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Vast majority my arse. Erdogan won the last election in 2014 with less than 52% of the vote [1] on less than 75% turnout and he has only been so successful in his career because of a quirk of demographics. Turkey has been slower than other countries in urbanization and the rural Islamic majority has used their very slim majority to wipe out democracy and institute their policies at the expense of the urban secular minority. Just look at the distribution of protests in the country and you see a very clear pattern: the cities are very different from the rest of the country.

Putin is someone who has the support of the vast majority of his constituents, even despite the hardships and corruption, while Erdogan is just another opportunistic authoritarian who abused a faulty system to become a "democratically elected" dictator. In the eyes of much of the rest of the world, he has no legitimacy and is a pariah whose only leverage is the migrant crisis and the conflict with ISIS.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_presidential_electio...

52% of the vote on 75% turnout is fantastic. When's the last time an American president was voted in on such a mandate?

The United States doesn't have compulsory voting like Turkey does. Australia, another country with compulsory voting (although much better enforced), regularly sees elections with over 90-95% turnout. That is a real democratic mandate.

Thanks for the information; I was unaware that Turkey has compulsory voting.

Is there a credible opposition party to AKP, or a smattering of smaller parties?

There is a long list of opposition parties in Turkey but few of them have any power [1]. The main opposition party with about a quarter of MPs (vast majority representing urban districts) is the Republican People's Party, which was the first political party in Turkey post WWI as well as the one led by Ataturk during his secular revolution.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_political_parties_in_T...

Vast majority was against the coup. That is for sure.

In the Last election Erdogan's `party` had 49.5% of votes with %85.18 turnout.

> Isn't the current situation in Turkey just another case of shock doctrine

Sorry, when you start talking about tens of thousands imprisoned without due process, that's way beyond approving undemocratic legislation in opportunistic ways.

> If Front Nationale ruled France and pushed discriminatory policies, would we call Le Penne a dictator as well?

A dictator can be voted in and still be a dictator (see also the one-Godwin-stops-me-from-mentioning). In fact, the original Roman dictators were elected, and followed Roman laws. Modern dictators usually reach power with a golpe, but that's very recent; both Mussolini and Hitler were regularly elected and nominated heads of government by following their proper constitutional laws - the King of Italy was not deposed, nor was the German President (he died of natural causes and left the office technically vacant).

Dictatorship is defined by how power is exercised once attained, not by how it is reached. Removing regularly-appointed judges on political grounds, that's dictatorial; taking political prisoners without following due process, that's dictatorial; and so on and so forth.

> Speaking of Ataturk,

I agree that we (especially outside of Turkey) now carry a rose-tinted view of Ataturk, conveniently forgetting his ugly side: he all but deported and killed swaths of population in order to "solidify" the ethnic background of his state, especially in remote areas and on the islands bordering Greece; and was, after all, a dictator who might have wished for democracy but didn't practice it very much. He was very much a man of his time, from a generation that produced Mussolini, Hitler, Franco, Stalin and so on.

Much more than simple majority vote, Democracy as we'd like to understand in the western world is about (1) Checks and Balances and (2) respect for individuals and minorities who are not in the ruling side. So it is not about Democracy vs Dictatorship, but Democracy vs Authoritarianism.

> would we call Le Penne a dictator as well?

What would you call Chavez or Maduro? If not dictators (after all, "There is already too much democracy in Venezuela" according to their supporters), certainly they are the leaders of an authoritarian kleptocracy.

> Democracy means what the majority votes win.

No. Voting is just the end stage of a much longer process, backed by the credibility of the Institutions to which the people put faith in.

> Isn't the current situation in Turkey just another case of shock doctrine?

No. This is you trying to fit your worldview into the events.

> Checks and Balances

Yeah, and the special thing about Turkey is (was?) that the military is one of the balancing forces because they were not controlled by the government as they are in many alternative democracies. This is partly historical due to past military coups. It's hard for me to say whether it's good or bad, given that the military independence has led to very negative outcomes like the 1980 coup, but it can also provide a force to keep a crazy parliament in check.

> What would you call Chavez or Maduro?

Can't comment because I don't know enough, sorry. Will look into them.

> This is you trying to fit your worldview into the events.

Maybe you're right, all I'm saying is that it looks like they are in the process of passing controversial policies while the electorate is under shock.

We called those type of government 'liberal democracy'.

Democracy says nothing about check and balance, or respect for minorities.

I don't mean "respect for minorities" in the sense of policies for disenfranchised groups. I meant in the pure numerical sense, i.e, "people who voted for the other guy don't get to lose their rights".

But I think we are just using different names for the same beast. "Liberal Democracies" are "Democracies as we'd like to understand them in the western world".

One of the requirements for democracy is a free press, but Erdogan has been oppressing it for years through means such as shutting down newspapers he didn't like and jailing journalists. There is also a law against insulting the president that has lead to over 2,000 people arrested. Reporters Without Borders lists Turkey as 151 out of 189 countries for freedom of the press.

> I mean, if votes can be rigged in the US and any and all objection is silenced by friends in the Supreme Court, then what do you expect from Russia or Turkey, really?

What vote rigging are you talking about?

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

Edit: Is rigging the wrong term?

There is a lot of misinformation about what happened in the 2000 election and about the Florida recount.

