What is Happening in Istanbul?
defnesumanblogs.com
defnesumanblogs.com
It's now a full blown anti-government riot. The park issue was just the last straw that set it off.
The original poster was telling the truth now stop arguing about shopping malls.
*Yes, I know how sad of a question that is.
Knock yourself out.
Despite what people on reddit, and other fringe internet forums would have you believe, The United States has some of the strongest personal liberties in the world.
In most jurisdictions, it's illegal to wear a gas mask during a protest. The ostensible logic for this is that they, as with all masks, obscure the face and hinder personal identification by police (which we'd call "internal security forces" if it were Turkey or China or someplace).
If you're caught wearing one during a protest, you can be arrested ipso facto, and it will be confiscated and not returned to you, and you'll be subject to legal penalties merely for wearing it.
I must disagree. Any government that would prohibit free agriculture is already on the road to tyranny. Every dictatorship, no matter its form, allows for the existence of some personal liberties as it limits the rest.
The US has been a developing economic police state since at least the 1930's.
Adorable. Try actually exercising them and get back to us.
13+ years since WTO Battle in Seattle? Melissa Kaplan still cannot find Washington State wearing gas mask code/regulations?
What is it about Evergreen(Evergray?) Washington State?
Last updated January 13, 2013
State Codes Related To Wearing Masks
Compiled by Melissa Kaplan Need to wear an air filtration mask when you go out to avoid the effects of fragrances, chemicals, pollens and more?
You may be breaking the law.
Each state has its own code relating to masks (though some states may have no such code) and/or disguises. In some, you may be okay wearing a filtration or surgical mask; in others, you may be required to carry a note from your physician stating that you need to wear the mask for health reasons.
If you find the code section for your state and send me a copy of the section and language, I will add it to this listing.
.......................
The only thing I could find:
Seattle municipal court judge dismisses WTO gas mask case on February 17, 2000.
On February 17, 2000, a municipal court judge dismisses criminal charges against a man accused of violating the emergency order prohibiting the possession of "devices commonly known as gas masks" during the period of unrest surrounding the World Trade Organization (WTO) meeting which occurred in late November and early December, 1999, in Seattle.
Mayor Paul Schell had issued an emergency order prohibiting the possession of gas masks in Seattle except by military and police on December 1, 1999. Later that day, journalists were allowed to possess gas masks, but the ban did not extend to firefighters.
Justin Reed of Seattle was arrested at City Hall on the day the ban was signed when he attempted to attend a City Council hearing called to discuss and ratify the mayor's order. The judge ruled that prosecutors did not prove that Reed knew of the ban when he was arrested. The charges were dismissed "with prejudice" meaning that Reed could not be charged again with the same crime.
As of February 17, 2000, only 24 persons out of more than 600 arrested during WTO protests were still charged with crimes, including four accused of violating the gas mask ban.
http://www.historylink.org/_content/education/index.cfm?Disp...
> The military has been handing out gas masks to civilians and there is a video of then getting into verbal arguments with the police. Although the gendarme look as if they are in with the government the majority of the military look as if they're going to sit this one out while quietly supporting the protests.
You, as far as I gathered, and probably depending on state etc, have a constitutional right to arm yourself to the teeth; somehow, gas masks seem a bit trivial compared to rifles.
http://www.zaman.com.tr/ Democratic, Islamic, Liberal ENGLISH: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/
http://www.posta.com.tr/ Populism
http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/anasayfa/ Nationalism, Kemalist, Centre-Right ENGLISH: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/
http://www.sabah.com.tr/ Liberal Conservatism, Center-Right
http://www.sozcu.com.tr/ Nationalism, Kemalism, Secular
http://www.milliyet.com.tr/AnaSayfa/ Kemalist, Nationalist, Secular, Center-Left
http://www.haberturk.com/ Nationalism, Conservatism, Right-Wing
http://www.turkiyegazetesi.com/ Conservatism, Right-Wing
http://www.stargazete.com/ Liberal Conservatism, Center-Right
http://www.gazetevatan.com/root.asp Kemalist, Nationalist, Secular
http://www.bugun.com.tr/ Conservative-Democrat, Nationalism, Center-Right
http://www.takvim.com.tr/ Center-Right
http://www.aksam.com.tr/ Center-Left
http://yenisafak.com.tr Islamism, Conservatism, Right-Wing
edit: added some English links above. Also http://www.goodmorningturkey.com/
Ideology that Kemalism brings defines the fundamental principles of Turkish Republic.
Perhaps it is a popular crossing that gets filled up whenever major events are happening?
The bridge pictures here appear to be legit. http://www.rightnow.io/breaking-news/turkey_bn_1369752659185...
EDIT: it looks to me that at the beginning of the video you can spot the feet of another person behind him.
But even in the event they did not see them, you just don't drive a tank against a barrier where you don't know if there are people or not.
There is slow motion on youtube?
"Erdogan’s vision of Turkey is one full of citizens who piously pray in the country’s ubiquitous mosques and then go shopping at one of its equally ubiquitous malls, which are frantically being built in urban areas.
As long as the imports, credit card, and debt-driven Turkish economic bubble remains intact, the government will continue to pursue these and other neoliberal policies to the great praise of western think-thanks, private equity firms, and politicians who all repeat the fallacy of the ‘Turkish [success] model’.
Notwithstanding these neoliberal economic policies, Erdogan is still extremely popular among Turkey’s poor and working people in both urban and rural areas. Most western observers have missed this crucial fact and are, therefore, quick to enthusiastically compare the Gezi Park protests with the ‘Arab Spring’.
One has only to speak with blue-collar workers in Turkey to understand popular attitudes toward the government. Whenever I am in Istanbul, I engage in political small talk with people from various walks of life, including waiters, construction workers, and young men working on the ferries crossing the Bosporus. I also frequently visit my family members, who are from a poor Anatolian background.
In my conversations with these people, I have heard nothing but firm support for Erdogan. When asked about Turkey’s unemployment rate or the Prime Minister’s nepotism, most of these individuals do not hesitate to say, “I know that Erdogan is also ‘siphoning the cash’ (hortumluyorlar). But good for him (helal olsun). At least he is leaving us some crumbs. The previous bastards never gave us everything.” Memories of many decades of economic and political oppression by secular elites are still fresh for many Turks. Because of the AKP, these people now have access to things like privatized health care, credit card use, and unprecedented infrastructure development."
http://muftah.org/why-the-gezi-park-protests-do-not-herald-a...
What puzzle me the most, is the voluntary cooperation of the media with the government. Even if the media does not support this event, how they not cover it at all? sad, I always thought of Turkey as the most successful example of a Muslim democratic state.
There are very, very few religious democracies, and if you only consider those both officially and effectively religious, I won’t be able to name a single one.
UK?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancasila_(politics)
In Indonesia, you are not allowed to be atheist. You must declare yourself as a follower of one of the 6 state sanctioned religions.
Turkey has been a successful majority Muslim but very secular and democratic state for a very long time. Maybe that’s changing …
(Ah, decisions, decisions. Sometimes I think the EU should have accelerated making a move on letting Turkey join. There are substantial risks associated with that, sure, but I also think that the EU would have had a significant chance of changing the trajectory Turkey is on.)
Uhm. Military coups in: 1960, 1971, 1980, as well as substantial intervention in the succession of power in 1997 that many considers a coup.
