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Comment by AdamJacobMuller | Hacker News Reader

I remember the process of getting a SIM in turkey was super annoying.

I had to physically go to a store where they needed BOTH of our passports and a second form of ID (so had to go back to the hotel and return with my traveling companion) and a decent 30 minute process of entering our information into databases and making copies of IDs. Compare that to most countries where I can either trivially pop into a local store and pick up a prepaid sim in a few minutes, or, for most of my travel I can have them shipped to me at home in advance so I can land in country with a local sim.

Istanbul was worth it though.

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I definitely like using turkey as an example of how quickly a relatively healthy democracy can turn into an opressive theocratic regime when pointing out how close the USA became a similar nation just this past year and warning friends to not be complacent in upcoming election cycles.

It definitely is a good example of such. A good example of such after 20 years of the West quietly cheering for such outcome.

Turkeys' EU accession plan went nowhere, despite Turkey being genuinely serious for years on end.

Western capitals were dead silent during the 2016 coup attempt.

> Western capitals were dead silent during the 2016 coup attempt.

Yeah, and for the better. The coup attempt is very controversial and it's not good guys vs bad guys situation.

To be fair, the west cheered for Erdogan up until Erdogan completely abandoned his initial positions. Later, the west simply worked with Turkey and Erdogan was properly elected through the years.

What the West was supposed to do? Invade Turkey? Assassinate the politician who consistently got about %50 of the vote of the Turks on elections with no less than %85 voter turnaround?

Foreign influence cannot solve local problems.

The way Fethullah Gülen got red-carpet immigration treatment in the US stinks to high heaven, though. It seems suspicion the US was behind the coup attempt is widespread in Turkey and not limited to AKP supporters.

Any important person can get red-carpet immigration treatment, why exactly does this particular case stink?

Well, for once the CIA agent Graham Fuller[0] actively supported Gulen's green card application[1]. I don't know if Gulen was a CIA himself but there are ample clues that he is at least involved with the US government. CIA has a rich history of pulling such operations. That's Fascinating read actually.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_E._Fuller

[1] https://www.politico.eu/article/graham-fuller-turke-issues-a...

I don’t think this really supports the original claim.

E: s/your/the/

What's my original claim?

“The way Fethullah Gülen got red-carpet immigration treatment in the US stinks to high heaven”

That's not me. You can tell by the way the letters in the username are arranged. My point is that the guy behind the coup has known ties to the CIA and in my opinion that stinks. Of course I wouldn't know if or what role CIA had in the coup but I find it fair to ask the questions due to the established links.

My mistake, I was browsing through the user page so I didn’t see the name of the user I originally replied to.

Sorry.

However, I bet someone like Gülen would get red carpet immigration treatment even if the CIA wasn’t involved. I don’t necessarily doubt CIA involvement, I just doubt that his immigration treatment is indicative of anything.

No worries!

> However, I bet someone like Gülen would get red carpet immigration treatment even if the CIA wasn’t involved

I guess we will never know that because CIA is indeed involved and we can't have an alternative reality :)

He was given a green card as a "prominent educator" despite not having a degree himself. Anyone who's been through the US immigration wringer knows the process is very strict, and prima facie Gülen was not eligible.

The only similar case that springs to mind is the maid of the former Indian vice-consul in NY's maid:

https://www.thehindu.com/news/international/world/maids-fami...

That also stinks to high heaven, and created a serious diplomatic incident with India.

* What the West was supposed to do? Invade Turkey? *

Apply economic and political pressure. Threaten their standing in NATO? Stall their admission to the EU?

They did all that but Turkey is also a powerful country and important ally.

EU can stall Turkey's admission in the EU and they did that however they also need Turkey to tackle the refugee crisis, Russia and other issues.

EU got to the brink of collapse with 1 million Syrian refugees, Turkey is hosting 5 million of them. EU and Erdogan got a deal, EU turns blind eye to some of Erdogan's stuff and Erdogan takes back all the refugees that EU sends back.

Similar agreements are in place with the USA. US lowers the heat under Erdogan and Turkey keeps the peace in Kabul. Stuff like that.

> EU got to the brink of collapse with 1 million Syrian refugees

That's overblown. Support for the EU is the highest for a decade and close to all time highs. Brexit seems to be proving something of a cautionary lesson.

https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/11/17/majorities-in-...

https://europa.eu/eurobarometer/surveys/detail/2532

Now the support is strong, it wasn’t as strong in 2016 when refugees were marching in Europe and EU’s proposed solution for the refugees was to distribute them evenly to all states.

EU managed to sign(actually, re negotiate the one signed in 2013 that Turkey no longer wanted) a send back deal with Turkey, now it’s all good.

> EU got to the brink of collapse with 1 million Syrian refugees (...)

That's quite the extraordinary claim. Can you offer any extraordinary evidence that supports your claim? Because from what I've gathered, it barely holds any bearing with reality.

