Topic being overrun by expat turks who are Erdogan apologizers. Not the first, not the last, but thankfully the truth is not subject to upvotes
Apart from that, the sheer amount of Turkish immigrants who left the country in the last decade (including me) are not Erdoğan supporters. However, many of us refrain from heavy criticism as we occasionally go to Turkey to visit our relatives and we don't want some specific person having a bad day destroying our lives.
So you usually hear the other side and may mistakenly think that "expat Turks" support Erdoğan big time. The majority of votes he gets from Turkish immigrants are the Turks who left the country more than a couple of decades ago and partly, their children. The "why" has a complicated answer that touches religion, demographic dynamics and acceptance in society.
If the people who can speak up don't speak up then how is change ever to be expected? This is btw not what usually happens in such situations (immigrants fleeing authoritarianism are generally vocal against it)
I love Germany, I'd rather work improving where I'm living, which is something I'm already trying to do, instead of getting stuck in the past.
PS Not Turkish but from another country with a regime that retaliates against critics.
There's a huge selection bias here (the immigrants most visible are those who speak up), so I wouldn't be so certain about this. My prior is that people don't give a shit about what's happening elsewhere, and their life is certainly easier if they don't _publish_ their controversial views. (Even if that controversial view is shared knowledge among immigrants, it's usually not common knowledge.)
Do I like Putin or what Russia is doing? Hell no. But at the same time I'm not going to saying anything negative in public about Russia. If I got on the Russian governments radar forget what they will do to me, I live in America, what will they do to my Grandmother, my uncles, my nieces, my cousins?
I don't know what they will do, and for that reason I cannot risk saying anything.
The same applies in places like Turkey, China, etc. Yeah you might not like what the govt there is doing, but at the same time you can't risk speaking up and having the blowback taken out on your family that still lives there.
I have been reading comments similar to yours. Your view is nothing but naive / pure romanticism. There is a large amount of us (Turks of all opinions), just reading silently. Yet you are confident enough to straw-man whole Turkish side of the story into your shallow view.
This is very common. Turkey has a bad PR, and it's been useful to a certain extent for the West. But there is a point where unrealistic bad PR, causes ignorance like seen above. This is a divide between West and Turkey.
If this is an orchestrated divide. I don't mind West being so ignorant of Turkey.
“Never Interrupt Your Enemy When He Is Making A Mistake” Sun Tzu
The west is so deep in turkey they know what color underwear edrogan wears each morning. You're mistaking PR with reality. The west misunderstanding turkey is much more likely to hurt turkey in the long run, than hurt the west.
Turkey siding with Russia/China, leaving NATO would be end of any US influence in mideast + eastern mediterranean. Guess why Putin is giving so many nice toys to Erdogan. He wants to make Turkey confident and stand up for itself by conflict instead of diplomacy. Meanwhile West is doing the opposite game. I think we all know where this goes.
Remind you, Turkey is 80M in population. Any all out war or a civilian war, will be 4 times worse than Syria, 2 times worse than Iraq. Europe/West had to redefine itself in face of refugee crisis from Syria. We will be talking about a whole different "Western values" if such a crisis happens. And if that happens, CCP won't look so bad to most of the world.
It's interesting that you think its in the west's best interest to continue being blackmailed by Turkey indefinitely. That's the status quo. It won't go on indefinitely no matter what.
>Turkey siding with Russia/China
Everyone is aware that turkey is playing the powers off each other, but I really doubt Turkey will really side with China or Russia who both hate the islamic religion.
>Turkey siding with Russia/China, leaving NATO would be end of any US influence in mideast + eastern mediterranean.
Edrogan thinks to forge anew turkish superpower by blackmailing the west and playing the powers off each other. Everyone knows.
>Any all out war or a civilian war, will be 4 times worse than Syria, 2 times worse than Iraq.
It won't come to that. The west will sanction Turkey into nothing, and Turkey will have the option of becoming 1/100th of its current economy or sell itself to china or russia and become a client state, something erdogan won't stand.
>And if that happens, CCP won't look so bad to most of the world.
Nobody with an sense in their head sees the political orientation of china and the way Xi can disappear its billionaires and thinks "I should sign up for that, that's the system for me".
The CCP system looks terrible, and being a client of theirs is just to be under a boot.