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Comment by pluma | Hacker News Reader

Although from an outside perspective a military coup seems completely undemocratic the Turkish military has historically had the role of maintaining the principles Atatürk founded the Turkish Republic on. You can think of them as a built-in correction mechanism in case the government veers too far off course -- they remove the government, reset everything to start and then hand over control back to the people once the situation is stable again.

I strongly suggest reading the Wikipedia article on Kemalism (the principles of Atatürk for the Turkish Republic): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemalism

Erdogan dreams of bringing Turkey back to its Ottoman glory and is willing to exploit religion (and abolish Laicism) to do so. I don't think he staged the failed coup himself but it is clear that he's benefited the most from it:

He told the Turkish people to go out and stop the coup, risking their lives and knowing full well that the soldiers wouldn't massacre the civilians but creating an opportunity to make his supporters seem like a peaceful opposition to the "violent" military.

He spread the narrative that the coup was staged not to defend Atatürk's principles but by a religious sect his ruling party fell out with. He used that narrative and the failed coup to get rid of thousands of educators, judges, officials and military officers (calling it a "purge" even).

He's basically doing what he did before: eliminating all opposition to ensure his rise to permanent and unlimited power. Except because of the clever PR move of risking his citizens' lives he now has public support for his autocratic ambitions.

Atatürk created a nation that should have been an inspiration to the entire Islamic world with a degree of secularism far outmatching that of many Christian nations. Instead Erdogan is heading full speed back into the dark ages of theocratic dictatorships. This is a political tragedy of disturbing proportions and a huge loss for Europe and the Middle East.

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Karl Popper considered a government democratic if it could be replaced without violence, and while that's not exactly my definition, I think it's a good start - a bare minimum.

A provision in the constitution for military coups doesn't excuse it. That just means the Turkish constitution is a bad one, that doesn't offer its citizens democracy. Handing over control to the people "once the situation is stable again" is a joke - then the people the military disapprove of will have been purged, their parties outlawed and the public sufficiently intimidated from supporting them for a while.

Which is not to say Erdogan is any friend of democracy, obviously. I don't think his recent reliance on free media during the coup will provoke any change of heart in him. It's just that Turkey's democracy was always a bit of a sham.

Keep in mind those military coups have generally been relatively peaceful. Erdogan called the coup leaders a "junta" but that evokes the wrong images. The military is sworn to uphold the ideals of the Republic. The police is sworn to serve the government. The military has always tried to keep civilians out of the conflicts.

As a German and knowing my country's history I think a violent escape hatch is always necessary and justified. Both Germany and the US have something quite similar except they don't have a designated protector but instead put that duty on their citizens -- which means the citizens would have to fight against professional soldiers, which is exactly what a military coup would avoid.

You cite Popper, I cite Clausewitz: violence should be avoided, but if all else fails it should be regarded as the continuation of politics with other means. The important distinction is that it must be temporary and it must be avoided if at all possible.

The coups wouldn't be necessary if it weren't for autocrats like Erdogan who try to corrupt the ideals they were supposed to uphold. Turkish military coups are the equivalent of law enforcement using lethal force: it should never happen, but when it becomes absolutely necessary it will save more lives than it costs.

I'd even go so far as to say that if post-WW1 Germany had been modelled like Turkey, the nazis could have never risen to power. Unless the government, like Erdogan did, corrupted the military by replacing its leadership with its conspirators.

"Both Germany and the US have something quite similar except they don't have a designated protector but instead put that duty on their citizens"

and that's a fricking huge difference. Speaking of the military's freedom to topple governments as a duty, as if it was a burden and not a pure power of privilege?

Imagine that the military fails in its "obligation" to topple governments. They let a government stay that should have been toppled. Will they pay? Will anyone punish them? Of course not. You say it "must be avoided if at all possible", but who gets to make that call? That's right, only the generals themselves.

But for the people it's completely different. They - we - have skin in the game, it's we who will suffer if a tyrannical government is allowed to stay. Which is why we, and only we, none of our high-minded "protectors" internal or external should have the final word on whether revolution might be "worth it".

> Unless the government, like Erdogan did, corrupted the military

You think that the default status of a military is to be uncorrupt. Interestingly enough, that is a mistake the US founders didn't make - although their opposition to standing armies has fallen by the wayside long ago.

> Keep in mind those military coups have generally been relatively peaceful.

I hope that this is ignorance. In '61 the prime minister and two ministers were executed. In '80 there were about 600 thousand arrests, thousands of torture cases and thousands of killings. The sufferers were mostly communists and leftist alike, and extreme-right.

I'm from Turkey and I'll tell you this: If we have all these problems, it's because Kemalist revolutions. I would certainly love to live in his dream country (except for the extra-nationalism part), but the revolutions were without tolerance and impatient. Most of the people sort of swallowed it, when muslim reformists got power, they had the army in front of them. Up until the mid-90s bloodshed solved everything. But since one and a half a decade, they have asserted themselves, they now think that they have the power. Erdogan and the like know how to speak to them. He shows them the carrot, all run. They believe they'll get back the old glorious days, except they don't know nothing about the old glory, thanks to century long assimilation and constructed history. Thus, being already ignorant, and in the spell of The New Glory, they believe what they are told on the TV. This ignorance has been created by the anachronism and traditionmaking of the post-WWI regime and sequent politics of nationalism, fed also by the coups, inventing an anatolian people that came from central asia, and that only remotely knows what happened between 10th and 20th century.