Yes, check Brexit and Marie Le Pen, politics in Poland, Hungary, Germany back in 2016. The refugee crisis was a central theme back then and anti-EU politics managed to gain significant grounds thanks to it. In UK, they even passed the mark narrowly and left the EU.

Sure, the refugees are never the only EU issue but the 2016 crisis pushed EU to its limits and even chopped of part of it. That's why EU was at the bring of collapse and if it continued there was as strong probability that anti-EU politics would prevail in other(than UK) EU states too.

One country left the EU and was made an example. Britain is worse off for it and didn't gain anything. The entire world had the pendulum swing to conservative governments, including the US which had even less refugees at the border.

I don't appease bigots. We are going to see many more refugees within our lifetime and the "1st world" cannot ignore the problem forever by sending them to different poor countries.

It's not the number of refugees that the EU can't handle, it's the fact that they're not white, english-speaking christians. We can bullshit around that, but statistically refugees commit fewer crimes and attain higher education in larger numbers than native-born citizens.

Germany, to give an example I can speak to, has a fertility rate around 1.5. Quite frankly most of the EU could really use the new blood if they could only get over the fact that those people weren't born on magical "EU soil"

You mean Brexit, which started 3 years before the Syrian refugee crisis and Marie Le Pen, whose support numbers moved from 17.8% to 21.3% after the Syrian refugees? That's your "major fracturing"? Meanwhile Poland and Hungary have been moving to a far right dictatorship pretty steadily.

> Turkeys' EU accession plan went nowhere, despite Turkey being genuinely serious for years on end.

Only the Turks are to blame for this. Maybe they were serious, but they did a shit job.

Had Turkey quit their bullshit regarding Cyprus, things would probably have gone very differently. Turkey has no legitimate claim to any of Cyprus, as evidenced by literally nobody wanting to live in the Turkish controlled shithole.

From a purely pragmatic point of view it’s hard to imagine a world in which northern Cyprus is genuinely worth more to Turkey than EU membership would be.

Well, I beg to disagree. There are millions of Turks living in Northern Cyprus. Prior to Turkey's military intervention, the Turkish people were being massacered. If Turkey ever ceases to support Northern Cyprus, there needs to be some sort of military presence to keep peace.

Northern Cyprus is not just a lifeless island, it's a place that has been the home for many Turks for hundreds of years. If having lived in the same country for hundreds of years after conquering it doesn't give you a legitimate claim to reside there, I don't know what will.

I think the value of human life is much more important than getting into a union. The EU shouldn't have pushed this requirement.

Devices, SIM cards and identities must be matched in Turkey, so that nobody does anything naughty. They also make the service providers keep tower signal logs worth of many years, so it's common to prove your whereabouts in courts by requesting these logs.

On the plus side, you can see and manage all your data from the government portal. It's rather convenient to be able to see all the subscriptions(GSM, TV and so on) on your name and cancel them from there if you wish. Totalitarian control has its perks.

>So that nobody does anything naughty

Ah yes, now I know why all of those shootings and mass murders happened in the Turkish airport-- there was no system for mapping identities to SIM cards!!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_Atatürk_Airport_attack

The security aspect was more of a pretext to force people purchase the heavily taxed officially imported mobile phones.

Obviously, the usefulness for prevention of such attacks would be limited, it's more about identifying the offenders. It's also useful for surveillance, as you would expect a totalitarian state would like.

> cancel them from there if you wish

You can cancel such services from a government portal? That's nearly worth living under an authoritarian regime.

You have to buy sim at airport, there is an exception from this registration, it is easy.

Are you sure about that? Maybe the process is streamlined for tourists but I doubt that they are not taking a copy of your passport.

In fact, I Googled for tourist SIMS from the Turkish GSM operators and they mention[0] that to purchase a tourist SIM a foreign passport is required.

[0] https://m.turkcell.com.tr/en/aboutus/traveling-turkey/local-...

Of course they will take your passport. First time I bought sim in store, it was illegal to use foreign phones, and shop owner had to fake his IMEI. Airports never had this restrictions or asked for IMEI.

AFAIK foreign IMEI was never illegal in Turkey. The registration requirement started in 2011, before that you could just pop a local SIM and use it.

Any IMEI can be registered within a specific timeframe(they change it from time to time but it's usually 3 weeks to 12 months) or the GSM operator will deny service to your device. It could be that you missed your deadline because to register an IMEI you need to do it within certain timeframe after you enter the country, there was even a business of paying tourist to use their passports for registering IMEI of black market imports.

Those who legally import phones for sale in Turkey also register the IMEI of every device but at different and much lower rates than the individual registrations(they pay other taxes).

Interesting, this was 2014, perhaps clerk did it to save me money for device registration.

Now I just use my EU data plan, it has enough data for short stays.

That's probably it. Instead of you paying this ridiculous registration fee, the clerk probably offered you a cloned Turkish IMEI. That's another popular workaround!

Wasn't an option in 2018 I think. I was tired and stressed and on my 3rd week of travel though, so, perhaps I missed it.

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