Hacker News Reader

Comment by msm_ | Hacker News Reader

From a brief reading of the wikipedia article you linked, I'm under impression that the accusations are baseless (given that there are - supposedly - witnesses and his former classmates that confirm his version, and apparently no whistleblowers that present a proof otherwise). The sources are in Turkish so I didn't consult them[1]. Is the article biased or omits some important context? Since you believe the degree is not authentic I assume you know about some things suggesting misconduct.

[1] Yes, I could translate them, but I'm not prepared to go down this particular rabbit hole.

View on HN

I think you are confusing Erdogan with Imamoglu. Imamoglu has photographs, classmates, there is no doubt that he attended college. His diploma was anulled because he transferred initially from a different college. He spent 4 years at the Istanbul uni, attended classes, passed the exams, there is no doubt in that.

On the other hand, Erdogan does not have a single photograph during his university years, no classmates to back his story. He started a two year degree, but there is no evidence he attended a four year program. A public notary issued a same as original certification on a disputed document. The original diploma of erdogan cannot be found. Looking at the date of the diploma, the university faculty didn't even exist yet.

I am not confusing anyone with anyone, just discussing the linked Wikipedia article. A few quotes:

>Aydın Ayaydın, a Member of Parliament from the opposition party CHP said that Erdoğan participated in the four-year degree education of Aksaray Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences, as Ayaydın himself was a teacher of Erdoğan. Expressing that he remembers Erdoğan and his classmates very well, Ayaydın said "one of his classmates is Mehmet Emin Arat, who currently is a professor at Marmara University

>Mehmet Emin Arat himself called the claims on Erdoğan not having a degree "unfair" and "baseless", stating that "the claims do not have any legal, official or historical basis".[14]

>Israeli Journalist Rafael Sadi, who was another classmate of Erdoğan,[15] said that he was irritated by "people that are telling baseless lies just to slander the man for the sake of opposition" and shared the names of professors that he and Erdoğan followed courses from.

Of course they can all be bribed and/or lying, but the Wikipedia article as written supports the version that his diploma is legitimate. Or at least that's my reading.

Before the 2000s, depending on how overtly conservative you were and who was in govenenent (coups, counter-coups, and fits of "democracy" happened every couple years), you might not have been allowed to attend at all.

An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.

Unsurprisingly, once conservative Turkish politicians like Erdogan took power, they came with vengeance. Didn't help that rural, working class, and certain ethnicities (Anatolian Turks, Kurds) were more conservative than others - go to Istanbul Airport sometime and count how many un-hijabed vs hijabed women work as the bathroom cleaning staff.

Of course, those same conservative politicians then do the exact same shenanigans of corruption, power politics, and authoritarianism, and so the cycle continues.

The intersectionality between class, religion, ideology, and ethnicity makes Turkish politics wonky.

> Of course, those same conservative politicians then do the exact same shenanigans of corruption, power politics, and authoritarianism, and so the cycle continues.

The curious things was that early in Erdogan's reign, that is during the 2000s, Turkey seemed to be genuinely making progress, especially in terms of economic policy and outcomes. That's when he was still making fairly orthodox reforms more or less along the lines required by the EU for aspiring new members. (Yes, neoliberal reforms work!)

In the last few years we saw more 'interesting' economic ideas from Erdogan, like that high interest rates cause inflation.

> In the last few years we saw more 'interesting' economic ideas from Erdogan, like that high interest rates cause inflation

Basically a bailout for AKP aligned construction oligarchs like MAPA Group. Turkiye did the same thing in the 2000s that China did in the 2010s with real estate construction.

> Turkey seemed to be genuinely making progress, especially in terms of economic policy and outcomes. That's when he was still making fairly orthodox reforms more or less along the lines required by the EU for aspiring new members. (Yes, neoliberal reforms work!)

Yep, but moreso IMF, because Erdogan 1.0 still had to follow IMF terms and reforms from the 2001 bailout.

