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Comment by twblalock | Hacker News Reader

Unfortunately, the people of Turkey were going to be screwed no matter how the coup went. If it had succeeded, they would have got a military dictatorship. Now they get a different kind of dictatorship instead. Erdogan was slowly evolving into a dictator before the coup, and now he's accelerating that process.

I wonder if the best outcome for democracy in Turkey would have been a attempted coup which resulted in Erdogan's death before it failed. I don't know of any Turkish politicians who would have been able to build a dictatorship as successfully as Erdogan.

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> If it had succeeded, they would have got a military dictatorship

That's usually not how these things go in Turkey. In 1997, there was a non-violent military coup because of a situation very similar to what we've seen with Erdogan. A few months later, I spent the summer in Istanbul, drinking beer, discussing any and all politics with Turks, and chasing Turkish girls in a decidedly open and free environment. Most Turks I spoke to (admittedly tended to be secular) were quite glad that the coup had taken place and that the Islamist Party (Refah, or "Welfare" Party) was subsequently banned.

Incidentally, at the time the Refah party was banned, Erdogan was an active, up-and-coming party member.

In any case, few of the military coups that have occurred in modern Turkish history have been violent (1980 was significant exception) and none have resulted in a long-term dictatorship (1980 resulted in a 3-year military dictatorship).

Ironically, since 1980, it has been democracy, not military intervention, that has now permitted a dictatorship to gain a foothold in Turkey.

> If it had succeeded, they would have got a military dictatorship.

That's not a given. Turkey's military has staged quite a few coups over the years and that's really part of their purpose in the Turkish government order. After a few years power usually transitions back to normal democratic elections.

The point is a coup is opposite to that of Democratically elected process. "Part of their purpose" means the democracy is a farce, and there was never a choice of the people.

Historically, the population has voted for dictatorial islamists -- and has been saved only by secular military intervention.

It's the standard problem of having a democracy that votes to end democracy. In America, we get Trump, which is debatably similar...

The assumption that democracy is an undeniable good, that democratic government suits all nations, needs to be revisited.

It's not democracy that is the problem in Turkey.

Many horrible things have been done by democratically-elected governments. In my own country, slavery was actively promoted while we were still one of the world's few "democracies". And as we've seen in more modern times in Iraq and the Balkans, democracy and war-torn ethnically-divided territories do not always work well together.

When I was younger, I thought of democracy as the end-all and be-all of political philosophies, since that the progressive march toward of the perfection of democracy is what was emphasized in school. As an adult, I've come to believe that a nation's true value is in to the extent it promotes the liberty and welfare of all its inhabitants, including minorities.

By this metric, my country, the United States, often viewed as one of the world's "great democracies", is doing relatively poorly.

In places that have a history of subverting democracy by voting in dictatorial leaders all on their own having an institution that is supposed to over throw them strengthens the democracy so long as it's functioning properly and only comes into play at the right times.

It's easy to want a dictator when you're in the majority, they hold the beliefs you do and you're probably going to not be the groups oppressed (at first). Raw complete democracy doesn't have a good way of dealing with a majority wanting to repress a minority. So founders (at least smart ones) put checks in to balance that, in the US it takes the form of the Supreme Court and in Turkey they have the military as a final ultimate check.

edit: Source for my original post (can't edit now) of the history of Turkish coups: http://www.aljazeera.com/news/europe/2012/04/201244728146879...

I'd rather live under a liberal, pro-Western, secular military junta, than an illiberal democracy ruled by Islamists who are destroying liberties, hollowing out civil society, and turning the country into a Sunni version of Iran under the Ayatollahs.

Fareed Zakaria has a great book, The Future of Freedom, where he discusses, among other things, the perils of illiberal democracy. The bit that really stuck in my head is his argument that the impartial judge is a more important institution than the ballot box.

Man has lived under undemocratic regimes for almost all of recorded history. It is the human condition. It is more important to defend civilization and order against barbarism and chaos, than it is to ensure that the majority rules. Liberal values and constitutional government preceded true democracy by hundreds of years in the West. Why do we expect otherwise anywhere else?

> I'd rather live under a liberal, pro-Western, secular military junta, than an illiberal democracy ruled by Islamists who are destroying liberties, hollowing out civil society, and turning the country into a Sunni version of Iran under the Ayatollahs.

(1) The Sunni version of Iran under the Ayatollahs is called "Saudi Arabia".

(2) Assuming the attribution of the coup to the Gülen movement is accurate, it would likely not have been a "liberal, pro-Western, secular military junta" but instead an "quasi-liberal, pro-Western, relatively-tolerant-but-still-Islamist military junta".

I think Iran is a better comparison. They keep up the pretense and ceremony of democratic legitimacy, have a sizable and somewhat-tolerated liberal civil society, and rose to power by calling the faithful to the streets.

Saudi Arabia is a tough situation. The House of Saud is the only thing standing between the radical imams and total power.

The future of the Middle East looks very dark right now. Egypt is the only large power where the forces of order and civilization are winning.

I agree with you, but I can't help but feel that this position isn't defensible. Don't they have the democratic right to move to a more religious society if the majority want it?

Whether majority rights override individual rights is a matter of some debate.

> Don't they have the democratic right to move to a more religious society if the majority want it?

No.

That is "tyranny of the majority", and is one of the well-known failure modes of democracy.

> Liberal values and constitutional government preceded true democracy by hundreds of years in the West. Why do we expect otherwise anywhere else?

Also the lion's share of economic and scientific advancement.

For some reason democracy is being treated as the all encompassing headline act and receives applause tenuously related to its performance.

I just can't wrap my head around the fact that it can happen like this, wide in the open with everyone watching. Before the coup I was already amazed that I heard news about he taking over a critic newspaper and the next day publishing pro Erdogan propaganda, it's just beyond belief what is happening.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-03-04/turkish-g...

Well, the world also watched as Hitler unfolded.

Who knows how this is gonna end? Pass the popcorn...

The Turkish military has a long history of executing a coup and then returning control to a new civilian government. While military coups often lead to military dictatorships, that has not been the case in Turkey, and it is in fact one of the established roles of the Turkish military to do so.

> Turkish Armed Forces see themselves as the guardians of the secular and unitary nature of the Republic along with Atatürk's reforms and have intervened by taking over the government three times. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constitution_of_Turkey#Influen...

But after this, will that ever be allowed to happen again? This coup, false flag or not, has spelled the end of that control.

Probably not. My only point was that in Turkey, a coup does not necessarily mean a military dictatorship. Which people apparently disagree with despite the facts and downvote me angrily for saying. This fucking site, man.

This site is better than most - I gave you an upvote to show that :)

Maybe it was just the way you said it. Keep posting facts and maintain a reasonable disposition and I think you'll find that the debates on HN are informative and positive. It certainly beats most of the other sites I can think of.

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