Now the people is at the hands of them to be manipulated. They have forgotten the reality of pre-40s, and they are searching an identity, that's honourable and clean, and they follow whomever that invents likeable things. Why are the potent are shouting to the US now? Because it pleases who thinks «The US runs the world, and there are 5 rich jewish families behind them,» i.e. ignorant conspiracy-theory lovers. Why are they this ignorant? Because the past was intentionally distorted by the nationalist and patriotist elite, the revolutionists, the coupists and the like.

No existing democracies are pure democracies, in the sense that the have non-democratic elements, often enshrined in a constitution, that constrain the government. In the US, unelected judges with lifetime appointments strike down laws passed democratically, in accordance with a constitution that none of us alive had any input in writing. We've all gotten used to that idea, but it was extremely controversial when it first happened ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marbury_v._Madison ).

Why do you think having an element of the military providing a check on democracy is obviously less legitimate? (Regardless of whether it's sensible.) If coup-leaders were formally separated from the military and wore black robes, would this make it better?

I am very much against the thing you describe, whether they call themselves supreme courts or guardian councils or defenders of the constitution. Yes, I am a radical democrat. I think the safeguards supposedly provided by such institutions are largely illusionary.

All sorts of minorities, for instance, may be protected in flowery words, but it isn't worth the paper it's written on unless the majority (of power, sadly, not of individuals) actually care about it. A constitutional safeguard that doesn't have the support of actual power is worked around, it's just a question of lawyer rhetoric. In the end, the only check that can exist on us is ourselves.

That said, at least supreme court judges in the US (and other countries) don't have the power to topple the government, execute ministers, outlaw political parties etc. That's one way the military providing "a check on democracy" is even worse.

> That said, at least supreme court judges in the US (and other countries) don't have the power to topple the government, execute ministers, outlaw political parties etc. That's one way the military providing "a check on democracy" is even worse.

Right, so I doubt anyone in this thread would claim the Turkish coup system is better than the US system, except perhaps by making a strained appeal to a very different culture necessitating more drastic checks on democracy (or something). So you don't really need to argue this.

And the rest of your argument for radical democracy doesn't have much to do with Turkey per se, the topic of this thread.

> All sorts of minorities, for instance, may be protected in flowery words, but it isn't worth the paper it's written on unless the majority (of power, sadly, not of individuals) actually care about it. A constitutional safeguard that doesn't have the support of actual power is worked around, it's just a question of lawyer rhetoric. In the end, the only check that can exist on us is ourselves.

Flowery words are actually better than nothing, and at least the US constitution tried to set up institutions that made sure that law complie(d/s) with that supreme law of the land. Radical democrats would do well to look at the kinds of Jim Crow laws that appeared after the Civil War which were completely unconstitutional and were judged so and overturned against popular demand by judges given the power to strike down laws.

I really don't have faith in the mob. It's clear the framers of the Constitution didn't either, and there are plenty of examples of the tyranny of the majority that should give us pause.

The only alternative to "the mob" of majority rule is some form of minority rule. Words can't rule on their own.

Minority rule has all the problems of majority rule, and then some.

Yes, once in a blue moon the guardian councils of the world may be right when public opinion is wrong. But it seems to me ten times as often, it's the other way around.

And even then, you must remember that public opinion is far from democratic. Some people have far more power to make themselves heard, influence how people see things, etc. I'm for majorities of people, not majorities of power-shareholders.

The US is hardly a good comparison: the US constitution is deeply anti-democratic when compared to other liberal democracies, and even when compared to the States of the US because it is almost impossible to amend ( http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_ch... ). The fact that judges are forced to invent new rights in the U.S. because a bunch of long-dead guys couldn't predict the future is, in itself, a symptom of a flawed system.

That's really not germane to the point I'm addressing.

The idea that unelected judges or putschists are required to keep a political system sane indicates that the system is flawed (in IT terms, they are hacks rather than features), so I think it is, at least somewhat germane.

All systems at that scale are flawed, and even the founders knew this. Thus they biased decisions toward conservatism (in the classic sense--resisting change) but actually _did_ amend the Constitution, right away, with a Bill of Rights to make it even clear the construction of the document was to protect people from their government. The process is difficult, but it's happened _27 times_ (the first 10 times in bulk).

27 times out of 11,000 proposed amendments, and as you point out, the first ten happened in bulk. I doubt that the founders planned for 2% of the population (as conservative Antonin Scalia pointed out) being able to block an amendment.

Unless you can tell something about the distribution of the quality of constitutional proposals, then the percentage is meaningless. Besides, it's designed as a document that is a scaffolding for the rest of law, and shouldn't require a high rate of change.

Why do you assume that it's easier in other countries? The Netherlands has about the same safeguards for its constitution:

It provides that an amendment can be proposed either by a two-thirds majority in both the House and the Senate or by a convention, called into being by Congress, after a request from two-thirds of the states.

In NL: it requires a simple majority in both houses, but we don't have the escape hatch of initiating such a change from lower government tiers.

then comes step two: ratification by three-quarters of the states.

In NL, step two is harder: the proposal must wait until the next parliament term (or parliament can dissolve itself and trigger early elections). Now it requires a supermajority (of 2/3rds) in both houses to pass.

No violence when one Castro passed power to the other nor when Maduro continued Chavez. Democracy means nothing. Republic means everything.

And was those genuine changes of government, you think? Or just a new face on the same old one?

Anyway, that's one way Popper's definition is insufficient. Democracy is not just about whether a government can be replaced, but about how different the government we replace it with can actually be. Replacing a government isn't worth much if what you can replace it with is functionally identical in every way.