Yes, IMF rules and EU neoliberal orthodoxy actually work.

Have a look at the development of Greek unemployment numbers over the last decade or so. It has been a steady downward march, with Covid merely a minor blip.

(Having said that, unemployment is still at something like 10%. That's bad, but far from 'basket case' territory.)

because thr youth left in droves? Empty house == good statistics

As long as they have jobs elsewhere?

Brain drain means you have great politics, gotcher.

Beats high unemployment.

To be fair, he is still doing the infrastructure build up. I think the only difference is that he has moved from the liberal agenda; but he only followed that agenda to have a shot at the EU membership. Once that became not a viable option, he obviously regressed on that.

I don't think keeping the same policies as the 2000s would have avoided the hyper-inflation spirals though it might have marginally helped. Turkey issue is that it can't move from being a poor economy (as in simple rent industries like tourism and packaging stuff) to a middle economy where they can manufacture some stuff. Istanbul is a very misleading city because it paints a different picture to the reality of the average turk once you are outside of the city bubble.

What do you mean by 'rent economy'?

Tourism is a pretty good sector for the economy, especially because by its very nature you have to compete internationally with the rest (and best) of the world. There's no shelter behind tariffs or similar.

Tourism in Turkey is essentially one dude owning the land/establishment and 10 dudes running around serving tourists. Nothing wrong with that if that's a small part of your economy but if you have most of your people doing that, then it's definitively a mismanagement of your country talent.

Same can be said for many countries, even highly developed ones such as the US or UK

Capital city bubble is present in some form in every single country, not sure whats the argument with that. Thats basic open economy

Agreed in principle.

> Capital city bubble is present in some form in every single country, [...]

Some countries are remarkably multi-centric. See eg Germany or the US, where the political capital isn't really the centre of the economy.

I don't think that's good or bad, just interesting.

Sounds like Trump getting revenge on the PMCs in America now.

Not exactly. An Erdogan-esque example would probably be a JD Vance or DeSantis administration, because both are actually ideological. Trump might be a lot of things, but ideological is not one of them.

Founder Fund aligned vendors like Palantir, Andruil, SpaceX, and Scale (they're making the pivot into defense tech because their losing their moat) are absolutely taking advantage of FF's closeness to the Trump admin to get preferential contracts.

That said, the best comparison is probably Israel under Netanyahu after he was indicted for loving ice cream too much. While there was a boom in startups and business creation, most of those startups ended up leaving after the Judicial Crisis upended stability.

Wiz's leadership themselves moved Wiz's accounts and ownership outside of Israel during that crisis and Yinon (and most other members of the Israel cybersecurity scene) were very vocally opposed to Netanyahu and Likud during the crisis. At the same time, Likud aligned businesses did very well so long as they remained aligned (eg. NSO Security collapsed when they decided to align against Netanyahu, after which he retaliated with a Likud lead inquiry into NSO Group in the Knesset).

Ehn, at this point it doesn't even matter. The damage has been done, and either way I'm still extremely well off and have backup options to move to. May as well be completely jaded, cynical, and mercenary - when elephants fight it's the grass that dies and the mosquitos that feast.

> An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.

This should have been countered by "forcing" education for everyone. For university, you could do special high subsidies that enable the woman to break from their families. It'll be painful for a couple generations but it does work.

I may be misunderstanding what you’re saying, but it sounds like you’re assuming that women only continue wearing hijab because their families force them to. That’s certainly not the case.

It is extremely rare to meet a hijab girl in Turkey whose family never told her to wear one. For a woman, telling her to wear a hijab as she grows up is pretty much enforcement.

This argument is weird, in all cultures and religions children usually follow their families traditions and beliefs.

Yes, there isn't much sense in talking about choices, then.