The secular nature of the Turkish state has largely remained as secular as it is because the Turkish military has a tendency to conduct coups whenever they deem someone is trying to introduce religiously motivated laws, coupled with a legal system that is frequently used to shut down political parties that mix politics and religion.
Turkey does not exactly have a very solid democratic tradition yet.
We have yet to see if the "Memorandum" issued in 1997 and allowing the current government is a sign the military has softened it's stance, but it's very clear that so far at least, the elected Turkish governments serve at the mercy of the military.
Whilst the constitution makes the country ostensibly secular, the AKP has been slowly turning it into an Islamist state. I assumed that's what was fundamentally behind the protests, but maybe it's just another anti-corporate thing.
If you recall the London riots (during which I was in Wales), rude attitude of police and political scandals were among the suggested reasons, which are also among the facts that inducted things happened here in Turkey.
The next elections will be held on 2015, at which I expect that the votes are going to be distributed even among the three major parties, where two of these are CHP and MHP, which are defined to be social-democrat-left and nationalist-concervative-right (with no apparent tendency towards theocratic ideals) respectively. AKP will probably be in the parliament, albeit lack the dominion present today.
Actually it's not a bug, if they would allow smaller parties they would have 10,20,50 parties in there, some with only one person. It would be a mess - hard to make any decision.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1fi07t/im_so_conf...
Append "?share=1", and the dumbass registration wall goes away.
I imagine it's something friends, VCs, and the tech press were told about, but the rest of us aren't supposed to use.
It is still a weird thing, though. The Quora management swears that forcing people to log up makes things better somehow, although they've never been particularly clear on how that works.
Eliot is an interesting example of one a single well-connected individual can accomplish in the digital age: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-brown-moses-blog/x/255....
His feed is a bit of a firehose feed, so I recommend you only follow him, whenever you need to immerse yourself in an ongoing story.
The things going on in Turkey are so insane, they have to be seen to be believed.
EDIT: His YouTube playlist with videos of the clashes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvUktDH-OBM&list=PLPC0Ude....
On top of all that, the government control over its people’s personal lives has become unbearable as of late. The state, under its conservative agenda passed many laws and regulations concerning abortion, cesarean birth, sale and use of alcohol and even the color of lipstick worn by the airline stewardesses."
It sounds as if the protestors, if the author is genuine, are protesting something I call "Singaporification." It's the fusion of authoritarian quasi-fascist rule with capitalism-- a kind of socially conservative, often (but not always) religious conservative, but economically neo-liberal state of affairs. On the surface it sometimes looks theocratic, but in reality it's more of a dictatorship of gentrification. Religious morality (or sometimes secularized versions thereof) is used as a facade to condemn any form of social deviancy and especially to mentally control the lower classes by manipulating their religious faiths.
(We see the latter in America with the "culture war," which is a way of distracting the largely-religious working classes while their future is sold out from under them.)
In conversations with fellow techies, it's disturbed me to what extent many seem to tacitly support this kind of thing. I've been in many conversations explicitly praising Singapore -- a country that permits death sentences for minor infractions -- as a viable model of the future.
The thing that makes Singaporification scary is that it works. The scariest dystopias are not hideous hellscapes where nobody would want to live, as those tend to self-destruct or at best persist in tiny enclaves and never catch on. Who would want to emulate North Korea? But seductive dystopias are dangerous because they can catch on. Who wouldn't want low crime, clean streets, and a wonderfully healthy economy? In that sense I find Singapore to be the scariest dystopia in the world today.
Historical precursors include Franco's Spain. Think of Singaporification as a gentler, less overtly violent form of Spanish fascism. But as we see if you openly challenge it, the gloves rapidly come off and your shiny clean utopia busts out the tanks, tear gas, and death penalty sentences.
Edit: on second thought, it also represents a fusion of liberal nanny-statism, conservative social authoritarianism, and neo-liberal economics. Government by and for the uptight, culturally xenophobic urban professional.
As Benjamin Franklin said: those who sacrifice liberty for security and prosperity deserve neither.
Worth watching: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066434/
"Buy, and be happy."
If action flicks are more your thing, this is a fun and a bit underrated riff on the same theme: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/
Assuming a lot eh?
But yes, at some point, we have to make assumptions based on the information we have available.
I think people should be able to say whatever ignorant things they want to say, and their ignorance should be displayed by stating facts countering their arguments, rather than censoring them or simply shouting them down with substance-free statements.
I have visited Singapore several times. My anglo-saxon, western uncle lived and worked in Singapore as a teacher for a number of years. I even had brief involvement in a start-up business in Singapore.
I cannot identify in any way with the portrayal of Singapore as some dystopian nightmare. If anything I would describe it as a safe, pleasant, interesting and diverse city-state. In my experience, police are courteous, bureaucracy is minimal and people do a remarkably good job of living good lives in spite of the dense population in many areas. I would concede that in the time I've been there I've witnessed immigrant workers from neighbouring countries essentially imported to work in menial labour and the entertainment/sex trade. However looking at the conditions they're coming from, I'm sure to many it is the best opportunity to improve their lives they are likely to get.
And in the end, the human outcome for real people is the most important aspect of a society. For all the self-righteous feel-goodery about "free" political expression, nobody really cares about the important political messages you're posting on your blog. What's the value of your free voice when at the end of the day you can vote in the "conservative" guys who don't give a shit, or the "progressive" guys who don't give a shit? I'd rather have slightly better governance without the illusion of choice, thanks very much.
> I find Singapore to be the scariest dystopia in the world today.
What?
Anyway, Singapore is the greenest city on earth. It'll be more likely to see people here protesting the demolition of a shopping mall to build a park than vice versa. It's ridiculous to compare this to what is happening in Turkey now.
The quintissential idea of a dystopia is that it's a safe place to live, the streets are clean, you have jobs and food and security. As long as you stay in the lines put in place by the State you're fine.
But women can only wear skirts 2 inches below the knee. Lipstick must be color 22 or 46. Men cannot have beards. Or you must have a beard. You must wear a tie to work, even if you collect garbage. The news going to report what it's told to report, not necessarily whats happening in front of everyone. Photos can and will be edited to reflect the proper history that should exist. God help you if your faith is the minority and says you must not cut your hair. When you leave your shiny office with your coworkers for lunch, remember not to leave in groups larger than 4 because its against the law.
So I am not saying my specific examples happen in Singapore. But you don't seem to get that we aren't really talking about Singapore.
We're talking about dystopian ways of living that exist on earth, right now. We're talking about people with lots of money actively trying to make stuff like what I just said part of your life, right now. It never happens over night. It's one day at a time. One accident, one criminal act. One new camera on a street, one new law passed.
So slowly, so you feel safer, until one day you see something happening around you that you don't like and decide to speak up. No one sees you at work tomorrow or the next day. You and your wife and kids just disappeared one night. No one saw anything, even if they did. In a week, a new family moves into your nice modern apartment. Someone else gets your cushy job. No one talks about you. They feel safe, too.
You are right, I have no idea what this has to do with Singapore at all!
And if we aren't talking about Singapore why do we keep saying Singapore?!
So clearly the best option is to simply claim it as "rubbish" instead of discussing and trying to understand the other persons viewpoint.
have you ever been to singapore?
Actually, it is you who has no clue.
