Turkey is sliding into dictatorship | Hacker News Reader

Turkey is sliding into dictatorship

economist.com

82 pointssukruh113 comments

I've read the Economist for a long time, and they should be ashamed of themselves for not calling out how wrong they were when Erdogan was first elected.

Their line was that the AK's "moderate Islamism" would be good for democracy long-term, and anyone who was afraid of political Islam was regressive.

Yeah, sometimes editors and opinion pieces are wrong. But admit it when you are -- I haven't seen the Economist staff learn anything from this sad episode.

They - at least for a time - regularly mentioned how wrong they'd gotten the invasion of Iraq. So they do that on occasion.

To be fair the Economist wasn't alone in a such optimistic proclamations surrounding Turkey's democracy in the region. Similar sentiment was coming out of Washington as well:

http://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/04/06/obama.turkey/

What kind of turnover do they have at the Economist? The writing seems a lot like a student newspaper staffed by really smart people who have studied a year or two of economics or international relations.

I think Erdogan, the dictator, and 'moderate Islamism' as you quote, are two different things and we shouldn't conflate the two. If anything, his arch-nemesis, the US based Fethullah Gulen, is also an Islamist though of a different shade. Now, if this Gulen (if it is true he was behind the recently failed coup, or, otherwise) did manage to lead Turkey and ended up being different from Erdogan, when it comes to the dictatorial tendencies being overtly exhibited currently, Islamism, I think, wouldn't be the problem here but Erdogan, the individual.

Is it? I don't have any real data on it, but anecdotally, it seems like Islamic rule correlates very strongly with dictatorships.

Saddam, Qaddafi, Assad, Mubarak? Islamic rule?

I think I used the present tense. For Libya and Egypt, last I checked, they were Islamic military dictatorships. House of Saud and the Ayatollah both functionally are dictators. I don't know what's going on in the Phillipines, but IIRC, they're falling into a dictatorship.

Duerte and the philippines are Very Catholic Indeed.

Duterte was elected five months ago with massive popular support and the Philippines is still mostly categorized as democratic.

I think it's more that Islamic culture seems to correlate with dictatorships. The Wikipedia article on it lists 47 islamic countries and says only one " Indonesia is the only Muslim-majority nation acknowledged as fully democratic by both Freedom House and Economist democracy indexes."

Which may be because having been to Indonesia it doesn't seem that Islamic - a lot of the temples are more Hindu in style. Maybe the documents of Islam with the death to apostates type stuff don't encourage democratic ideals.

Back when he was first elected in 2004, Erdogan was not the huge asshole that he is today. His party actually conducted a lot of useful reforms that were beneficial for the country.

Over time though he slid into authoritarianism, and started jailing or exiling people who disagreed with him. Some people believe this was him showing his true colors, while others think it's a combination of his narcissism and severe paranoia getting the better of him.

Don't get me wrong: Turkey was never the pinnacle of freedom and the fair treatment of minorities. But, for people who care about liberal democracy and the separation of religion and state, things are inarguably in a much worse shape today than they were a decade ago.

> Back when he was first elected in 2004, Erdogan was not the huge asshole that he is today. His party actually conducted a lot of useful reforms that were beneficial for the country. / Over time though he slid into authoritarianism

That is the standard practice of authoritarians. Rarely do they announce before being elected, 'if you elect me, I'm going to do away with democracy and become a dictator'. First they get elected, then consolidate power (including by governing in a way that builds political support), and then they seize power.

The fact that he behaved in the way the parent describes doesn't mean he didn't plan to seize power as an authoritarian dictator (and it doesn't mean that he did). If the future authoritarians were easily identified ahead of time, they wouldn't have much chance of advancing their plans.

Because they're not easily identified no one should feel like they have to apologise for not guessing their nature.

If the same thing (god forbid) should happen with Trump, it will be pretty hard to claim that he wasn't showing authoritarian colors in his 2016 campaign. He definitely was.

The only thing about this which surprises me is how Erdogan seemed to really want Turkey to become a member of the EU, and yet has been actively doing everything he can to make that impossible.

Then again, he tends to say and do a lot of odd things, so I guess the simple answer is to not assume any kind of competence or rational thinking from political leaders.

The thing is today that's what goes with the base of AKP. Political leaders are never stupid, we sometimes believe so because they're doing things weird to us, while we are not who they care about at all.

On the other hand, nobody really cares about Europe here nowadays, as in more than half a century all they've done is exploit and humiliate us. I, as a secular irreligious turkish citizen, don't want my government to allow that sort of thing no matter what, whichever party should the ruling one be.