For the screwed up constitution that Castro established it was perfectly genuine and legal. You have to remember that everything that was done in Nazi Germany was legal.

Being legal or coming from the State is orthogonal (means nothing) to being moral.

I said nothing about legal or not. By genuine I meant just that - was it a genuine change of government, in the sense that policies changed in meaningful ways?

If not, then I still call these countries non-democratic.

Neither change was prompted by the citizenry, which really is the unstated core of Popper's definition (which has other problems, eh, but is a decent start).

As start I prefer ~2000 years predecessors of Ancient Greece who invented The Republic to keep bread and circus at bay.

Never mind Turkey. Could you name three Western governments that satisfy Popper's criterion?

? Most western governments hand over peacefully after elections.

That is exactly the point. Holding elections, even peaceful, transparent elections, is not the same thing as "replacing the government." Most government employees and non-employees who heavily influence policy are not elected and can't be replaced through elections.

This reduces into a linguistic question of what Karl Popper actually meant, which is kind of .. unfalsifiable.

At least in UK politics, 'government' explicitly means "Her Majesty's Government", ie the Prime Minister and those they appoint to assist them. Not the Crown, not the permanent state.

Sure they can be replaced peacefully, in theory. Governments do occasionally fire civil servants for loyalty reasons, though it's controversial, since those positions aren't supposed to wield political power. Think of Bush's prosecutor purges.

Though I agree that Popper doesn't focus enough on degrees of change or feasibility of change (if the only parties essentially agree on everything, is government really replaced?)

This is going to be controversial, but where is the proof that "democracy" is the biggest value to be pursued?

In my opinion democracy is only a tool, not goal. And I think sometimes (Kemalist Turkey is one example) it's better for a society to not implement "pure" democracy in the name of better values like secularism, freedom etc.

UK/Brexit is also a good example of majority of people being stupid and hurting themselves by using democracy.

Indeed "democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"

You don't "prove" a value. You just value a value. I value political equality, that everyone should have equal power to influence collective decisions that affect them. It's not a question delivering outcomes, or even of facts.

That said, I do think you're awfully quick to assert that people don't know what's best for them (re. Brexit)

re. re. Brexit: Really? Even after the whole circus that's unfolding during the past few weeks?

It will probably go done in history as the EU's worst mistake – far worse than Greece or Brexit – not to have provided Turkey with a realistic path to membership. Around 1995-2005, Turkey was growing economically, a civil society was taking root and the people had an optimistic outlook friendly to the west. Erdogan was a mildly-religious fan of the EU and keen on economic progress in his first years.

I'm not saying that Turkey was ready for membership back then, but it became pretty clear that it wasn't a lack of democracy or poverty that was the main hinderance of turkish membership: there were just too many EU countries (and you only need one) that Turkey just had an inacceptable ratio of churches to mosques.

Around election-time EU leaders would conveniently drop most pretenses and admit to this more or less in the open.

For Erdogan, who was achieving ever more success at home, every EU visit became a humiliation. Pretty soon, he turned his back on Europe.

To have a chance of joining the EU, Turkey had to implement EU rules, and prepare for the free movement of people. It was nowhere near doing that.

The following is quoted from https://fullfact.org/europe/turkey-likely-join-eu/

Turkey first applied to join what was then the EEC in 1987. It was declared an eligible candidate in 1997. Negotiations were formally opened in 2005.

Now, in 2016, negotiations have closed on just one out of 35 chapters—‘science and research’, which was completed in 2006, the year after it was opened.

Of the remaining 34 chapters, 14 have been opened for negotiation.

In 2006, the EU decided that until Turkey agrees to remove obstacles to free movement of goods (including transport restrictions) between it and Cyprus, no more chapters will be provisionally closed. Eight chapters (including areas fundamental to EU law, such as free movement of goods and right of establishment and freedom to provide services) will not even be opened.

The other way to look at it is that Europe dodged a huge bullet by not creating said path to the EU for Turkey. It's not like Erdogan would have turned away from being an authoritarian dictator simply because Turkey was in the EU and things like Brexit would now have been a minor worry compared to an unstable state run by a authoritarian dictator that exemplifies everything the EU abhors. It's more than just the ratio of churches to mosques that makes Turkey ineligible for EU membership and Turkey/Erdogan have been proving that for years now.

He would not be able to do many of the things he does simply because he would have to conform to EU regulation. He may be popular at home, but EU is also popular, and i believe a credible path to membership would strengthen that support.

The EU did not initiate the first schism between the EU and Turkey; it was Turkey's refusal to accept Cyprus (by that time a full EU member) as a sovereign state that caused all other negotiations to come to a halt.

I don't think it's fair to put this on either the EU or Turkey alone. There were many factors prevent Turkish membership but the parent is right: religion played a huge role in the public opinion.

I remember Merkel actually saying that Europe was founded on "Christian ideals" (nevermind the actual ideals having more to do with post-renaissance secularism than original Christian dogma) -- the same Merkel nationalists are now blaming for the "Islamification" of Europe.

If Turkey had been more compatible and the EU members had been less bigoted, I imagine Turkey could have even helped with the "Islamification" so many people are now worrying about -- it would created a European example for how Islam can work under Western ideals and prevented a lot of the guilt and xenophobia that lies at the root of a lot of the conflicts with Islam we now have in Europe.

>the actual ideals having more to do with post-renaissance secularism //

Could you go in to that a little, a few examples maybe of the main non-Christian ideals that underpin the founding of Europe.

Some pointers to start with:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment

the central doctrines [..] were individual liberty and religious tolerance in opposition to an absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church [..] along with increased questioning of religious orthodoxy.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libert%C3%A9,_%C3%A9galit%C3%A...

