Turkey's president says all he wants is same powers as Hitler | Hacker News Reader

Turkey's president says all he wants is same powers as Hitler

telegraph.co.uk

46 pointsobi1kenobi42 comments

I don't understand why people are surprised that Erdogan is pushing an Islamic agenda. He was voted in because of his appeal to the religious people.

I think all the people who are surprised at this are the ones outside of Turkey. This should not be a surprise at all. People living in the rural areas are very conservative and they are the ones who brought him to power once again.

Even to this day I hear nothing but praise for Erdogan in my social circle (of _very_ well educated upper-middle class people).

Reading articles from the US & UK makes it look like we are talking about two different people. There is not a lot of hate for Ergodan at the grass-roots level. Almost as if there is an agenda to push by the international community

Thanks for creating an account for telling us this.

While the guy (or whatever) hasn't commented a lot,

> created: 464 days ago

This is the only comment. So no he hasn't commented a lot.

Hey guys - yea, I'm a lurker, I guess.

New accounts have their username highlighted in green. This isn't a new account.

A lot of us Turks here are totally at the opposite side of Erdogan but come on. That type of blunt propaganda is really not needed. We need to stand on the side of democracy, and oppose this party in democratic ways. I'm truely ashamed how several UK/US media outlets stood on the side of the coup faction.

Good luck democratically opposing someone who, after gaining power through democracy, begins stifling dissent in the media and the judiciary. If the Turkish people don't understand that this man is trying to create the machinery for autocracy, then they can't be saved.

The trouble is this encourages a tendency to assume that whoever is has executive power today is the legitimate representative of democracy so long as they once won an election.

Now from what little I know of Turkey, I think Erdogan does have a good democratic case behind him, since he seem popular and won a recent election. But it also really does count against him if he roughshod of the machinery (such as a free press) that makes democracy work.

I don't know enough about Turkey to balance those two things, so I am not willing to stand on any side in this dispute.

> he seem popular and won a recent election.

The trend is not rising though. He's twice failed to break the numbers required to legally change the constitution, and now even his majority is not very solid. He survives on a steady diet of fairly suspicious shocks, like this coup attempt and a string of terrorist attacks that conveniently targeted his enemies rather than his friends.

He's also played the old "Putin switcheroo" between premiership and presidency to work around constitutional limits, which is why he's trying to strengthen his new role.

The democratic case for Erdogan is the same as for Putin, really; and that says it all.

> A lot of us Turks here are totally at the opposite side of Erdogan .... I'm truely ashamed how several UK/US media outlets stood on the side of the coup faction.

You answered your own question. Outside Turkey no one really knows/understands the coup faction.

So they figure anything must be better than what is there now. (Which may or may not actually be true.)

The coup faction is an imam (Fethullah Gulen) living in Pennsylvania who is the follower of an early 20th century religious Sheik called (Said-i Nursi). He has tens of thousands of policemen, soldiers,officers as followers. They wanted to implement rule of Sharia. Erdogan is also another religious-minded politician who had similar goals. Till 2012 they were good buddies and have the same audience, conservative, religious poor people. It's kind of their post-2012 battle for power in all parts of state, economy. Fethullah is weak in public support so avoids politics, but organized very well. They are like a spy organization. I don't know anything similar in Western politics. They were about to be expelled in 2 weeks from Army posts, but made a last ditch effort to grasp power and topple Erdogan.

I'am a big anti-erdogan turk but he never ever said that in the past it was a 'mistranslation' done on purpose and now that the coup has failed they use basic propaganda to corner him. Yes he is authoritarian fuck, yes he wants more power and lots of people hate him for that but it doesn't change what happened on July 15th, A coup orchestrated by an Imam and his group sheltered by U.S.A. They used planes that took of from Incirlik(nato base from where isis operation is lead) to refuel f-16s in Ankara.

The anti-american sentiment is at an all-time high in every part of the population and if they refuse to give Gulen to Turkey, it will be a breaking point and there will be no turning back. I think darker days are ahead of for Turkey and the middle-east.

Pretty convenient coup for Erdogan. Interesting that he had a very long list of people to be purged all ready to go and now he has a platform to call for the extradition of his biggest rival. I wouldn't be too quick to blame on the CIA.

> Interesting that he had a very long list of people to be purged all ready to go

That's a red herring. Every state has those lists, "ready to go". Seriously, do you expect a power clique to wait until they get whacked to compile a list?

> too quick to blame on the CIA.

It is entirely debatable if anything we are fed via the media has a connection to reality, but the surface matter here points to Russian intelligence spilling the beans hoping to flip Turkey. I'm pretty sure Turks haven't forgotten the 'New Map of Middle East' [1] that the neocrazies were putting out a few years ago. Alternative plot is that US and Turkey are playing breakup to cover their support for these well armed crazies that have come out of the wooodwork since the West decided to "help" the people of "Middle East" [sic].

[1]: http://www.globalresearch.ca/plans-for-redrawing-the-middle-...

A good start if they want Gulen extradited would be some actual evidence that he is involved.

It is very hard to prove something like this, you should understand that these kind of subversive groups don't work with a straight command chain. It is much more like ISIS cells, you don't know who is who and how they operate.

In any civilized country that is ruled by the rule of law, if you cannot prove that he is involved, then he can't be judged for it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

Until such proof is produced, this is just Erdogan doing a personal vendetta against a political enemy. No country outside Turkey has any interest of helping him with that.

> A coup orchestrated by an Imam and his group sheltered by U.S.A

And you got those "facts" from where?