Please read my response to the parent. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5809506
Other than a not-uncommon desire to stay in power and grow the economy, Erdogan really doesn't seem to share the same endgame as Singapore's de facto founder. One is a traditional Muslim accused by his critics of undermining the secularist underpinnings of the modern Turkish state; the other an ardent multiculturalist who ended up apologising for a comment suggesting Muslims ought to be less strict in their observances. Erdogan recommends Turkish women need to rear at least three children to "keep the population young" and helped provoke the riots by trying to tighten regulation on abortion. Lee Kuan Yew introduced the "Stop at Two" family planning advocacy campaign and legalised abortion.
Ironically it's values that Singapore's uber-strict legal system has rigidly defended - anti-corruption, state secularism and individual religious freedom - that the Turkish rioters claim motivate their opposition to the Erdogan's government. They've managed to leave more trees intact than central Istanbul too. :)
Last time I was in Turkey, they had a huge greenery programme going on in Anatolia (i.e. I saw it in Ankara and surroundings). Interesting, that Istanbul had its tree cover reduced.
What bubble are you living in because it desperately needs to be popped.
>Singapore also differs from the United States where penalties are determined by a judge;breaking certain laws in Singapore can come with mandatory decisions that still include cane beatings.
At least attempt some research
Give me a break.
And did your research tell you that you can get caned in Singapore for littering?
If caning its own citizens is not evidence of a nanny state that treats people like children, I don't know what is.
Not that I want to sound like a supporter Singapore's judicial system but I didn't expect to hear this from a citizen of a country that is allowed to kill as a form of punishment.
(Making the assumption that you are from the US, apologies if I got that wrong).
I was merely disagreeing with the parent's assertion that Singapore has some form of enlightened government that doesn't trample on personal freedoms, and treats its citizens with respect.
I made no such assertion. But perhaps you should enlighten yourself on exactly what personal freedoms are being trampled upon here, and how exactly Singapore's citizens are being disrespected. You just made a bullshit statement that you can get caned for littering in Singapore. What else of your opinion of Singapore is based on similar ignorance?
Next you are going to tell me chewing gum is banned in Singapore (gasp!). And I'm going to quote you something random from http://itthing.com/100-weird-laws-from-around-the-world (let's go with "In Indiana, it’s against the law to dress ‘Barbie’ in ‘Ken’s’ clothes" this time)
Surely the issue - assuming active littering is punished by caning and in this narrow area - is that any adult in such a place would never come up against the consequences of the law.
It's not treating mature people like children it's treating antisocial adults as immoral.
That may be the case but the fact that he was making an analogy between the way governments and private industry are setup, the mix of conservative ideology and lack of some of the freedoms was obvious. Again, whether you agree with that, is another issue, but your phrased you answer as if you didn't understand that he was making a comparison.
Basically it seemed you were skimming through comments about Turkey saw a comment on Singapore and just replied "what is this doing here, we are talking about Turkey".
It is also interesting that the gp post indicated clearly what he thought it has to do with Singapore if you want to continue the argument you can perhaps provide counter-arguments to their point, instead of insinuating that they got lost and thought we were discussing an article about libertarian city states or something.
I love how people always cast Singapore as some kind of horror story cautionary tale. No-one seems to have told the actual people of Singapore, who are perfectly free to leave their nightmarish dystopia at any time, and yet seem perversely inclined to stay. Somehow this obvious, central, crucial fact gets left out of the "we don't want to turn out like Singapore!" narrative.
I think the real reason people demonise Singapore isn't because it's a bad place to live; it's because it is actually a really good place to live, and this fact causes a certain conflict in the libertarian mind, a fundamental undermining of the whole axiomic structure of their beliefs and no-one wants to face that. So, instead, they try to villify it in vague terms of being some kind of anti-freedom devil state - a North Korea that, by Satan's blessing, works.
I'll tell you the really scary thing about Singapore. It's a better place to live than 99.9% of these so-called "freedom" countries. I'd live there over any city in America bar maybe NYC, and certainly over Istanbul. The scary thing is that, when you consider the outcome, maybe the Singapore formula is a better form of government, and a lot of people don't even want to contemplate that.
I'm not arguing with that. What I'm trying to say is that I don't think it has been conclusively proved that being able to exercise that freedom leads to a better society, and it is that end we should be thinking about, not the means.
> decide that you'd rather prize political freedom over wealth
Long term, if political freedom doesn't bring wealth, then what is the bloody point?
"Well, the company didn't make any profits, can't pay its bills and the building is falling down around it, but at least the workers all had a say!"
Seriously? You think that everything a government should strive to guarantee is a means where the end is wealth? You don't think that equality, freedom to criticize questionable government practices (even those that improve GDP), or anything else should be a goal in itself?
An overused example: Fascism has at times lead to incredible economic growth, creating wealth that did measurable good in most citizen's lives (by ending terrible depressions). But there was more that came along with that, which mostly wasn't cutting into the country's wealth (maybe it squanders some human capital, but so does 30% unemployment, which the Nazis completely reversed in around 5 years). Despite the positive implications of fascism on "wealth", there's a lot that the Nazis did that most would be inclined to call bad.
On the other hand, Scandanavian socialist democracy may not be optimal for wealth creation, but it has a lot of benefits that help people lead enjoyable lives that are free from the risk of various kinds of terrible suffering (eg. homelessness).
There are no universal goods, but when pushed, very few people are actually willing to eschew all goods except wealth. And if you are, what's so special about wealth that makes it a good you're willing to quasi-universalize?
But I did say long term - long term the Nazi "wealth" turned to ash. For that matter the nordic social experiment cannot be said to have succeeded yet. Really, none of this has been around long enough to make any final conclusions about anything.
Anyway. Instead of "wealth" you might want to read "social wealth" - the ability of a society to provide good jobs, education, social mobility, health care, long term satisfaction, security of state and person, those kinds things.
Mercedes is still doing quite well, actually. Germany is the exporting powerhouse of Europe.
But just to be clear, you would be ok with the whole holocaust thing if Germany now had the GDP (or whatever metric you want to use for "social wealth") of the US as a result?
I think you meant Volkswagen Group, created in 1937 by the Nazis and backed by Hitler to create the Type 1 (a.k.a Beetle).
Today, Volkswagen owns Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Bugatti, Porsche, Ducati, Seat, Skoda, and has a majority of shares in Suzuki.
Mercedes is small fry compared do VG.
To tell someone that their beliefs are wrong simply because of where they originated is rather arrogant. You have no idea the OP's background and how deeply they have questioned their own beliefs. It is perfectly fine to disagree with this opinion. However, you must argue against the actual opinion, dismissing it due to where or how it is taught provides nothing to the discussion.
P.S. - Sorry everyone for feeding the trolls.
I simply argued to the parent post that is there is no such thing as universal morals, and our morals, ideals, goals are all framed around an end we want to achieve. And that end, whatever is, can be arbitrarily defined... so morals therefore are also arbitrarily defined. Believing in universal morals is stating that your morals are better than others because you believe in it. It's just like nationalism. You'll believe your country is better because you were born in it, just as you might believe your morals are better than others (universal) simply because you've been indoctrinated by them.
Just as your school isn't necessarily right when indoctrinating you with morals, your country's founding fathers may not be right either. It might have been right for the purposes of the country, but you really do have to see things from other perspectives.
I hope people reading this also take note of the subtle name calling oillio just committed (calling me a troll). If life were that simple we could just dismiss every opposing viewpoint as a troll, just as in minesweeper marking everything a flag... but it doesn't work that way.