The ideals of the French Revolution eventually became the underpinnings of both the US Constitution and the European and UN Declarations of Human Rights. The reason why they're called non-Christian is because they originated as a countermovement to religious doctrine.

  The ideals of the French Revolution eventually became
  the underpinnings of both the US Constitution and the
  European and UN Declarations of Human Rights.

Just a small timeline correction: the Constitution was actually ratified a year before the start of the French Revolution.

Turkey still has troops parked in what is technically territory belonging to another EU member state (Cyprus). This had to be sorted out somehow if accession were not to be vetoed, and Turkey was moving very slowly on the issue.

I mean, you could argue that maybe the military would be better, but a military coup of an elected leader doesn't just "seem" undemocratic; it is undemocratic by any reasonable standard.

True, but then it becomes a matter of contrasting the will of the "demos" with the ideals that need to be upheld to ensure the future well-being of the people.

There are very few actual democracies in existence today. There is a reason most democratic countries don't put every decision to a public vote and why there are often certain laws no government is allowed to change. You can agree or disagree with the priorities Atatürk set in place but from his point of view even an elected leader can become a traitor and enemy of the state and it's the duty of the military to stop him (because they are the only power not directly under the government's control and are able to resist with force if necessary unlike e.g. supreme court judges).

You can say that a coup is in the long term interest of the people or not, just as you could say that a permanent military junta might better serve the people than the AKP.

What the comment you're replying to is correctly pointing out is that what you can't say about a coup is that it's democratic. It's the opposite of democratic.

It may not be democratic, but it certainly not the opposite of democratic.

Let's put it this way, let's say 60% of people vote to kill the other 40%. And then a third party enters and stops such madness. You know who is more democratic of them all? The third party, for allowing the existence of more than one party. A coup can be more democratic than any election. It's all about context.

You are confusing "justified" with "democratic".

For democracy to exist the "demo" part must persist. So no, I'm not.

If it's that simple, if you can just make decisions by fiat based on some set of core principles, no matter what the people say, then you don't need to take account of the popular will at all. Just have a government of philosopher-kings.

In reality, it's in no way the simple ground truth that Turkish coups have uniformly sought to achieve "greater democracy". What they are in fact is a terrible misfeature of the Turkish system; a way in which Turkey joins the ranks of Pakistan and Egypt on a faster or slower arc towards autocracy. Which is the other word for "democracy that remains democratic until the people do something that make you uncomfortable".

>what you can't say about a coup is that it's democratic //

How so? If there's a dictator in power and the majority of the people want to return to a democratic election and the only way to remove the dictator is with a [violent] coup - how is that not democratic? How can the imposition of a democratic system by the majority will of the demos _not_ be democratic?

[I'm not claiming that the situation in Turkey was supported by the majority or not, just trying to drill down on the general point of what [you consider] is democratic].

What does an elected leader have to do to warrant a coup? Dismantle the democracy? Randomly start killing people? Start death camps? Where do you draw the line or do you have non?

Edit: typos

No matter how justified or not the coup is, the military overthrowing an elected leader is as close to the opposite of any notion of democracy as I can imagine.

Stop repeating the same nonsense, an elected leader cannot crush his opposition and still be expected to be called a democracy.

First, please don't call other comments "nonsense". It degrades the thread and makes your own comment far less persuasive. It's also something the site guidelines tell you not to do.

Second, just because a coup is overthrowing an elected government that, having achieved power, is subverting democracy, doesn't mean the coup is itself democratic. A military coup is the opposite of democracy. Democracy has been restored in plenty of countries previously ruled by authoritarians without recourse to the military.

>"Democracy has been restored in plenty of countries previously ruled by authoritarians without recourse to the military." //

World politics isn't my strong suit, could you give a few examples? Thanks.

India, the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, the Philippines, &c.

> Democracy has been restored in plenty of countries previously ruled by authoritarians without recourse to the military.

Would a military coup in China be the opposite of democracy? Then what do they have now? A different opposite of democracy? I think you wanna paint a black and white pic of the subject but that is impossible

Yes! A military coup in China would not be democratic. How complicated is this to understand? A military coup implies government by a military junta.

Even when the military runs an election soon after taking power?

It is very unusual for any such election not to be a sham election with a preordained winner, but in any case this scenario is straying pretty far from the one we started out discussing.

Is it a triumph for "democracy" when one king overthrows another? You're describing a scenario in which neither the current government nor the hypothetical replacement (or means of putting it in power) is democratic. It's only in the past few centuries that the majority of would-be rulers have felt compelled to even make a pretense of respecting democracy, so I don't understand what makes this so mind-bending.

You're arguing that a coup can be justified. The comment you're replying to is arguing that a coup is undemocratic. These are separate ideas, and it's possible for both to be true at once.

You can judge a society by the way it treats minorities, including the political opposition, of course.

"Undemocratic" isn't a bad thing. Democracy is nothing more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for dinner.

It's pithy, it highlights the problem of the Tyranny of the Majority, but I feel democracy has more about it than that.

To borrow your analogy: In general there are more sheep than wolves, but the wolves have a habit of twisting things - gerrymandering will give them a fresh kill for every vote.

This sort of analysis has already been done in the last century, but it seems like it's recently been drowned out by misinformation.

Suffice to say, a modern democracy is supposed to have strong safeguards for minorities; take filibustering, for example, or the various human-rights courts and treaties. Modern democracy is not just "one head, one vote", or there would be no safeguards against a new Holocaust.

