Turkey referendum: Erdogan camp set to win after most votes counted | Hacker News Reader

Turkey referendum: Erdogan camp set to win after most votes counted

bbc.com

34 pointsgpetukhov28 comments

A de facto dictator wins the majority in a "democratic" election. News at 11.

> With about 98% of ballots counted, "Yes" was on about 51.3% and "No" on about 48.7%.

What majority? Typical "elections" in the Middle East have the dictator get 80-90% of votes. Examples include Egypt, Tunisia (pre-Arab Spring), Algeria, and Syria.

The guy actually has quite a following in Turkey, so 51.3% voting "Yes" doesn't surprise me at all. I know that Erdogan is proposing a system that gives him virtually unlimited power, but that doesn't mean that the vote was rigged.

It's not the outcome, but the referendum itself that's undemocratic. Removing usual safeguards by half the voters is just asking if democracy should be liquidated.

Yes, my response was to point out to OP that the referendum itself is probably legitimate. And I think it's the responsibility of the voters to decide if that should happen, just like with (to a lesser extent) Brexit and the recent US presidential election.

Liberalism (in the classic democracy enlightenment-age concept, not the US partisan party sense) has flourished and waned over the years across the globe. It will be interesting to see where this goes in the next 50 years.

The Guardian says things are getting messy (not that anyone was expecting anything else, I might add).

"There is still confusion about the number of votes counted in Turkey and any result, whether declared by the president or not, should be treated with caution. [...] the supreme election commission is reporting that only between 65-70% of votes have been counted, while Turkey’s official news agency Anadolu is reporting that 97-98% of votes are in."

Nationalism has influence on the type of tech developed: http://www.dailysabah.com/technology/2017/04/08/national-tec...

Apart from that, foreign investments might also dwindle.

And regardless of how much good you think a leader actually does. Two big warnings signs of corruption and self enrichment.

- staying in power for a very long time. Putin and Erdogan. - Self enrichment during the time in power.

People should be automatically suspicious why these two want to stay in power for so long, as well as change the laws to give them more power while they're in office.

I think, every democracy should have always a "versioning" system, where if 2/3s of the people vote for a return to a certain law revision (in direct vote, on the village center) - the goverment, the jurisdiction, military, finance and/or the totalitarian president are overruled and dispossable.

Are there any democratic islamic countrys left?

I think it's better to wait a little bit and see what happens, because there is still controversial things (such as unsealed votes being counted) going on which is usual after every election in Turkey, but who knows.

some ballouts are illegally counted as valid. %49 can't do any shit about it. Earning dictatorship in dictated way and showing that it was democratic. He just wants to save his life nothing more.

this is a bit outside looking in, but you get a sense of how easily people can be manipulated, or intimated in a democracy, without proper safeguards. Look at our election results!

Hope EU is happy about it's long term position toward Turkey.

Are you sure that's the real problem in Turkey?

I am pretty sure, which obviously does not prove anything.

"its long term"

sorry English is obviously not my native lang.

Its long term position of obviously not wanting that a country where more than half the population backs up a dictatorship backed up by fundamentalist Islam joining us and let those people have total unrestrained access across all our borders?

Yup, we are really, really very happy that nobody was so mad as to let you in the EU... or else this that just happened (and in fact what has been happening the last decade backed by the majority of your population) would be a major danger to our existence.

This way we always have the option to just close even more our borders until you deal with this insanity that is going on in Turkey and then when in some medium term future you get back to a democracy and show good will towards respecting everyone's civil rights and liberties we can then resume talks again.

I am not from Turkey :) You are already paying the price for head in the sand strategy and if some black swan event does not restrain Russia the global price for let's pretend it's someone else's problem will take the same tall it did last time.

Not sure which position you mean. As far as I can see they've said if Turkey adopts EU human rights etc they can probably join. As it is Turkey is becoming another Iran and will be treated thus.

This will not end well for Europe. With the pussy governments we have here and Erdogan with complete power over the faucet of refugees, we are at a high risk of becoming Erdogan's bitch.

Either our governments do something, and fast, or the rise of fascism in Europe will only accelerate.

Other possibility: Europe mostly goes on as usual, ignores Turkey.

Erdogan has full power over the islamisation of Europe. It remains to be seen if citizens of Europe will stand this for much longer. I think it's really frightening.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/mar/08/eu-turkey-refu...

EU population 743 million, Syria 22m. Even if Erdogan shipped every Syrian to Europe as a refugee it wouldn't make the EU very islamic.

Europe just tried to make a "pleasant deal" with Turkey about the refugees, giving Turkey a lot of money in exchange for them to close the border on their side.

But if Erdogan becomes a nuisance Europe can always go through the unpleasant path, close the border from our side and not give Turkey a cent.

Why the heck is this Hacker News?

Because major world events effect everyone.

Since this most certainly means that a large group of people will be deprived further from a fundamental right called freedom of press. A right that many people from this community hold dear.

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