Constitutional democracy is not a denial that people have different morals - it's based on that fact.
Naturally, if society was a crude free-for-all, we'd have things that resemble Somalia, or the Mexican drug cartels, or North Korea (along with things like The United States). In these examples of political structures, we have the most powerful taking control of whatever they can take control of. Then they hold it there with whatever means they can for as long as they can.
Democracy is like this but all the people say "hey, let's try giving everyone the same amount of power so we can normalize this game called life and control this experiment for longer-term goals."
Basically I'm saying that power supersedes even democracy oh the moral pyramid. There is one level even beyond democracy and here you'll find it in the company of authoritarianism, communism, etc. Power is at the top level of this pyramid. It is based on survival of the fittest. Power is the only universal moral because it is a fundamental law of nature. Democracy is not a fundamental law of nature. It is a construct of a specific subgroup of humans. It was conceived and designed to achieve a specific goal. And because there is a goal, and all goals are different, it is a subjective end. Therefore democracy is arbitrary and subjective—not a universal moral.
As much as you'd like to believe in inalienable rights, if I have a gun to your head, you can bet I can alienate your "natural" rights. Yes, you'll always have the choice of death or obedience, but once you're dead, you're irrelevant. But if you have a bigger gun, then I can no longer "alienate" your rights! You can "alienate" mine! That's power. Democracy is abstracted into laws which are ultimately enforced with power (guns, police... head) Because of this, democracy is not fundamental. It is human-designed construct and therefore it is not a universal thing.
Another way to think of it is like this: we have a 10 x 10 grid and we have 100 people. Democracy assigns each person a square. Power lets people take whatever squares they can defend. The end result of these two philosophies will look different, but democracy was specifically designed to artificially treat each person as equal so we can achieve the end goal of giving people a chance to succeed. Supposedly this will help society be better off, but this goal is still an arbitrary goal (though most people would agree on this) and democracy is just the means. The natural outcome is to give spaces to those who can defend it. If you can't defend the space, you don't deserve to own it. Democracy is human manipulation of this system to try to achieve better results.
I will fully disclose that I am a firm supporter of democracy (because of the way it normalizes society), but I want to make it clear that it's because it's the best method so far, not because it's inherently right.
Incidentally, why would you think that a universal moral ideal would be something that happens by itself? Isn't it abundantly clear that humans never fulfil any of their ideals?
> Incidentally, why would you think that a universal moral ideal would be something that happens by itself? Isn't it abundantly clear that humans never fulfil any of their ideals?
Legal equality isn't an ideal. It's not something we strive for because we already have it. A universal moral has to be something that happens automatically because otherwise (like democracy) it can only happen with human intervention. And if it requires human intervention, it is no longer universal. It is an artificial construct of man. And like all things men create, it's subjective and designed to serve the specific goals of its creator. A system like a free-for-all survival of the fittest is universal because it was not created by man to serve a purpose—it just is. Therefore it is universal because everything in the universe abides by it, whereas democracy is only abided by those who subscribe to it voluntarily.
Freedom is not free. Democracy is not free and it requires upkeep. Basically those who have power have used it to provide equal power to those under its jurisdiction. But it is made possible by the more universal law of power, and without the benevolent power holders we wouldn't have a free equal (under the law) society in the West.
And no I don't believe democracy is fundamentally "right", I believe it is the safest option we currently have because the people who want to be in control are often dangerous. How dangerous they can be is dependent on how much power they have. Show me anywhere in the history of the world where not having the right to criticize the government turned out well in the long term.
I'm not quoting that at you to be self-righteous. I'm using it to illustrate that most people in the world seem to believe that political freedom is considered a good in and of itself. At least in the US, anyway- it's in our mission statement. It's not just a good thing, but one of The Good Things, that's worthy of being pursued independent of wealth.
You seem to consider liberty as a means to an end. That's a perfectly fine viewpoint, but I think you should recognize that you're not debating about singapore, but about that underlying assumption.
There is nothing inherently wrong with your point of view, and I have many friends who live in singapore, dubai, etc who do not have issues with rules such as the above.
However, I also know many people who value personal freedom above all, and do not think that being guaranteed money supersedes these freedoms. (FWIW I count myself in this group).
I know I'm stretching this a bit, but if you've watched the Matrix, this is the difference between the protagonists who wish freedom from the machines, and Cypher (Joe Pantoliano) who thinks the illusion of a good life is just fine with him: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAsgavFvohI
He does have a point, but most of us identified with the protagonists, right?
I don't have a good answer as to what I would consider "just punishment" by the state for things like robbery, etc. However, throwing someone in jail for littering is certainly extreme.
No one is sentenced to anal rape in the US.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prison_rape_in_the_United_State...
I'm talking from the perspective of a (leftist) German who wanted to relocate to Singapore (Wife said no) and lived in Tel Aviv. I've never been to the States, because quite frankly I feel the trip would cost me more 'freedom' than I'm comfortable to part with.
Note that I comment on things I know only online/through the news/from talks with friends. That said, I wonder how many critics of Singapore have actually stayed there for some time..
I know the US gets a bad rap as far as personal freedom is concerned (high incarceration rate, capital punishment, etc) and this is indeed an issue in some other places in the US where I've lived, but I love it here in the bay area.
You should try it for a bit and see what you think. Interestingly, I'm planning to move to Europe, most likely Germany :) and live there for a bit to see what that's like.
There is a problem with centralised political power, and that's that if a nastier, more corrupt and less tolerant clique gets hold of that power there is absolutely nothing that can stop your pleasant and prosperous one party state from becoming an oppressive and dystopian one. That is the problem. In fact it's a historical truism that absolute power eventually does corrupt absolutely, or at least that eventually the absolutely corrupt will gravitate to that position of power.
Simon Hibbs
Well yes, of course. Even the laziest student of history knows that. I am not trying to advocate for that extreme end of the range of political possibilities.
The elephant in the room, though, is that the other extreme - our hyper-egalitarianism; giving everyone, by birth, no matter how uninformed, no matter how disinterested, an unchallenged vote does not seem to be working too well. Especially when one throws such "freedoms" into the mix as the ability for the incumbent ruling class to massively amplify their own voices by the mass media. So "there is a problem" with what we have, too.
You say that there's a problem with centralised political power, and I agree wholeheartedly, but we certainly do have a problem because that centralised power is in every lounge room, car radio and news stand in the land. At least with communism you knew who was pulling the strings!
Democracy isn't the problem in itself, flawed as it may be, but US democracy suffers from special self-inflicted problems: it's a government created by people who were suspicious of government AND democracy, so it's unmanageable by design. To be fair, democracy was an untried idea at the time, but the US is stuck with ridiculous artifacts of those early doubts.
We have a right to bear arms that cannot easily be undone or moderated but no right to, say, transportation, communication, or health care. Our abortion laws were magically derived from some other inferred right rather than designed by legislators with reference to experts (which is how abortion laws everywhere else work) so it's literally a war between people who think a pregnant mother has no rights over her own body until the child is born and other people who think she should be able to kill the baby right up until it's born. In Australia (IIRC) it's twelve weeks or to save the mother's life. No other democracy has this problem.
There is no centralised power controlling news media in the democratic developed world. I can walk out on to the street in the UK and buy publications supporting any political viewpoint with enough people interested in it to make selling such a publication viable. Hop on to the internet, and you can push whatever agenda you like, and I note that that's exactly what you and I are doing. The problem with totalitarianism is that if they decide they don't like what you're saying, you get censored. Those strings get pulled on you, immediately. See the censorship situation for social media in China for details. This conversation would be practically impossible.