Sure, but it doesn’t follow that they only continue to wear it because their families force them to. Most traditions have to be taught, but that doesn’t mean that they’re only continued by force. My parents sent me to Saturday school where they told me to do Shabbat dinner and taught me the traditions — that doesn’t mean that I’m being forced to sit down for brisket as an adult.

The suggestion was prohibiting the hijab in higher education and subsidizing it, as if the only barrier to conservative women attending an institution where they’re prohibited from dressing traditionally is their parents’ approval. That’s not the case.

I do think the suggestion was pretty bad. Segregation is always bad. But traditions not continuing to adulthood sounds like a load of nonsense, especially considering the issue of head scarves or hijabs which are things women of certain upbringing are supposed to wear to adulthood. It is not comparable to santa claus and they won't disavow you for not eating brisket with family.

“Pretty much” is doing a lot of work here. So are you saying that parents should never teach their children about their own religious beliefs? Or is your problem with the hijab specifically?

They do whatever they want with their children and I don't care if the whole world including men wear hijabs. Or maybe even multiple hijabs on top of each other.

But people who think it isn't forced are simply wrong.

Many are forced.

Many women - and men - are forced to do things. This is not a problem unique to hijab.

>This should have been countered by "forcing" education for everyone. For university, you could do special high subsidies that enable the woman to break from their families. It'll be painful for a couple generations but it does work.

Yikes

I wonder why these comments are always written from the imagined perspective of a space invader that has reformed countless planets already...

Colonialism never died, just rebranded.

Progressivism started as a movement to empower technocrats to “better” society via social engineering — and as a continuation of US/EU colonialism. They invented the concept of “scientific racism”, forcibly sterilized undesirables, etc.

Now their followers destroy native culture, eg Japanese culture, promote a return to systemic racism, etc.

And make posts like this, where they argue that forcibly indoctrinating the youth with their ideology will enlighten society.

"Colonialism" and "Islamophobia" are mostly arabic talking points that will never catch on. They don't strike a nerve, they don't bring forth some hidden truth. The underlying principle is: People from different cultures see their own cultures as superior. Most religious Turkish people see themselves as the true representatives of islam due to past Ottoman reign and culture. Most europeans will see their own country as being superior to other countries in europe, and the european civilization to be better than the rest of the world. Chinese will do the same. Almost all arabs do the same. It is basic tribalism, there is no global conspiracy against islam, people just don't like it. So get over it.

You mean by “forcing” women to remove their hijab? That’s called religious persecution.

Like Catholic schools in the US solved the “backwards” culture of the indigenous? — just force people to attend schools of your preferred ideology?

Or they could get out of the middle ages and stop caring if women cover their hair?

They can't the inability to form strong institutions is baked in. And if you have no law, beyond the state/family-head rules this or that, you cant reform and renorm.

If the USA is any indication, getting out and staying out of religious extremism and hyper-conservatism is actually quite hard to do long term.

"go to Istanbul Airport sometime and count how many un-hijabed vs hijabed women work as the bathroom cleaning staff."

Out of curiosity, what is the ratio?

Every single one I saw wore a hijab. The cleaning staff earned less than the customer facing shop and restaurant staff (who were almost all hijabless).

Istanbul Airport is right next to what used to be Istanbul's Dharavi (a megaslum). Most residents were migrants and ethnic minorities. This was also the neighborhood that Erdogan grew up in, and helped propel him to power.

A major reason he kept winning elections was because he enacted a massive urban housing program that helped convert those slums into normal neighborhoods with public services (and also helped siphon money to AKP aligned construction conglomerates).

And it's people from those backgrounds that were doing the menial work at IST (eg. cleaning staff)

> An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.

They could have just removed their hijab. Nobody was forcing them to keep it on.

Turkey is a military powerhouse and Erdogan is a strong leader. The west wishes to remove him like all long lasting strong leaders and install some puppets which they can control. They tried to coup Erdogan away couple of years ago with the guy who fled to the US, since then he is especially cautious.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com