. That's the explanation I've heard before and it was never brought to my attention they were painful processes for the people. The way I was told about it, I thought it was a pretty streamlined process that impacted only the people in power.

Can you elaborate, please?

What do you want me to elaborate? Do you think military coups in Turkey are special for some reason? You can google about them yourself.

I haven't investigated too carefully, but the word floating around now is that the military in Turkey takes power about every ten years when the government gets too Islamist, and has a decent track record of returning control to a civilian government.

Well try living those military coups or asking actual people who lived through those.

Even democratic government that was turning towards religious extremism, routinely shut down freedom of speech and press, and was well down the path to turning into classic strongman dictatorship?

The military in turn, in past coups, hanged hundreds of people including a prime minister, oppressed press and public in much worse ways.

Turkey still has a functioning democracy, true, current government is shit, but they but your portrayal is actually inaccurate.

Military coups / rule is horrible. They only bring terrible pain to people.

And Menderes arranging pogroms on minorities and stealing their money was a good thing?

You are parroting the same stuff Junta did at the time.

My bad, you are right and I was wrong.

Nah, in Turkey it's the other way round...

The tyranny of the mob can be just as cruel as any dictator.

According to Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith, democracy has its greatest failures with a thunderous (democratic) applause.

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