If you really want to see an incumbent ruling class pulling no punches and using all the tools available to it to pull those strings as tight as possible, there are several nations out there doing that right now. My wife's family live in one.
Now it's possible that they will make some good decisions, and create wealth and raise living standards for a while.
But eventually, they will either make some bad decisions, or die. And when that happens...then what? Often the answer (as we have seen recently) is violent chaos.
Political freedoms allow a society to reinvent itself without chaotic bloodshed. When leaders make bad decisions, everyone else can talk about it, figure out a better way to go, and vote that into effect.
The power of this approach is ably demonstrated by the U.S., which is the richest, and one of the most stable, nations on Earth, despite having among the strongest protections for free expression.
To put it another way: Singapore uses strong central government to achieve the same kinds of effects Americans will cheerfully use other means (e.g. Disneyland, gated communities, giant shopping malls) to achieve.
This is not true. His exact words were "I find Singapore to be the scariest dystopia in the world today".
> Singaporeans (or at least the ones who are left) happen to be willing to accept less freedoms in exchange for economic success
This is bullshit. What a sweeping generalisation to make of all the citizens of a country.
> willing to accept less freedoms
What are these "less freedoms" exactly?
> in exchange for economic success
At least the original comment also conceded "low crime, clean streets, and a wonderfully healthy economy"
You know, free elections, the right to arm yourself, the right to buy chewing gum.
Singapore is pretty creepy under the surface and reeks of covert oppression, at least to my American eye. It seems to work for them, but I wouldn't want to live in a place like that, clean streets or not.
a) that in the USA you are _legally_ allowed to kill others and to pollute?
or
b) that no, the USA doesn't legally allow that, but in practice it does (any stats on how many guilty people got off the hook?)
or what?
Contrast this with the USA, whose laws are (supposedly -- it has been much more complex since the Great Depression) based on principle, on a Western logic that, I believe, still holds strong. It is beautiful, as many writers have shown. In past years I have been a great appreciator of this, having held strong libertarian and even anarcho-capitalist values (not a part of the Ayn Rand hype train, I assure you).
But politico-economic systems are much more complex, human nature so rich, that logic and rhetoric cannot fully capture, perhaps ever. As of late I've read a bit more into histories of Communism in the last 100 years, looked at alternative systems of government. And I just don't think the victory and purity of Western idealism -- that it is the One Way, the Only Way -- is as valid as most of us think. There is that banal idea that "Communism works on paper, but not in reality", but I am gradually leaning towards replacing "Communism" with Capitalism.
I know we cannot really compare the Nordic models of governance with Singapore, but I think they, like Singapore, also incorporate many political ideas based on empirical observation, rather than stubborn insistence of value systems.
Unfortunately even the USA isn't so pure. There are so many systems of principles now, that clash all the time -- and they themselves have changed drastically from the USA of 100 years ago. Thus the Libertarian argument still stands. I think the question is, does that Argument even matter?
The expats are happy enough (and the locals I know), but according to surveys, people aren't all that happy. Rather numb, in fact.
That's ironic, you being an American and all.
> the right to arm yourself
This is rich.
In San Francisco it is unlawful to use used underwear to wipe off cars in a car wash.
So what?
It is easier to get chewing gum in Singapore than it is to buy kinder eggs in America.
Additionally, the reason for banning chewing gum was a whole lot more reasonable (it makes the streets dirty & jammed train doors).
>I wouldn't want to live in a place like that, clean streets or not.
And I wouldn't want to live in America either. I'm happily trading chewing gum and semi-automatic pistols for affordable healthcare, summer every day and clean streets.
Right, I dont want to contemplate that.
So what?
That said, I thought Singapore has repealed the chewing-gum ban already.
And also, what's the big deal of banning chewing gum? :)
Many (native) singaporean are too poor to leave the country.
For migrant workers?
For gay people?
Then there's the caning, censorship, draconian drug laws etc. - doesn't seem like that nice a place to live if I'm honest.
Absolute power can scale up to a certain point. At the end of the day, the dictator-for-life can drive around and see things in his city that need fixing. He can also limit rivals to the throne by centralizing authority.
In a larger country, you can't scale up the dictatorial machine as effectively... you're dependent on the bureaucracy or governors/viceroys to run things in the provinces, which creates a raft of other problems.
What many younger people here might not know is that only 12 years ago, life in the US was different. You could board planes without going through ridiculous levels of non-security. Your family could actually meet you as you came off the plane. In the first week after 9/11, there was a global outpouring of support for us. There were candlelight vigils held in places like Tehran, Iran for us. In the first few weeks after, there was a growing feeling that maybe this was finally the time that the US would straighten out and take a deep and serious look at our own actions and policies. As you can see, that didn't happen.
We got "buy more stuff" from the president. Indefinite detentions. Men who are still in a prison in Cuba who were kidnapped from their own countries. Whether guilty of something or not, they should have been tried years ago.
We get the FTAA protests in Miami. You get the Democratic convention in Boston and "freedom areas".
You get the Boston of just a couple months ago. A massive police and state over reaction to find one young man. At no other time in American history has an entire metropolitan city of that size been systematically shut down to find one criminal. And everyone went along with it to "feel safe".
Have kids? There's an overwhelmingly large but amorphous in number group of pedophiles waiting to get their hands on them.
You get fear. Be Afraid is the message. And young people have been taught that for so long now, and now they can vote and have kids. And this is how culture changes and restricts.
If you follow Occupy, that didn't start recently. That was going back at least as far as Seattle in 1999.
Don't be afraid. People die and get hurt. Sometimes it's other people that do it to others. Our freedoms collectively are more important than our deaths individually.
As has been said many times before, I may not like what you have to say but I'll punch someone in the nose to make sure you are able to say it.
I agree we did overreact, but this sentence is just nonsense. Are you really implying that our actions and policies are what caused muslims to hate us, and that therefor we should change them???????????
Well, that's a few simultaneous fallacies.
But, yes, your policies led to the 9/11 attackers deciding to attack you. Is this not blisteringly obvious?
> and that therefor we should change them???????????
Oh gosh no, change? Not mid-stream.
In exactly the same way that wearing miniskirts leads to rape. Take for example UBL's main grievance: the presence of the international Desert Shield force, or as UBL put it, allowing infidels to live in the land of the two holy cities. That force was there at the request of King Saud of Arabia. So what makes this agreement between King Saud and 30+ other powers a valid cause for the King's subjects, or anybody else, to wage war against the US? What makes Usama bin Laden the superior authority to say who is allowed to live in Arabia? What justifies forbidding people from holding any other religious belief than the approved one? What makes Usama bin Laden the sole authority on religious matters in Arabia who can decide what religion people are allowed to believe?
To use your metaphor, it's a lot like wearing a miniskirt and flashing the perpetrator. Neither side is really 100% clean in this.
God forbid the Iranian people benefit from their own oil fields! That'd fuck over BP!
And some notes on his influence: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Qutbism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma%27alim_fi_al-Tariq
They do indeed "hate us for our freedoms" and the mind-numbingly ignorant position is to deny it.
I would tell you to go educate yourself but if you honestly buy this line now in 2013 I don't suppose there's anything more than can be done for you.
Were the two ever separate?