Its not just Erdogan. People of Turkey seem to be supporters of this path. Although its very sad.

The people have always been supporters of this path. That is why the reset button had to keep on being pushed by the military.

This isn't entirely wrong. Turkey started out as the remnants of the Ottoman Empire, an Islamic caliphate. Atatürk created a secular republic inspired by modern Western nations and culture. He even went so far as to change the writing system.

It's fairly safe to say that Atatürk's ideals have always been in strong conflict with the will of a certain part of the demographic (e.g. fundamentalists) as well as people from many of the neighboring countries.

Consider the controversies in France and other European countries surrounding (proposed) bans on headscarfs and burkas -- then consider that headscarfs have been banned in Turkish universities for decades (though this ban was not always extended to students).

It's entirely possible to democratically elect a government that reaches majority support while harming the entire nation and the well-being of future generations. This is why certain laws are treated as immutable in most republics -- no matter how much the people want to change it.

In reply to the dead comment: I'm not saying banning scarfs is an example of democracy. I'm saying it's an example of the will of the people being overruled by the founding principle of Laicism. Even though the people want to have it, the constitution prohibits it.

I would be interested to hear from people who are down voting this why they are doing that? On the surface this seems like a reasonable assumption given the role of the Turkish military.

Maybe because "the people" is a dangerous generalisation. I'm pretty sure huge swaths of Turkish citizenry don't really want to live in some Iran-style "democratic theocracy".

> People of Turkey seem to be supporters of this path.

A doubt all of them are. Just as with Brexit, popular opinion might be divided.

Of course not all. But he seems to have the democratic support. As most people prefer it.

Having democratic support doesn't entitle him with right to dismantle the very system that let him be elected, and in my uneducated opinion that's what he does.

Democracy is playing by the rules, not changing these rules each few years as you see fit, even while quoting "popular support" (but not holding any referendums, definitely).

Define "democratic". He consistently imprisoned opposition members and journalists, banned parties, fixed elections... Support is there, but let's not pretend it's so overwhelming -- in the last two elections, he failed to reach the supermajorities he craved and was forced to reshuffle an unpopular government. Despite all sorts of shocks, there is a quantifiable amount of people resisting his rule. Hopefully this won't change after these horrifying purges.

Erdogan always had strong support from Turkish expatriates. I had always heard this explained as fundamentalists leaving Turkey because its secular laws were more restrictive (e.g. headscarfs are banned in universities[0] because of the strong separation of church and state) and Erdogan catering towards those fundamentalists.

I don't know what changed in Turkey but it now seems that his support has grown not only outside the country but also within and he seems to be hellbent on exploiting religion to gain political support. I don't know whether he actually holds fundamentalist views himself but he certainly knows how to use them to his advantage.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Headscarf_controversy_in_Turke...

> I don't know whether he actually holds fundamentalist views himself...

He does, actually. Google what he said about women.

You don't need to believe in religion to be a chauvinist, though.

And don't need to believe in anything to publicly support positions you think will get you votes.

Today's Turkey is the glory of "populism".

I agree, but his fundamentalist religious views are well-documented. The only difference between him and the Saudis is he does not wear funny outfits

I don't find a good link for the following statement but I saw it mentioned a few times lately and it seems that Erdogan was banished from political life because of it.

At a conference in 1998, Erdogan quoted from an Islamic poem: "Democracy is just the train we board to reach our destination. The mosques are our barracks, the minarets our bayonets, the cupolas our helmets and the faithful our soldiers."

> Erdogan always had strong support from Turkish expatriates. I had always heard this explained as fundamentalists leaving Turkey because its secular laws were more restrictive

Wanting to practice your religion in it's most basic form makes one a fundamentalist?

Actually I always thought that is what "fundamentalist" meant. But I never thought of fundemantalism as a bad thing in itself. (Actual bad things are along the lines "militant" and beyond).

> I had always heard this explained as fundamentalists leaving Turkey because its secular laws were more restrictive

Not so much fundamentalists fleeing from secularism, but people emigrating from the poorest backwater parts of the country, where, coincidence or not, both religious traditions and AKP are much stronger than in well-educated urban regions.

The people who went to the streets, against the coup, where Erdogan's supporters. The majority of the populace in Ankara & Istanbul stayed in their houses.

I.e. the only people on the streets where those against the coup. We do not know how many of the majority, who didn't take to the streets where for or against its success.

No, people has families and children and for a million other reason they may choose not to go to streets. It is idiotic to think that they are supporting the coup.

It's not idiotic to think that some support the coup, and the parent poster specifically says we simply don't know how many support it or not.

Why would they (70%) not support him? - He increased their gdp - He reflects their view - He is merciful to the refugees (settled 2.2 million refugees)

Why does he have to be pleasing to you?

Why do you support hillary.. she killed millions.. Why do you support obama... yest 320 and today 124 (in idp school in syria) dead becasue of him

Why do you support any damn politican in the west? All their pockets and morals are stained.

They compare no where close to Erdogan. But your media has him hating with all kind of funny things.

Anyways, You should be ashamed about the ban of headscarfs .. while claiming the "freedom"-superiority.

Instead you are giving it an example for the "democracy". Guess we should re-define democracy as "bigotcracy"

Do you want the Americans to fight the terrorists in Syria, or no? War is not without collateral damage. Our country gets criticized for not doing enough when we try to stay out of it, or for "murder" when we take violent action and someone innocent gets hurt.

Erdogan jails journalists who don't like him, and has committed a purge of police, judges and teachers who he disagrees with.

