Is Turkey Still a Democracy?
foreignpolicy.com
foreignpolicy.com
The scholar argued that Hitchens was simply out of touch with reality, and regularly pointed to Turkey as proof that widespread Islamic faith was compatible with democracy.
I don't have any knowledge of world religions, really. And I know countries like Albania are mostly muslim and seem to be doing okay. But that debate comes to mind every time I see a headline about Turkey these days.
This unfortunately is a reversing trend that has concerned my Albanian friends. Due to economic hardship after the fall of communism extremist groups (e.g. saudi-funded mosques) were able to take hold, and some very hardcore wahhabi-style fundamental islamists were established using largely the youth preying on that poverty. This is mostly in the Northern part of the country, which is far more religious than the capital Tirana and the Southern part.
My take as a westerner traveling there and talking extensively about it with multiple people is that they had no problem with extremism until external forces were allowed to take hold in the late 90's. And this is seen as a currently growing problem, that has a lot of moderate and non-religious Albanians concerned but not certainly not hopeless.
Unfortunately it's still a very poor country - so things can turn on a dime. An ill-timed recession or other major economic hardship during a critical time of development may be all it takes to turn from the path of liberal democracy to something more like Turkey.
(See Christian "Dominionism" for the same sub-belief within Christianity)
Its part of the reason why people get so scared of things like Shiara law and Shiara courts. But regardless, Hitchens' argument was that without resorting to exaggeration and fear mongering, because the ideology leans further in that governmental direction, it makes it harder to square with modern secular democracy than other religions would.
We can not say there is no democracy in Turkey because Erdogan is leading in the elections.
The majority in Turkey wants Erdogan.
Technically this is democracy.
But Erdogan's behaves may not be modest,his genre is tough.But this is not mean that Erdogan doesnt act in democratic way.
If public cant elect his leader,then we say there is no democracy.
By the way I dont like Erdogan attidues against Turkey's civillians and also his economic management.
this is explain everything I guess.Befero Magna Carta there was Constitution of Medina. We know human rights.All of you should stay away from Turkey. You were talking about free speech and freedom of the press.You can watch turkish press from TV. All of them can speak what they want. All of them can judge their Leader by free style.
But of course we are not perfect like anybody in the world.
I know what are you mentioning but these Journalists spoke wrong and ugly. You can judge anyone but everybody has limits.This is also human rights.
The problem is not the system here. It's the fact people are not willing to use the power they have. They don't vote with their money, act like citizen, organize their life so that it reflects the way they wants things to be.
Having children is a political statement. Watching TV is a political statement. Getting in shape. Eating at mac Donald. Leaving in the city. Working in a bank. Taking a loan. Having a car. Dressing up. Embracing religion.
Every decision of life has consequences on the system. This is the power people have. They seldom use it for a lot of good and bad reasons. Indeed, if you make a default choice, something you don't think about, or something you refuse to bother with, you give up your power.
Often they will say "there is nothing we can do" or "it's x's fault". But the reality is, it's impossible NOT to change the world. You just change it locally, at your scale, all the time.
A democracy can only work if the majority of the people are trying to make it work. If they just live in it, any system will decay, no matter how fair and benevolent it is. A system is just a canvas. There are better than others, but eventually democracy is how we are using it.
Actually having democracy implies thinking less about freedoms and more about responsibilities, and how to all share them. Few people want to do that. You can't blame us, it's hard, exhausting and scary. It's easier to expect the system to be fair, to have "people that know" being responsible, and to be far away from the consequences of failure.
Voting a few times in X years is not democracy. Delegating power to a minority is not people having power. It's quite the contrary. If people accepted real power, we would have much more numerous, regular and direct access to the management of our society.
Note that I'm not saying I'm unhappy in our current systems. It's been very generous with me, I enjoy a good life with many benefits, more than most on earth, more than even most of my neighbors.
It's just not a democracy. We never had one. Just like we never had a communist society. We tried, but until now we failed. And despite that we labeled wrongly the failed attempts which became canonical examples, twisting the definition.
I'm not sure it's a bad thing : I doubt humanity is ready for democracy. We can't bother reading a "confirm/cancel" prompt, let alone all the political programs on election month. Maybe we need to try something as a transition instead of jumping around and pretending we are already were we need to be.