Modern societies have never really lived without a large state. So almost every new society (or post-revolution) in history adopted that same practice. But usually with new limitations.
The problem is that once the state is instantiated and given broad power, their power continues to grow and expand out of self-interest and desire for control.
Regardless of capitalism or socialism.
As Rothbard said: "the true utopian is the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, 'Limit yourself.'".
At the same time I don't know enough about Singapore's current economic/social situation to comment. I was only stating an observation on the nature of states ability to expand in scope and power regardless of limitations enacted at initiation.
> I was only stating an observation on the nature of states ability to expand in scope and power regardless of limitations enacted at initiation.
Yes, as e.g. the USA nicely demonstrates.
"The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others" - Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism. http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/Mus...
Fascism calls for state control and direction of the economy, which ultimately means Fascist Party control of the same because Fascism denies the legitimacy of any other party to ever govern the state. Capitalism calls for few to no state controls over economic activity so as to allow all businesses to operate with minimal interference.
Germany followed Italy's lead in state direction of the economy and notoriously seized the assets of Jews and sent them to "work" camps in the name of increasing the productivity of their labour. Franco banned international trade and watched his economy crash for a decade.
I am speechless.
As someone who was born and raised in Turkey, and visited Singapore for long periods of time, let me say very clearly: you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Turkey and Singapore are two completely different worlds, with different histories, cultures, and geopolitical situations, and are not related in any shape or form. There may be a few surface-level parallels, but that's where the similarities end.
I am stunned however that a person who very likely has never even visited either place (much less lived in them) has the gall to call what Turkey is going through "Singaporification." I mean, it's not like I haven't noticed the anti-Singaporean sentiments on HN lately - they don't surprise me, since a lot of HN folks are white middle/upper-middle class and lean libertarian[1], which is the exact opposite of Singapore. But using the events in Istanbul as an opportunity to bash Singapore is just... petty and shameless.
I would love to give you a detailed breakdown of the differences between Singapore and Turkey, but that would be an essay. I'll highlight a few important ones.
Singapore is one of the least corrupt countries in the world. Turkey on the other hand is rampant with corruption, especially the current government. That's part of the reason why the protests started: the contractor that was going to build the mall on top of Gezi Park has ties to the Prime Minister, who was going to profit from it. That's just ONE example.
Singapore is extremely diverse culturally. There are several religions and languages. As a result, there are often no culturally accepted behaviors. In a sense, Singapore does not really fit the traditional definition of a nation, and instead has been called a society in transition. In contrast, Turkey has a very strong cultural identity rooted deeply in the country's history and predominant religion, Islam.
The two country's governments are also extremely different. Singapore is a de-facto one-party state; the dominant party, the PAP, has won every single general election since the first one. In contrast, Turkey is a multi-party system, which creates very complex dynamics in the political landscape.
I can go on, but you get the idea. Hopefully.
[1]Table 10 in http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa580.pdf
You should ask Shane Todd about that.
- Singapore is the least corrupt country in the world because of extremely tough laws that were enacted in the past.
- I'll give you that Singapore is much more diverse, but note that China also wants to adopt a Singapore model and has an incredibly strong cultural identity.
- A quick lookup shows that Erdoğan has been in office for the longest time since the 60s (three terms). To me, fears of Turkey becoming a de facto one-party state seems justified, at least absent any other information.
I'm not sure if listing the differences and similarities of the two countries is even relevant to this particular discussion. The thesis was that Turkey might be trying to adopt a Singapore model of using economic growth and social order to offset the demand for political freedom. It doesn't actually matter how different the countries are if the government objectives are similar.
There are other indications that Turkey is turning into an Islamic (Sunni in particular) state and our culture is being destroyed. Scientists and artists are ridiculed routinely by the politicians in power. They destroyed Turkish Academy of Sciences. They shut down Feza Gürsey institute. They fired majority of people who made Pardus GNU/Linux distribution and Göktürk satellite from TÜBİTAK.
Unfortunately, this is no joke.
I am no supporter of current Government, but most things you say can be counter-answered.
- Some press reports things less than you like. Some reports with exaggeration. Blame the first group if you want for their cowardice. If second group is alive and kicking, your point is proven to be false.
- Taksim Square was actually totally closed to 1st of May events from 1978 to 2010 . It was this government allowed opening it again. This year there is construction so it was not allowed. I remember the horror in Kadikoy in 1996 tough.
"People could express themselves more freely if they were not religious or if they were against the government. Now they fear retaliation, losing their job etc." This is just your opinion. I cannot really prove the opposite either. Nepotism is there tough, and cannot be avoided regardless of any government.
Journalism issue is problematic and a shame. Most are really PKK related and probably this will change. I cannot say this is something new tough.
"Scientists and artists are ridiculed routinely by the politicians in power" they push each others wrong buttons, and politicians are less tolerable indeed. But apart from 1-2 incidents this cannot be generalized. It is a shame that PM does not have a sense of humor.
To me, Turkish Academy of Sciences issue is overrated. "Most" guys there weren't doing anything useful in terms of science there anyway. They continue their work in universities or in Tubitak without a loss. Handling of Science and Technology by this government can be criticized but for better or worse, they pour perhaps x10 more money on R&D than previous governments.
Do not know what really happened behind pardus and Gokturk issue. Sattelite is on the sky and Pardus turned to Debian, that is what I know.
The events unfolding at the moment shows that it was possible to celebrate the May Day in Taksim. "This year there is construction so it was not allowed." does not hold water.
As I gave an example (the journalists being fired), it is not my opinion, it is a fact. And if you do not observe other examples around you then you are simply not looking. Of course every government benefits their supporters to some extent, but getting journalists fired? When was the last time did that happen? And regardless of this happening before or not, is it not suppression of free speech?
You say, "To me, Turkish Academy of Sciences issue is overrated", to me it is not. To a lot of my scientist friends it is not (For the record, I am an astrophysicist). People spent a lot time and energy to build the Turkish Academy of Sciences and the Feza Gürsey Institute. And I know these developments did hurt scientists for a fact; I work in a university and I am personally affected. They may be pouring more money into R&D but did you look at the projects in the last science project fair? http://www.sendika.org/2013/05/kuran-mucizesinden-seriat-huk... Do you recall what the Science and Technology minister said about faculties of science or the theory of evolution? That's where a lot of money is going. It is hard to quantize how much real science is getting.
The satellite is in the sky and the team that built that satellite is mostly fired. Pardus was an independent distribution, the team that built Pardus is also gutted and the distribution is now a (badly) translated Debian.
May Day issue. To me it holds water. You are dismissing the fact I told you. I put my money on this, once the re-construction is finished (if ever) I bet they will allow it. Mark this thread to remember.
Yes, I dislike the way Government's handling of press. They should never interfere. However, journalists are not being fired by PM. They are fired by their bosses. No matter what, blame and shame is on them. Also, my personal opinion, the fired journalists were mediocre at best. Perhaps they just screwed up and got fired afterwards. They could easily find places in anti-government press. Where are them now?
Sorry that you got personally effected from the Turkish Academy of Sciences issue. But from what I see Academy is very much alive and doing okay. Probably we will not reach to an agreement on this issue. I am not a believer of so called autonomous science academies. For fundamental science, I prefer actual research. And Universities are the places for that.
Also ouch!. Do you base your ideas on a single stupid project on a science fair for high schools? You are a man of Science, I would expect better.