If President Obama dissolved police departments, school districts and judgeships on a wide scale, there would be mass protests or a civil war. We expect freedom of speech and freedom of thought, unlike many in Turkey, it seems.

edit: I'd like to leave this here to show what he has done since the "coup". https://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/4tq4sd/all_turki...

Is he merciful to the Kurds that helps fight IS or is he bombing them?

Is he trying to force Germany to punish a comedian?

Is he trying to reintroduce death penalty?

Has he purged more than 2000 judges? Is it reasonable to think he has verified that all of them were bad judges during the two-three last days?

Too much drama?

- PKK is killing your soldiers what do you do? This has nothing to do with IS.

- Ok, he has a temper and does not have a good sense of humor but please, did you find "that" poem funny?

- Oh come on. You know it was not about being bad judges.

Though yes, reintroduction of death penalty is a very bad idea. Also things are being done too hastily. All allegations are need to be verified.

That poem was not meant to be funny, it was a reaction to an earlier attempt by Erdogan to complain about another "insult".

The poem was just saying "THIS is what an actual insult looks like".

In light of the recent events though it appears that goats have been insulted in the poem, not Erdogan.

Oh you are insulting peoples intelligence here. Playing with words like that does not make it less stupid.

Not the OP, but I'm German and I didn't find the poem funny. That wasn't the point of the poem. The poem wasn't the comedy. The comedy was the presentation of the poem.

Saying Erdogan has sex with goats isn't funny. It's crude and it's even potentially racist (considering that sounds more like an ethnic slur than a personal insult). But that was the entire point. The poem actually went out of its way to be so appallingly insulting to drive this point home.

I don't think the performance was particularly good and I think the same point could have been made in a more tasteful way, but it should be protected as satire and I hope the German courts will rule accordingly (as many lawyers are predicting).

The entire point of the performance was a reaction to the ridiculous complaints about the earlier satirical song about Erdogan (which btw was almost entirely factual and only "insulting" because it presented Erdogan unfavourably and ridiculed his eccentricity and blatantly autocratic behaviour). It didn't set out to insult Erdogan, it was explicitly phrased as "That wasn't an insult that is illegal under German law. The following is what an insult that would be illegal under German law would look like".

Taking the poem in isolation is intellectually lazy and dishonest. It's like showcasing a replica of Michelangelo's David's penis and saying David is obscene because it's entirely about genitalia.

>he has a temper and does not have a good sense of humor but please, did you find "that" poem funny?

solid reasoning behind pursuing a criminal conviction to be sure.

Upvoted you for being reasonable. Still disagree though.

But no, I did not find that poem funny, but the fact that he hasn't got a sense of humour, that turned out to be a bit funny.

Do you support freedom of speech?

I've been reading this sort of thing a lot recently. Indeed, I think someone admiringly called Turkey's military "the world's best armed constitutional court". Yet, from what I was able to gather, even the Turkish opposition parties objected to the coup, and comments from ordinary Turks (and interestingly Greeks) were that Turkish coups were very bad for them. Many of us presume to have the right to decide the fates of other nations-it's a weird throwback to the imperialist mindset.

I wonder if we'd be as supportive of the US military taking over, in the interests of National Security if say, Trump, won the election and withdrew from Europe and East Asia? Or if Scotland voted to secede from the UK with the consent of the Commons, and the British Army decided that its duty was to protect the Union, and overthrow an elected government?

There is no excuse for human rights abuses, but if the majority of Turks believe they've been chafing under Kemalism for 90 years, and want to try something different, what right do we have to presume to dictate to them?

In any case, I fear this is all going to be moot. The commentariat is starting to make noises about the Kremlin supporting all manner of extremist candidates and positions in the West, including Brexit, Marine Le Pen, and Trump himself. Putin may have found the soft underbelly of Western democracy: money. I hope this isn't the case as I'll be as much a victim as anyone; but if it is, it will be the first bitter taste of the foreign meddling and sense of imperious entitlement we've been demonstrating for centuries.

> There is no excuse for human rights abuses, but if the majority of Turks believe they've been chafing under Kemalism for 90 years, and want to try something different, what right do we have to presume to dictate to them?

Democracy is not simply the rule of majority. There are certain fundamental aspects of democracy that are sacrilege and can not be broken down even if 99/100 citizens want it.

Are you serious? Democracy is first and foremost the government of the majority. Whoever defines himself as democratic must respect the will of the majority. Sic et simplicitur.

I'm not sure if gp is American, but if he is then I would presume he is, indeed serious. The US Constitution is almost impossible to amend in practice, and a ridiculously small percentage of the American population can block an amendment. Indeed, the late conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia made this point.*

This has may have led to a perception from Americans that constitutions ought to be difficult to amend by their nature, and that is an essential feature of republicanism, since the US Constitution is practically set in stone-hence the immense power of the US Supreme Court justices. In fact, most countries do make it considerably easier to change their constitutions (with a straightforward super-majority, in most cases), and to adapt to the needs of the people. The idea of an unbreakable and sacred tyranny of people who are long dead (The Founders) is something unique to the US, among constitutional democracies.The arguments about things being needing to be set in stone confuse cause and effect.

*http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_ch...

While it is true that the smallest states can club together to block an Amendment, I am not sure that is a real stumbling block in practice.

There have been lots of amendments to the US constitution, and I expect if a solid majority of people wanted something changed, it would not be hard to pass another. This could easily happen if one major party strongly supported something and the other party was merely split.

But in recent decades it has been easier to change the constitution by the back door through getting judgest to give creative interpretations.