Actually, I think your dead wrong. Watch what happens when you defriend Europe as a partner to your economy. We share a lot ( not the only country though), but if you attack us, we don't need to do anything... People just stop being interested in your country and your economy slips away. No outside Western investments and tourism anymore.

I don't know if that's a good thing, but you shouldn't be happy with what Erdogan is doing...

Wasn't the last line in a speech of Erdogan: Come visit Turkey. It means that he's scared for losing the benefit of being our friend.

Now, I hope you like tourism being partially replaced with 'friendly' Russians :)

+ Exploiting Turkey? Got real proof? I know for sure Turkey had good economic growth because of the EU, not despite of the EU. Then again, we will know for sure in the coming 5 years of I'm right or wrong. Already Turkey is beginning to slip in negative economic growt and that's not our fault. Erdogan is alienating European civilians

I think a lot of Turkish citizens, and the Turkish government, are frustrated with the long time it has taken and now they have become ambivalent, feeling like they will never be allowed to join the EU. Its very easy to each side to blame the other, but from the Turkish perspective, there needs to be a concrete timeline for the process. Indeed for several years there are clear problems in Turkey that would block them joining EU, but those problems came up only after Turks became frustrated with the slow accession.

As for economic concerns, EU has many trade deals and many EU members would probably be quite happy to have some kind of trade deal without giving Turkey membership, and with how things are today, maybe Turks will just accept that.

Since what happened to Greece, I think we have to be carefull who we allow. I do agree that it is taking long, Turkey tries to force themselves in the EU. I don't think that's how a future member should act. The EU had been long in the making and a country that can't join in a span of 3 years of isn't bad considered the consequences it has on both sides

> ...can't join in a span of 3 years...

Turkey first applied for membership to the EU about 30 years ago: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_the_European_Un...

I do agree, i'm suprised they started 30 years ago. Since Turkey isn't part of Europe.

https://www.reference.com/geography/turkey-part-europe-ad085...

> Since Turkey isn't part of Europe.

Ok, this is a completely separate point, which was discussed early on in Turkey's application, but I think the fact that talks have gone on this long indicates that EU officials do consider Turkey to be "close enough" to Europe.

Its a bit ambiguous, geographically speaking. UK, Ireland and even Cyprus were accepted into the EU. Georgia, Iceland, and Greenland are all considered possible candidates to join the EU if they want to. [1] (I'm aware that Greenland is a territory of Denmark but officially Greenland is not part of the EU.)

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:EU28-further_enlargement_...

I'm not saying they are not allowed because they aren't in Europe. I wouldn't have thought they considered it since 30 years, since most of Europe or formally EG started with France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany ( and before that the Benelux)

Perhaps that's better explained.

Ps. Where are you from?

I guess I didn't understand what you meant by "not in Europe." I thought you meant geographically.

I'm American and I live in the US. My parents are Turkish, and also US citizens. We do not like how things are going in Turkey and I agree that now there is no way Turkey will join the EU.

What about you?

From Belgium, and even I think that we should not be allowed in the EU.

At it's core, the principles of the EU are great. But members were cheating, we have to much debt to be allowed in the EU when you look at the 'requirements' , but perhaps that's another discussion

I didn't know Turkey's EU membership was still being considered. I think it's quite clear that EU membership will not happen under Erdogan or any government he or his successors set up. Even if he were removed, there is a long way to go. You have to be a free democratic country. Instead of working towards that, in the last year, all Turkey has done is show the world the opposite. How can you possibly expect things to speed up when the Turkish government is doing everything it can to put the brakes on the deal?

>How can you possibly expect things to speed up when the Turkish government is doing everything it can to put the brakes on the deal?

I was trying to say that Turks have, more or less, given up on joining the EU. Not because they don't want to, but because they feel like it has become hopeless. I agree that the past several years have done nothing to help the situation.

Remember, Turkey joining is supposed to be mutually beneficial, so if EU sees some benefit to Turkey joining, then probably there needs to be a concrete timeline (so that Turks see light at the end of the tunnel) and, obviously, Turkey will have to meet the requirements. For many years, Turkey was a free democratic country (though not perfect!) but still they did not join the EU.

edit: Turkey first applied for membership to the EU about 30 years ago. That is a long time; longer than any other applicant to the EU: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enlargement_of_the_European_Un...

It is indeed a long time, much longer than i thought.. Then again, Turkey has always fared well with our coöperation ( it was a very popular tourist destination), this also isn't a reason for his current actions.