Pardus was meant to replace MS dependency in government desktop and servers. It was funded by Tubitak. There were many full time paid developers. Initial developers were very strong - top notch. Some of them I know personally. But they left the project one by one. It was long ago. Call it miss management, or lack of vision of higher hierarchy, apparently they could not deliver afterwards. After the change of administration, group is dissolved and they went to plan-B. My point of view, Pardus was gone long before. It was not an ideological issue but a management problem. People may disagree with me, or shed light on the issues I do not know, but that is how I see this. I cannot comment on the satellite crew fired because it is hard to follow the correct information. If they were fired without a good reason, why didn't then fight using lawyers and Union? I do not know.
I do believe there is excessive nepotism and communitarianism in governmental institutions today (They may see it as their right, a form of 'revenge'. I call it bullsh*t). Of course It was there before opposing governments, even when republic was founded. There is no way of getting rid of it. Perhaps libertarians are right on this, you can only beat it by making government as small as possible. Okay I am carried away and wrote too much when I could do actually useful things instead.
Of course, not even living anywhere near where you are, I cannot qualify this myself. But my question (that I hope you won't understand as offensive) to you is: Is it possible that you are victim to your somewhat limited horizon and to the possibly biased information that you get from your government?
Do you still think this means "fuck-all"?
(And again: Just trying to get a clear picture of what it is you're saying.)
Assuming the government will go after a few days of riots is naive; however, this is a very significant data point for Erdogan.
Basically, Altayli is a spineless coward and lost the respect of the Turkish people.
(He reminded me of the way Wolf Blitzer moderated some of the presidential debates here in the US. Blitzer also didn't have the balls to ask anything difficult.)
EDIT: all these debates have the political reek of programming language wars... US <-> Lisp; Singapore <-> C++.
You have to go where?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/france/1009...
I think if you want to see practical examples of freedom, you can conquer your own island and start inventing them. No modern nation is going to tolerate very much of it.
I also find it strange that most western European countries outlaw the Nazi party and denying the holocaust. I suspect this only serves to give them more legitimacy in the eyes of society's downtrodden. The American model of dealing with these groups just seems more sustainable. Give them enough room to say all kinds of stupid things.
Le Pen is an ignorant racist. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't give her every opportunity to say all the stupid shit she wants to say.
Corruption on upper levels probably never disappears, but at least on the lower levels, where people really got hurt and dreaded most, things got better with current government. As someone who lived in Turkey for quite long time, I can say I was pleasantly surprised that one didn't have to bribe anyone buy a small property. Before, it would be impossible to buy property without bribing everyone in the land register office including janitor and tea server.
Also, in the recent perceived corruption index charts Turkey's position is not so bad, wish it is much better (54.th in 176 countries, Singapore is 5th. Source: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results)
I really do not know what this map considered as corruption. A little explanation shall sure help!
Also, who says the US is the "land of no corruption"? The US has some famously corrupt cities, states, senators, even a President or two, and has throughout its history. I don't think we're claiming superiority in that department. Are we?
I hate this overly cynical "i get all my politics and ideas from wikileaks and reddit" on how horrible the US. The US is a fairly pleasant place to live in. If you think a speeding ticket is oppression then its really time to grow up.
To be honest I doubt Singapore is on the radar of most HN participants in any shape or form whether positive or negative. Thats not to say that its insignificant - its just that there haven't been any 40k people riots there lately...so not at the front of people's minds.
As for corruption in Singapore, well, let me just say that one of the caveats of these corruption indices is that whether you perceive it. If you are a foreigner visiting Singapore or even a local living here for a while, your daily life in general will probably be pleasant as long as you are not involved in any form of political activism.
Most of the shenanigans in Singapore are related to politics and how the incumbent party has maintained its power. There is a reason for Singapore being placed in the nether regions (144th rank in the Press Freedom Index) in various press freedom rankings and why we are labeled as a "hybrid regime".
As for people who keep gushing about Singapore and how awesome our country is, all I have for them is a wintry smile and the old phrase, "Not all that glitters is gold".
I haven't lived in either, but I did live as a child under dictatorship until I was 7 years old and 1989 happened. My parents and grandparents have fresh memories of the dynamics at play in our country and did their best to explain them to me.
I do have a problem with the quoted statement.
It really depends on how you define corruption. If you define it as fraudulent behaviour by those in power, well, technically those in power do not need to behave fraudulently if they bend the law to support whatever they want to do. On paper, at some point Romania was amongst the least corrupted countries in the world. In practice, our society was rotten at its core.
Ending corruption is not the end goal in itself, corruption being a symptom of other problems in society, like the ability to live free, free to build a business, free to own stuff, free to put food on the table, free to have your own voice and your own opinions and beliefs, free to be happy. Not having corruption can either mean that the problems have been solved, or that those in power forwarded whatever agenda they wanted while crushing all opposition. This is especially doable if the country is doing well economically, such that its citizens do not have to worry about putting food on the table, or providing quality health-care to their family or whatever basic needs humans have. The true test that a form of government faces in regards to corruption is not when things are going well economically, but rather when things go awry and one thing to keep in mind is that corruption also goes bottom-up, starting with normal people closing their eyes at fraudulent behaviour of which they themselves are guilty of.
Also, I do have Turkish friends and I have visited Istanbul twice and judging by their own stories of Istanbul, by how the city evolved during my visits and by how dynamic it is, Istanbul is in my top 10 cities I'd want to live in, while Singapore is not.
The Turkish Prime Minister expressing his concerns on news spreading, "There is now a menace which is called Twitter. The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”
http://goo.gl/MLTCL (Washington Post)
Some stuff is not like other stuff -
http://pawelmorski.com/2013/06/02/turkey-some-stuff-isnt-ver...
This is messy and local and not understandable through pie-in-the-sky comparisons and metaphors and abstractions (or by reading clippings-job 'intelligence services', ZeroHedge-meets-Mossad-reject conspiracy theorists, or the propaganda plants of every Middle Eastern talking-point mill)
Just read TFA and ignore the out-of-body hallucinatory comments.
Hugh Pope is also pretty good
http://hughpope.com/2013/06/01/a-ringside-seat-as-istanbul-p...
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/12/120312fa_fact_...
The problem in Turkey is more depressing than "Singaporification": Turkey economy is growing but political, administrative, and legal system is not keeping with it. For instance, corruption is still rampant.
This seems to be the sort of opinion only a person who does not live in said hideous hellscape could support. While I (Singaporean) do not agree with everything the government does, I would definitely much rather live here than in North Korea.
You could have an authoritarian government that routinely tortures and executes political opposition and severely punishes minor crimes that ends up with the support of the majority of the populace because they like clean streets and a strong economy. That sort of government would be extremely difficult to uproot.
This article is grossly misleading. Papers and televisions are showing what is going on, one can read from internet [11, 12, 13], and express his opinion. I live in States and even I can access all these information from here. Turkey is a democracy with multi party system similar to France since 1946. Unfortunately the minority group who held the power in Turkey for decades lost their control of most of the government and state after years of corruption with 2002 elections. In 2001 Turkish economy experienced a similar economic meltdown after a "soft" coup of the people who support and make the current demonstrations. The economic repercussions was so deep it effected almost everyone similar to what has been going on in Greece and Spain. Since then the new government handled economy and democratic process so well, even in the current terrible economic situation of the world Turkey managed to become the fastest growing economy in Europe. Turkey has made the last debt payment to IMF couple of weeks ago. For the first time her existence Turkish economy's credit rating became investment grade by Moody's on May 17th this year[1]. Most importantly the clash with the Kurdish minority ended with a new peace process. This is by far the most important achievement of the current government given the 30 years of history of violence in South Easy of Turkey. Over 40K people have died since it started in 1980.