In the 2000 election, the close result in Florida triggered an automatic machine recount under Florida law. The machine recount still had Bush leading. So Gore sought hand recounts in only four heavily-Democratic counties. The Florida Supreme Court then ordered statewide hand recounting only of "undervotes" (ballots where the machine failed to detect any vote for any candidate). But the recount process itself was a total disaster: http://www.factcheck.org/2008/01/the-florida-recount-of-2000. The various counties doing the recounts were applying totally different standards to counting the votes.

In a 7-2 decision,[1] the Supreme Court held that the Florida recount violated the Constitution's "Equal Protection Clause," which requires the law to be applied equally to all people. It found that recounting only some ballots and recounting them using different standards in different places resulted in unequal application of the law based on where people voted.

In my opinion,[2] the Supreme Court got it right. The right thing to do would have been to stop after the machine recount. There is no way a hand recount was going to be a more fair and trustworthy process than the machine recount. The machine might not properly count what everyone intended to vote (e.g. because they didn't punch out the chad on the voting card all the way), but machine error is going to be random. Hand counting, on the other hand, will be biased toward favored candidates. Moreover, a subsequent $1 million study commissioned by news organizations found that Bush still would've won under most recount scenarios.

[1] The oft-reported "5-4" decision in Bush v. Gore was not about whether the recount was valid. 7 of 9 Justices agreed it was not. It was about whether Florida still had time to do a proper state-wide recount within the statutory deadline.

[2] I was too young to vote in 2000, but at the time I supported Gore. I too was infuriated about the 2000 election until I actually studied Bush v. Gore in law school.

Thanks for the detailed correction.

You should be infuriated about the fact Bush won with a minority of the popular vote (the electoral system), not the Florida supreme court decision.

> You and I may not like it, but the vast majority of the population supports the views and policies of the AKP and Erdogan.

Erdogan succeeds in part because he attacks democracy. The whole reason Erdogan (with ISIS's help) attacks the Kurds is because "they" deprived Erdogan's party of a parliamentary majority for the first time since 2002. [1] [2] So his military attacks his own cities. [3]

(The Erdogan/ISIS connection is obvious. [4])

Erdogan's been threatening academics for a long time. For example, detaining them for a petition for peace, hacking/blocking it so people can't read it. [5]

Erdogan destroying his opposition isn't democratic.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/18/turkey...

[2] http://america.aljazeera.com/articles/2015/7/29/turkey-launc...

[3] http://www.france24.com/en/20160714-turkey-unesco-heritage-s...

[4] http://time.com/3980085/these-5-stats-explain-turkeys-war-on...

[5] https://news.vice.com/article/turkey-detains-21-academics-fo...

> The whole reason Erdogan (with ISIS's help) attacks the Kurds

Erdogan attacked Kurds long before he lost his parliamentary majority. He attacks them because it's politically convenient for him to have a unifying enemy (most non-AKP Turks do believe the Kurds should renounce violence and drop their separatist demands). In fact, the HDP reached such a high level of support in those elections because a lot of people finally saw through the game and were tired of playing it.

I don't disagree that Erdogan all but helped IS/Daesh against Assad and Kurds, I'm just saying that his attitude towards the Kurdish problem has been more or less the same since the '90s.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't the HDP (and other anti-Erdogan political parties, if I understood the news correctly) oppose the latest coup? How could this be, if they believed Erdogan was such a major threat to democracy?

Just because they are the opposition doesn't mean that they would take power in the event of a coup, which creates huge political and social upheaval, especially with the way the Turkish military does it historically. The last time they led a coup, in 1980, over half a million people were arrested and the political board was entirely reshuffled.

The opposition may not have much power right now but they'd have none at all if the military took over so it's all about theit survival instinct.

Fully understood. I'm Latin American and believe me, I have no love at all for military coups.

My point was, if Erdogan is such a threat to democracy, how come his political opponents -- such as the pro-Kurdish HDP and leftist parties -- didn't support this military coup, which was allegedly in favor of liberty and secularism and everything good that Erdogan seems to be against? Maybe these opposition parties were aware that military coups are seldom democratic, are often followed by arbitrary imprisonment and summary executions, and maybe it wasn't obvious that this rebel army faction was a better and more democratic alternative to Erdogan?

A sibling to my last reply states it best: coups are risky and if the opposition chose the wrong side they'd be the first to go in a large scale purge. The resulting political landscape would be significantly worse for everyone. If the plotters had managed to capture Erdogan early on in the attempt and one of the coup leaders went on national television to show Erdogan's dismembered head then maybe, maybe the opposition could have gone along without taking an unacceptable risk.

If they mutely oppose the coup, before it concludes, and the coup wins, then they might well not get the worst of it. They can also do a 180 after the fact - the coup will be too busy purging the AKP.

If they support the coup, this undermines their legitimacy, and in the likely case that Erdogan wins, they will immediately be purged, along with the coup planners. Of course, that can happen regardless.

There's an old Soviet joke about this - three men are in a cell, and try to figure out why they are there. It turns out that one criticized a minister, another praised that same minister, and the third is that minister.

You and I may not like it, but the vast majority of the population supports the views and policies of the AKP and Erdogan.

Yes, but that's un-american and therefore, evil.