These stories are spread by Erdogan, IMO I find the 'Erdogan staged everything' conspiracy much more believable. Bringing back democracy by sacking thousands of judges.

those gulenist judges threw 1000 officers in prison to weaken the secular force in the army and they put their people in it instead, we got these result today. The seculars like me are in a quandary: we know gulen is behind the coup, but we also know that our crazy president will use this failed attempt to muster more power.

Is Gulen the leader of the Hizmet movement? yes

did Gulen followers infiltrate the judicial system, police, and army and undermined secular forces under Erdogan's reign? yes

Did Gulen and his followers turned against Erdogan when they disagreed on how to share power? yes

Did Gulen's followers attempted a coup to ovethrow Erdogan? yes

All of these happened in the span of +12 years in front of our eyes, those gulenist did all this with impunity under Ergodan's protection(until fall 2013) while praising their precious Imam living in U.S.A.

In The past when you asked a gulenist why their "saint" leader lived in the U.S.A and not in a muslim country under sharia law they would say that he is so sick that he needs 50 doctors around him...They actually view him as the Messiah, you know the reincarnation of Jesus...

yes we can't prove it, but how can we do it? The Hizmet movement is in some ways similar to Scientology, you know they are shady as fuck but they're so slimy that you can't catch them with their hand in your pocket.

It is ironic that the only group that now is pro-american in Turkey is an Islamic sect which is at war against the secular order in Turkey.

The US has said that if the Turkish govt can provide any sound proof of Gulen's involvement they will consider extradition. But extradition requests are denied all the time even between really friendly nations. The problem with this extradition is that this will most certainly lead to the man being executed so the stakes are even higher to make sure that extradition is just.

>orchestrated by an Imam

citation?

There's a common conspiracy theory amoung Turk's that Gulen (quite an interesting character) was the one that orchestrated the coup. He's in self exile in the US. Definitely worth looking into.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fethullah_G%C3%BClen

And apparently they were friends and supported each other before they became rivals and Gulen, a Sufist, was evaluated as a threat by Erdogan, so Gulen high tailed out of Turkey --given Erdogan's tendency to want to concentrate power, it looks like it was the wise choice.

first of all he didn't leave Turkey under Erdogan's rule, he left much earlier because secular forces knew what he was and the circle was closing on him. He Left Turkey in 1999.

Wasn't that conspiracy theory started by President Erdogan literally as soon as he possibly could start it (on the televised Facetime chat)?

That's the thing, its not a conspiracy theory. Everybody already believe, even secular turks like me, that Gulen was behind many things in Turkey like: The imprisonment of more than 1000 "secular" officers in the army since 2007 with the Ergenekon Operation, and later with the Balyoz operation. The irony is when we accused Gulen of being behind those operations, AKP and Erdogan were accusing the seculars for being conspiracy theorist.

>> The anti-american sentiment is at an all-time high

This is interesting considering the US keeps touting how important allies Turkey is to us for the fight against ISIS. Why is there so much anti-American sentiment right now?

I honestly haven't been able to read that much on the coup so I'm probably missing something - I know you mentioned the US supported Imam, but what else is going on? I seriously would like to know more.

Turkey is like Pakistan: a strategic US ally who doesn't exactly see eye-to-eye with the US on all problems.

In particular, Erdogan bet big on ISIS to rid himself of both Assad (strategic rival to Turkish influence in the region) and Kurds, so he's not in love with a US policy that arms Kurd troops against ISIS and Al-Nusra.

Also, Turkey is a big country. Daesh is obviously unpopular in "westernized" Istanbul, but out in the sticks where people listen to imams and maybe make the odd cross-border illegal transactions with ISIS fighters, they're likely loved a bit more, especially considering their anti-Kurd role. Coincidentally, rural provinces have also been Erdogan's primary constituencies ever since he failed to attain UE membership.

And well, of course there's Israel.

Edit: downvoted why? I don't think any of this is particularly contentious.

Any country with a large Muslim population will have negative views of America due to US support for Israel.

It really is that simple. Turkey has its cosmopolitan side, but numerically they don't match the Erdogan supporters, who in general skew towards the Islamist side.

Without taking sides, it's at least easy to see how someone might hold the US responsible for the present day level of instability in the Middle East. Turkey has a land border with one of the largest, most unstable regions.

Note: The article is from January.

Can you put (Jan 2016) at the end so people realise it's nothing new :-)

Feature request: Before you can flag a discussion, you have to give your reasons for doing so, which will be published.

OP here -- I would also love to know why this post got flagged. I posted this because I was interested in the HN community's thoughts on the article as I try to decide what to think of it, and not because I was agreeing or disagreeing with it, or to push some agenda or other.

He replied: "Yes. There is nothing saying that you can't have a presidential system in a unitary state. There are already some examples in the world today, and also some from the past. You see it when you look at Hitler's Germany. Later you see the example again in various other countries. What is important is that a presidential system should not disturb the people in its implementation. If you provide justice, there will be no problem because what people want and expect is justice. We cannot at the moment say that presidential systems are entirely free from problems. There are places governed by a presidential system and still goes through problems, but in comparison we see that presidential systems are relatively better than parlementarian[sic] systems.”[1]

I think invoking comparison with Hitler's Germany as an example of good system is still pretty awful!

[1]: http://factcheckingturkey.com/authoritarianism/claim-erdogan...

How much oversight/transparency do we think we will see over the presumed coming trials of the 6000 arrested following the failed coup?

Brilliant, now whenever I criticize him online I will instantly lose as per Godwin's law. Well played, well played.

No one is asking who are the Turks looking for someone like Hitler.

But Hitler died... perhaps something is lost in translation?

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