I think it's fair to say that the negotation is finally over and even a trade agreement shouldn't be in the making. You can't build trust with distrust. You can't start a trade agreement with threats.

Hungary.

Yes, this is exactly the sort of problem that the EU wants to avoid. Hungary joined the EU in 2004. Since the Fidesz party was elected in 2010, Hungary turned increasingly authoritarian; Fidesz had a sufficient majority to institute a new constitution in Hungary that removed checks and balances between different branches of government, and it turned out that the EU can do very little to counter such developments.

The main ways to sanction governments of EU member states, such as temporary suspending of voting rights in EU decision making, and EU funding, require unanimous approval of all other EU member states, and as soon as you have 2 member states who are afraid of such sanctions they will put in their veto in favor of each other, as has happened repeatedly with Poland and Hungary in recent years.

Erdogan used EU to get rid of the military check on Islamist trying to dismantle democracy. Eu is stupid. Every modern Turk warned them and no one listened. No the EU will reap what its sown.

> Erdogan used EU to get rid of the military check

How did the EU do that?

> How did the EU do that?

“Since 1999, civilian control of the military has been strengthened. The constitutional and legal framework has been amended to clarify the position of the armed forces versus the civilian authorities,” the European Union said in its 2004 Progress Report on Turkey, which cited various developments with regard to civil-military ties. “A number of changes have been introduced over the last year to strengthen civilian control of the military with a view to aligning it with practice in EU member states.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil%E2%80%93military_relatio...

It is kind of funny that EU being so afraid of the military occasionally taking control of the civil government, EU paved way for the much more sinister threat of a transition to dictatorship. Very shortsighted.

Europeans like to blame America for meddling with foreign countries without any understanding of the consequences, but here EU did exactly the same.

Turkey is only part of the EU in Erdogans wet dreams.

Did he, or did he really just want to seem wanting to, to those who liked the idea? I could well imagine the EU question to be one of those topics where one group is fiercely convinced of their answer whereas the other is mostly close to undecided. In a situation like that the opportunistic course of action would be pretty clear.

Their creativity doesn't imply incompetence or irrationality. For example NATO/EU bombs the heck out of zillions of countries so a counterstrategy of "we are almost members of your own alliance" is a brilliant shield.

The other interesting strategy is the EU is indecisive about if the purpose of the EU should be to help the EU people or if its merely a cloak to hide German rule. Often an issue will be polarized along that axis. Naturally some commentary will align with "the purpose of the EU is non-military takeover of Europe by Germany" and some commentary will align with "serving all European people" and this is going to look really odd. The only way to avoid that is to self censor certain topics, unless of course your actual purpose is to stir stuff up to distract NATO/EU from bombing.

> For example NATO/EU bombs the heck out of zillions of countries so a counterstrategy of "we are almost members of your own alliance" is a brilliant shield.

Turkey has been part of NATO for sixty five years. That's not why.

Mussolini may have sincerely wanted to be a run of the mill leftist.

Head of state is the kind of job that draws narcissists, and when they feel slighted, bad things happen. Checks and balances are important, yo.

This is even more reason to contribute to activists trying to stop the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a Mosque. It is a piece of 6th century history that we as a civilization just cannot afford to lose.

I thought it was already used as one? I don't particularly care what it's used for as long as it's generally open to the public, are they planning on closing it off to people or tearing it down or something?

If anything it should be a Orthodox Church, but since no one can agree on that, it should be transferred to UNESCO, and treated as a cultural site and museum. If it resumes being used as a Mosque, to avoid any slippery slope fallacies, it will most likely result in a lot of the preservation of the historicity of the location being lost.

I feel like it's use as a mosque is part of its history now. as long as they don't destroy any of the history it doesn't bother me that it is a mosque.

EDIT: it's -> its

its history

fixed. I blame my phone's autocorrect

Hagia Sophia hasn't been a mosque since 1931.

Yes, definitely a good reason to re-litigate historical events from 1451.

Considering the Greeks were not liberated from the Ottoman yoke until 1829, with genocides and killings from "modern" Turkey not stopping until the early 1910's, I'd say it's not exactly ancient history, either.

To put it into context, "Greek Independence Day" comes after American Independence Day.

Turkification as a general policy continues to this day and probably will continue. I don't see how it 's related to Ayia Sofia though, when the temple was built people still called themselves roman.

The Hagia Sophia was converted from mosque to museum in 1931-1935, so you must mean re-litigating historical events from 1930s?