This is not as clear-cut as you present it though, it's very much a live wound in political science. Is there anything "sacred", in a democracy? If 99 out of 100 representatives voted for a new Holocaust, would that be fine and legal to enact?

Most systems route around the problem by requiring "supermajorities", or majorities with different qualifications, to amend the most criticals bits (constitutions and the likes) or even to progress regular legislation in some cases ("filibustering"). But the problem is still there. If representatives of a constitutional democracy voted to transform it into an absolutist hereditary monarchy, following all necessary constitutional rules, would that be legitimate?

What we often take for granted, in constitutional sciences, is a set of rules that is often less than 100 years old, and which was achieved with much bloodshed. We risk re-learning painful lessons.

> Democracy is not simply the rule of majority.

Yes, it is: it's the rule of the demos — the mob.

> There are certain fundamental aspects of democracy that are sacrilege and can not be broken down even if 99/100 citizens want it.

Those are the fundamental aspects of a republic, not of a democracy.

I blame Woodrow Wilson and all his nonsense about making the world safe for democracy. I don't actually care about whether I live in a democracy or not: I want to live in a republic, where the fundamental liberties of even the smallest minorities are secured from even the great howling mob.

> Those are the fundamental aspects of a republic, not of a democracy.

I was indeed referring to a republic where majority of modern democracies operate. I assumed given the context of the discussion this was obvious. Turns out, that it is not.

The opposition parties and other opposition only object to the coup, because otherwise they would be arrested or even beaten to death.

"Erdogan dreams of bringing Turkey back to its Ottoman glory and is willing to exploit religion (and abolish Laicism) to do so."

I don't know if this is true, it may as well be that he caters to the majority in current Turkey.

Things are a mess in Turkey, but I'm not sure that is Erdogans fault. He's got ISIS, Russia and an aggressive West to deal with, along with a divided nation.

I'm all for an open democracy, but I don't think that would work in Turkey in this horrible situation. A measure of safety does come before democracy, a reality we are quick to forget in the more peaceful parts of the world.

IIRC, his political opponents had their chance and blew it in a spectacular manner, so that even more people voted for Erdogan. What good is a military coup, if the current government is the least of the possible evils?

I don't know much about Turkey, but I feel we may be guilty of judging Erdogan out of true context.

I would like to comment how biased this view is. Yes the president is religious and cares about islam, his religion.

- Turkey gdp has increased unparalleled in the whole of europe under Erdogan. - Erdogan has resettled 2.2 million syrian refugees in new cities (much more than whole of europe combined) with monthly food and money .. although 2.3 million are yet to settle. - He was elected with 60% votes and current stats (before coupe) say he enjoys support of 70% of people.

This is sufficient for him deserving to be the democratically elected president of Turkey, even if with some wrongs (from turkish people perspective) here and there.

But for some people in west and unilaterally in your media: - He is evil - He is religious - He is undemocratic - He talks about death penalty (although quitely we would rather support coup dictat sisi in egypt who gave 6000 people death penalty for "protests") - He has degraded morals (even though we in west have shown our real colors with regards to the refugee sit

I'm not sure why you think my view is bigoted. I'm not saying he is evil, I don't agree with death penalties anywhere in Turkey our not, I don't think he "degraded morals" (what does that even mean?) and I don't think he has harmed the Turkish economy.

I'm saying he is objectively harming the ideals the Turkish Republic was founded on by Atatürk. I'm not saying this because I think those ideals would allow holding Turkey back for the West to exploit. I'm saying that because I genuinely think Atatürk was a great leader whose principles should be an example for all nations, not just Turkey.

I genuinely wish Germany was founded on Atatürk's principles instead of the mess we have (though I'm well aware of how much worse we could have it). I am genuinely upset by those ideals being betrayed by Erdogan and the Turkish people having chosen a path that stands against everything Turkey was founded on.

I am German, a lot of my classmates in school were Turkish immigrants. I even took a Turkish language course in elementary school (although I can barely remember anything beyond "bir iki üç"). I would have loved to see Turkey succeed as a modern state and become an example other nations in the Islamic world can look up to.

At this point I'm not even sure Turkey would be salvageable if Erdogan was gone. When I said this is a political tragedy, I mean it.

> I genuinely wish Germany was founded on Atatürk's principles instead of the mess we have

Curious, what mess does Germany find itself in with respect to Ataturk's principles?

I think @pluma means that the mass nationalistic hysteria which was generated after WW1 leading to WW2, would not have happened, if like Turkey military, German military would have preempted all the events by a coup.

Also they suggest that the present mass nationalism in Turkey has vague equivalence in what happened in Germany after WW1 leading upto WW2.

PS: I am finding this page discussions very educating. Thanks for several comments by @pluma, and also some very good arguments against.

This is a superb point. Americans are so quick to rally against any foreign leader that is sympathetic to Islam.

In the US we've had decades of anti-Islamic propaganda, since it has helped sell various war efforts.

All countries have some internal forces of pluralism and some internal voices of absolutism, for a variety of contemporary and historical reasons, and all citizens have the ability to consent and to dissent, and to thus influence their own destiny.

In the US, we are such sheep that we enjoy indignantly criticizing the character of foreign leaders we know nothing about... while ignoring the atrocities committed by our own nation and the humanitarian disasters that we create abroad (and tolerate at home).

Propaganda isn't simply about promoting specific beliefs, it's about creating a distorted sense of what is important. So many Americans view "stopping Islamic fundamentalism" as significant and more important than so many other things. This view is the result of Billions of dollars spent on propaganda over decades.