That would be a more effective rebuttal if the parent commenter hadn't confirmed the interpretation I took.

Meanwhile, could you send those activists to the Pantheon (2nd century history) in Rome, where the 'temple for all gods' is now a Roman-Catholic church.

As long as the monument is not vandalized, they can do whatever they want with it. It serves them better as a museum, testament to the universal glory of the city, but it's not like it hasn't been used as a mosque before. Of course Edrogan uses the situation to raise tensions between greece and turkey (and possibly russia), which gives him extra machismo points.

So saddening the amount of ignorance and hate I see here in HN regarding my country. I wish nothing about Turkey gets submitted again here so that I can continue to visit HN as a hackers' and tech entrepreneurs' forum.

You clearly don't know anything about our history. You don't even know who we are. You insult us with your superficial readings of superficial wikipedia articles. We don't need this at all.

We're having hard times, but I still have hope. After all, civilisation was invented here. I wish we were able to export the better parts too.

Complaining that others don't know as much as an expert (you) isn't going to help change anyone's perspective. Most people's perspective about most subjects is superficial. The same can be said for you: you know very little about most people in most countries.

If you want perspective changed, tell people what's wrong, or the real story, without hating on the people who could benefit from your expertise. Then your audience will know more. I think most people here would appreciate hearing your perspective (with much deeper knowledge of culture and history) on the current events.

I don't really hate anybody. I don't believe in nations at all, if this means something to you. If it was misjudgements to be refuted, I'd go for it, even though I'm kind-of short on time. But it's mostly prejudice and hate-for-the-sake-of-it. I know that's rowing againt the flow, it's tiresome and gets you nowhere. (Edit: my actual point is that while I do know that there are many here that would actually appreciate my insights, as I'm a rather neutral and realist insider, knowing what the bulk of the responses I'll receive in return of such effort will be like, I just can't convince me to do that. Maybe I'm not modest enough to try and explain the reality in the face of belittling dismissals and ostinated misunderstandings.)

The author of the article doesn't represent all western views any more than you represent Turkey. However, given the fact that we have a chance to interact here (thanks Internet!) tell me/us what you would like me/us to know about your country that you feel is being seen incorrectly.

The best way to combat ignorance is through education.

  The West must not abandon Turkey

Huh? So are we supposed to meddle in other countries' politics and government? Or are we not?

Aren't we already doing this? Or are you being sarcastic?

My point was we get so much flak for doing this.

But then sometimes we're "supposed" to do it? Which is it?

The problem is the vote has likely already been counted and any voting is just for an aura of legitimacy.

We take votes very serious here and there are multiple NGOs that are on top of things all around the country. I've once worked with CHP on an election day at a local office and can say that it's nearly impossible to do tricks in any elections.

All you need for constitutional reform is a 50% majority on a referendum. That seems way too easy.

Totally agree. Constitutional changes should be difficult by design.

Same saga with Brexit. 52% condemned the rest and the generations to come to political insanity.

A timely warning to the US, too - as more and more Senate votes are being decided by 50% majority rather than their traditional 2/3 (EDIT: sorry, 3/5). That both parties indulge in it should be worrying to everyone.

The US should worry more about the electoral college finally breaking down and allowing the minority to control the presidency. Should worry more about gerrymandering too.

With Senate, the simple 50% majority is by design. That's consistent with most other bicameral parliaments out there, which also vote on a simple majority basis. Since the issues they can vote on are restricted by the Constitution, it's not really a big deal. The big deal is amending the Constitution itself, which is extremely difficult (if anything, probably more difficult than it should be).

Additionally, the Senate gives minority population states a vastly outsized vote. North Dakota and California get equal say. 50 Senators do not come close to representing 50% of the US population.

> Since the issues they can vote on are restricted by the Constitution, it's not really a big deal.

I don't agree. The U.S. Senate is very powerful; those restrictions aren't very broad.

> the simple 50% majority is by design

It depends what you mean. The filibuster, which requires 60% majority, has been part of the Senate since around the 1840s; clearly many generations of Senators thought it was important and intended that it continue.

Yeah, but the republicans do what they want. Many probably thought the whole actually voting on supreme court nominees should continue.

The filibuster was always removable by a simple majority, though, so it was a self-applied restriction, not an external one. Which limited its efficiency greatly - anyone relying on filibuster knew that if they pushed too hard, it would go away.

> The filibuster was ...

It is ... it's still there, just not for confirmations of appointments by the executive branch.