Dehumanization propaganda (which the US is expert at) creates a political environment where many (most?) American citizens are dismissive of the basic rationality (and basic human rights) of anyone characterized as Islamic.

I believe that power systems gradually progress from "power by force" into something that looks more like pluralistic democracy. Not because the power holders decide to give up some of the power, but because they are successfully able to whitewash their nature by using propaganda messages. Over time, the government that waged genocide against native Americans and killed millions of Japanese civilians becomes the government that wants to wage a Trillion dollar war to free Iraqi women from oppression.

This is not the steady march of humanitarian progress. It's the enveloping propaganda narrative. We are just as barbaric now as ever, and our most recent genocide has been against the Iraqi people and the victims of the drone attacks throughout the region.

The anti-Islamic narrative used by the US Government to sell wars in the middle east has resulted in massive transfers of wealth... Generally, the plunder of a natural-resource-rich region by the US.

There is absolutely no desire on the part of the US to create democracy or pluralism in the middle east. Islamic solidarity groups, the only sort of grassroots political movement likely to stop the region's US-supported dictators, are of course vilified by the US because they also oppose US-led destabilization of the region.

You don't even have to support an Islamist Turkey to have problems with military coups. I think Erdogan is highly problematic and that the direction Turkey is taking will materially harm a generation of its people. But even that is a better outcome than a military coup!

I don't like Islamist governments (any more than I'd like a Christian Fundamentalist government here --- "Christian", by the way, being a word that could fairly be applied to me), but I too get the strong sense that the only factor being weighed by supporters of the coup on this thread, whether they're well-informed enough to invoke Ataturk or not, is "Islamism bad, anything else good". No.

Exactly.

In the US, the word "Islamism" comes with a payload that is a gift-wrapped propaganda message:

- Islamism will trend toward and harbor fundamentalist "strains".

- Islamism cannot be pluralistic or largely secular due to structural reasons or ideological invariants.

- An Islamist political system is permanently at odds with the sort of Enlightenment values that guide the West.

I've read a lot of very serious arguments that claim that Western pluralism and democracy were largely germinated by doctrinal aspects of Christianity.

Quotes like the "Render unto Caesar" passage are hailed as the cornerstone of the separation of church and state, and Islam, lacking the equivalent, is deemed to devalue such separation... Even things like the Schism of 1054 are hailed as helping to usher in the values of representative democracy.

I'm not an American. My opinion would be no different if it were any other religion. Islam just happens to be the religion shared by a part of the world that is currently in a huge mess. I don't even see what Turkey has to do with US politics.

To be frank, prior to Erdogan I didn't even consider Turkey an "Islamic nation". It was just a Western nation with a Muslim majority -- which was the entire point of Atatürk's republic.

He is evil

I'm sure that some people say that. So what? Some other politicians that have been called the same: G.W. Bush, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Nigel Farage, Angela Merkel, Francois Hollande.

He is religious

Are you suggesting that he isn't?

He is undemocratic

And there's ample evidence that he is. Democracy requires freedom of the press and free speech. When his government raids newspaper headquarters and installs puppet editors, he very much is undemocratic.

He talks about death penalty

It's not that he talks about it, it's about why and when he talks about it. Namely, to get rid of political rivals.

we would rather support coup dictat sisi in egypt who gave 6000 people death penalty for "protests"

Who is "we" here? Most European governments did as much about that as they do about Erdogan's latest purge: they wagged their finger.

The coup has been orchestrated by the gulenist,a religous sect infiltrated inside the army. No one in Turkey need to hear Erdogan say it to believe it. For 12 years the secular/kemalists warn the government to stop supporting them.

If western powers were so concerned about democracy in Turkey, they should've talked much sooner, when Ergodan and gulen were throwing thousands of kemalist from all of Turkey's instituations since 2007 with ridiculous accusations.

They started to raise concerns only when Erdogan turned his attention from the kemalist to his former allied gulen.

The sentiment that America and gulen are behind the coup didn't happen in 1 day, its started WAY BEFORE(for 12 years). And the first to believe it are the kemalists themselves because they were the first victims of Gulen and his followers.

And please stop with this Islamic propaganda, there is no way that Sharia is coming in Turkey. This is just wishful thinking. Yes Erdogan is a authocratic fuck, and he will do anything in his power to muster more, but everyone in Turkey right know is focused on the gulenist right now.

Anti-American sentiment is at an all time high and it is this time from every factions of the population.

> I don't think he staged the failed coup himself

Indeed. It is is pretty irrational for a grandee to "fake a coup" if the said grandee is not in 100% control of military-spook set. (And if 100%, it makes no sense, since you already have full control.)

> He spread the narrative that the coup was staged not to defend Atatürk's principles but by a religious sect his ruling party fell out with.

http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2016/07/19/incir...

You know, you can try and spin this n times till eternity, but it is pretty clear that either US or NATO tried to remove the legal government of a NATO member.

This is Bay of Pigs v2.0 + "who lost China" all rolled in one.

I think I'd want to see some evidence rather than speculation before I believed that.

Evidence in such matters is rare, but this scenario was predicted/accepted by some that study foreign policy:

https://www.corbettreport.com/interview-1193-sibel-edmonds-d... http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO18July2016.php

> http://www.militarytimes.com/story/military/2016/07/19/incir....

> You know, you can try and spin this n times till eternity, but it is pretty clear that either US or NATO tried to remove the legal government of a NATO member.

The fact that the US military base is without external power is hardly proof, much less "pretty clear" that the US or NATO was involved.

If I were in charge and there were a coup by the military, turning on power to military bases, especially foreign ones, would be way down my list of concerns.

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