It was 3/5, not 2/3, to break a filibuster, and the use of filibusters had been getting to unprecedented levels. The argument above was that constitutional change should be hard I.e. require a supermajority. The Senate rules as followed recently have been requiring a supermajority for ANY change. That is unhealthy.

> It was 3/5, not 2/3, to break a filibuster

It still is. Filibusters have been banned only for confirmations of appointments by the President.

Sliding? More like rushing full throttle. Ataturk would be disgusted.

What makes reddit and now HN think Ataturk was some sort of beacon of democracy?

> In January 1920, Mustafa Kemal advanced his troops into Marash where the Battle of Marash ensued against the French Armenian Legion. The battle resulted in a Turkish victory alongside the massacres of 5,000–12,000 Armenians spelling the end of the remaining Armenian population in the region.

He finished off the Cilician Armenians from Anatolia, whoever was left under French protection and had escaped the Genocide.

It was war not genocide

It was a pure genocide!

"Say hi to Anatolia" go read it, always two sides to a story.

also THE ARMENIAN ALLEGATİONS AND FACTS

Which funnily enough returns this as the first result https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide_denial

Ah yes, like the holocaust was just war ...

It seems there are sometimes slightly cruel things you just have to do, if there is a war going on ... was that your point?

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

Citing Wikipedia...yea sure go ahead with that. lol

Ah well, which other source would you then accept?

Except for Erdogans ministry of truth, of course ...

The important word should be "was". If you try to remove it from the past, by arguing semantics or by any other means, you make it stick into the present. A past genocide would be much easier to live with than a permanently unsettled question of genocide or war event or war atrocity or paranoid fantasy of everybody else conspiring to sully a history they actually don't even care that much about as if they had nothing better to do.

The thing is, history is full of ugly things and arguing them creates a much stronger link between the uglyness and the one arguing than ancestry could ever do.

>What makes reddit and now HN think Ataturk was some sort of beacon of democracy?

I haven't seen anyone say that. People are specifically saying he would be disgusted with how non secular Turkey has become since secularizing Turkey was one of his biggest things.

Every culture that we have any sort of knowledge of is or was an amalgamation of other cultures that were absorbed.

What is the point you are trying to make, wrt genocide?

democracy and genocide are not incompatible

Read more on what lead to banishment of Armenians. If you attack unprotected Turkish villages with the help of foreign powers and betray your neighbours, you face the consequences, this is war. Also there was no such thing as hating Armenians til aforementioned betrayal. At the time there were even couple of high ranking statesman like Gabriel Noradunkyan from Armenians.

Banishment? You mean genocide, right?

Turkey lost thousands of innocent and defenseless men from Armenian attacks which makes the situation a bilateral clash. So no, I mean banishment.

> bilateral clash

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

It started out as exile. The Ottomans basically rounded up large numbers of Armenian civilians and forcefully marched them from Eastern Anatolia to today's Syria, in the hopes that separating them from their Turkish neighbors (with whom they were fighting violently) would put an end to what was seen as a civil distraction during war. Countless Armenians perished along the way as a result of gross incompetence and negligence on the part of the soldiers in charge.

If genocide is defined as "systematic and deliberate extermination of a group of people" then it wasn't genocide, because the intention was not to exterminate, but to relocate. Turkey absolutely needs to own up to what happened and pay reparations (even though it is a different country than the Ottoman Empire under which the events occurred), but in my opinion calling it genocide is inaccurate.

Word "Genocide" was introduced by Raphael Lemkin to describe systematic extermination of Armenians and Jews by Young Turks in Ottoman Empire and by Nazis in Europe.

Here is Raphael Lemkin explaining it himself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=moByGLA7FDc

Genocide was thoroughly planned and executed by Ottoman Government which was run by Young Turks. Archives of multiple countries have documented evidence of the fact that it was Planned Systematic Extermination of Armenians - Genocide. There are archives from US embassy in Turkey, German archives, French Archives and press archives from that period that all confirm that.

Genocide did not start with marching people to deserts in Syria. It started with arrests and massacre of around 250 political and cultural leaders of Armenian origin, to prevent any organized resistance. [1]

Entire civilized world recognizes these events as a Genocide. One of the latest recognitions came from German government (in 2015). They were allies of Ottoman Empire by that time and did not do much to prevent the Genocide. [2]

Please do not spread misinformation and mislead people.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide_recognition

You are calling Genocide of 1.5 million of their own citizens "banishment". And then you advice people to go and read on the subject. Your lack of education on the topic of Armenian Genocide is astonishing.

I am calling the relocation of troublesome Armenians to Syria as banishment. Armenians perished along the way, it wasn't a systematic killing. Death toll of Armenians were only 500.000 while it was 1 million on Turkish side.

After living 600 years peacefully Armenians got greedy and betrayed Turkish people with the help of Russians.

Check my first comment there was even Armenian ministers in the government that time, did you see any Jew ministers during Hitler regime? Why would they allow such thing if they were about to commit some horrible genocide. Makes no sense.

> relocation of troublesome Armenians to Syria as banishment

didn't they "relocate" them by forcing them to march through the desert?

Most of the Armenians were located in Eastern part of Anatolia. As far as I can see there is no desert in between Syria and Eastern Anatolia.

While some Armenian independence organisations did use terrorism as a means, and indeed the question of the Armenian genocide is not that of the Ottoman Empire's momentary caprice to remove Armenians as a worse people like it was in the Holocaust (Holocaust and Medz Yeghern are incredibly different events, the former was head hunting against completely peaceful people for stupid racial ideals), the genocide happened, and words like betrayal and greed in what amounts to a global war of greed and massacres sound childish. If as Turks we have the right to indipendence as a people, so does ever other peoples.

>> Armenians got greedy and betrayed Turkish people with the help of Russians.

Bulgarians got greedy, Greeks got greedy, Assyrians got greedy, Armenians got greedy.

* Bulgarian Genocide in Batak of 1876. The number of victims 7,000.

* Greek genocide 1914–1923. 900 000 Greeks were killed.

* Assyrian genocide 1914-1925. 750 000 Assyrians were killed

* Armenian Genocide 1915 - 1923. 1 500 000 Armenians were killed.

All these predominantly Christian minorities in Turkey for some reason got greedy.

I assume lately Kurds are getting greedy as well?

>"What makes reddit and now HN think Ataturk was some sort of beacon of democracy?"

Because he abolished the Ottoman Sultanate that had ruled for nearly 500 years and established a secular democracy. He also gave women rights.

I don't think this is a fact in any way specific to HN or Reddit but rather to history itself.

Atatürk was not a beacon of democracy, he never pretended to be. As a military man, he did resort to heavy handed methods at times. The republic he left behind as his legacy is however one when you consider the circumstances. He created a secular, Muslim majority country that was aligned with the Western ideals and was even ahead of Europe in some aspects (women's suffrage). This is truly impressive considering no country in the region has been close to that level in the last century.

Please don't post unsubstantive-indignant comments to HN regardless of how right you are. Such comments are reliably destructive of the quality of conversation we're hoping for. This is clearly seen below, where the thread devolves into a flamewar about genocide, but it happens pretty much every time, so we all need to learn not to post like this.

If you have a substantive point to make, please make it thoughtfully; otherwise please don't post until you do.

Yeah, Turkey is sliding into dictatorship but Egypt is doing very well.

http://www.economist.com/news/leaders/21709955-belatedly-and...

http://www.economist.com/news/middle-east-and-africa/2170997...

Erdogan was "moderate" when "Western Democracies" was able to call a coup a coup and Syria wasn't a testing bed for weapons.

It looks they need a smokescreen for the blunder in Europe, Syria and ME in general and with his figure Erdo-guy is the best candidate. Oh "The Sultan", "The Barbar Turk is at the gates", "figthing with the poor Kurds", "journalist jailer", "coup was a theater" etc.

Did you really learn anything from the article about what changes in the constitution and what doesn't? According to the narrative Turkey was a "dictatorship" a year ago too, is a close "Yes" (or "No") in a referendum a typical political behavior of dictatorial politics, right?

Sorry. When the West reacts like this (and doesn't react to real dictators unless they piss to their lawn), it more and more looks like Western intellectual's main mission is to create a narrative to open a path for exploitation/military politics. God may have died but "Deus Vult" still lives.

Now I wonder, what will the NATO do when Turkey becomes a dictatorship.

I suspect they'll beat around the issue. Most of the West's pertinent military conflicts are in the Middle East. Turkey's position makes it an extremely valuable ally and abdicating a significant strategic on moral grounds makes no military sense.

Almost certainly nothing. NATO has had plenty of dictatorships as members, including Turkey during its various military takeovers.

Nothing, as long as he does not partner up with russia ...

sliding?

This website is disgusting. I have to close four dialog boxes and the content takes is ~30% of my screen. I expected better from the economist.

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