The person who wrote this article and those demonstrators are hoping to show their anger towards the government akin to Egypt's Tahrir Square demonstrations. However this is all reading it backwards. Current government is popularly supported by the people and the support has increased with each consecutive poll since 2002, leading to 50% [3] of the popular vote the last time. This government is leading a commission and effort to write a new constituition to raise the standards of human rights in Turkey. This is one of the biggest selling point to end the Kurdish violence since they now feel their rights will be protected better in the future. Current constitution is put together in 1980 by the people who engineered the last "hard" coup in Turkey [5], a coup literally executed with brute force, guns and tanks. With this government the efforts to get into EU increased tremendously [6] and actually it has been their strategy to balance the power in Turkey against Military's long standing anti-democratic ambitions and practices.
Recent demonstrations at a park in Istanbul got bigger by exploiting the grossly wrong police brutality. Unfortunately where there is demonstration be it in US [7], Spain [8] or Greece [9], in any country the police is very heavy handed. Otherwise the park that is in middle of the city is part of project [10] that will transform the area and close all the motor vehicle traffic and allow only pedestrians. This is going to be done by diverting traffic to underground roads that will be build as part of the project. Decision for the project taken by the people who was elected including members both from ruling and opposition party, and was voted unanimously.
Author of this article and those demonstrators are supporting the old regime. A regime that dictates certain ideology build around a cult leader like the ones in former Soviet Union, China and North Korea. Ours is Ataturk. You have to think like them, act like them, speak like them, live like them. During my mandatory military service I was forced to memorize who is Ataturk which was a list of 10 items that goes like this: 1) Ataturk was the best person in the world 2) Ataturk was best statesman in the world 3) Ataturk is the best military leader in the world. And thise list goes on and on...
Let me give you an example of what this people againts. Can you buy liquor after certain hours in States? Can you walk with an open beer can, alcohol bottle? No, because in States, varying by state, shops can not sell alcohol after 10pm or 2am. For example in England even places where liquor served as part of the service has to close by 1am. When this government made a similar, banning sale of alchol from 10pm to 6am, these people made a big noise. This is one of the arguments they have been telling during these demonstrations.
edit-1: I added some more references.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-16/turkey-raised-to-in... [2] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/25/turkey-justice-central-ku... [3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13740147 [4] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-10/turkey-s-kurtulmus-... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Turkish_coup_d%C3%A9tat [6] http://www.cfr.org/turkey/turkeys-eu-bid/p8939 [7] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/UC-Davis-pepper-spraye... [8] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/29/spain-riot-polic... [9] http://www.businessinsider.com/greek-police-brutality-2011-6 [10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opean5HeR-8 [11] http://gundem.milliyet.com.tr/basbakanlik-a-yurumek-isteyen/... [12] http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/23426620.asp [13] http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/gosterilerde_ilk_can_kaybi...
This wraps up the 'real' situation perfectly. Well put, sir. As a Turkish citizen, thank you for speaking the truth!
today the minister called, 'there is this damned twitter, ruining our society...'
so turks use now, twitter, facebook, foursquare, ustream tv, tumblr as 'the media'..
The youths are protesting because what was once a fairly liberal set of standards is rapidly being removed.
Ironically, it was the military that protected this set of freedoms.
Erdogan's big accomplishment was to be moderate enough in his political Islamism that he didn't trigger a military coup. Further, the European Union disapproved of Turkey's history of military coups, making it clear that they weren't going to admit a country that relied on military coups to defend its constitution from democracy. So the military did not remove Erdogan, despite the AKP's moderate Islamic agenda.
The military is a conservative force in Turkish society insofar as it defends an interpretation of the constitution and politics rooted in Ataturk's ideology from the 1920s. But it is not a conservative force in the socially conservative political Islam sense. You should not be surprised that secular urban youth and the Turkish military end up on the same side.
This is a general problem I have with such active counter-protests, be they to stop a station from being built (Stuttgart 21, [0]) or to block a legitimate demonstration of right-wing idiots. The rights to free speech, to assemble and to demonstrate are important, but in my opinion the right to demonstrate/protest in a specific location does not trump the right of the majority to implement a democratically made decision or the right of a minority to voice their opinion.
That said, there are obviously cases were a small minority has the right to (even violently) protest a decision made by the majority[1], but building a shopping mall in a park is not one of them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution , e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision?
I think this is getting at the heart of civil disobedience: the violation of laws or decrees considered unjust.
I know nothing about the Turkish protests, but another example of civil disobedience is Martin Luther King, Jr. He committed crimes, technically, as he protested. But I don't think that it makes sense to say that MLK's protesting == overturning democracy in America. By analogy, it's hard to imagine civil disobedience in Turkey to be overthrowing democracy there.
Then, as I said, the matter is difficult – essentially you have to weigh the predictable functioning of the democratic process against the damage that can be done to people if this process ‘goes wrong’. Unfortunately, this has a whole bunch of problems:
- we do not have a universal definition of when a democratic decision is so wrong it is acceptable for someone to stand up against it
- that someone has to judge objectively whether his rights were violated in such a way that he is justified to stand up against the democratic will
- in many cases, we do not know what the majority ‘really’ wants
- even if a given system/constitution has securities that allow people to stand up against democratically made decisions, these might be seen as either too lax or too restrictive.
For example, the German constitution would allow the people to overthrow a democratic government that wants to cut back on social security in such a way as to violate article 20 of the Basic Law[0] – in the US, on the other hand, people apparently sometimes feel obliged to oppose a government that wants to introduce such social security. If even two relatively similar western societies cannot agree on when it is acceptable to overrule a democratic decision, how can we expect to find universal rules for that on a global scale?
In essence, it is a philosophical discussion on how much you respect democratic decisions as compared to the rights of individuals, and whether or not you only accept positive law or also include some ‘natural’ law in your decision-making.
I tend to like both democracy and positive law, but YMMV, of course. :)
[0] It defines Germany as a ‘social federal state’, does not allow to change that definition, and allows everyone to take up arms against those trying to change it, provided that all other means have been exhausted.
I don't think that the nature of civil disobedience is disregarding laws. To the contrary, I think it can be found in regarding laws very carefully and choosing when and how to break such laws for maximum impact; then, by freely suffering the consequences for even greater impact. (This is a general point; I do not mean to imply that the Turkish protests are civil disobedience; I don't know enough yet to judge.)
I'd bet that the reason this has grown so quickly doesn't have much to do with individual gripes but that lack of trust and a feeling of disenfranchisement from that government. Compounded with rumours that government they don't have faith in could very well be going to war against a country with stock piles of nerve gas capable of hitting major settlements. Offering the crowds some security within themselves that the government is no longer emanating.
Ask yourself in that scenario, with the risk of sarin gas hitting your home, families home, government cold and distant,would you also go protest? I know I would.
how so? democracy is not limited to counting votes and stfu until the next election. it's not like authorities haven't been removed from office before and decisions haven't been changed due to public disapproval. getting into office is not a free pass for half a decade. acta protests were anti-democratic too?
And yes, if ACTA protests had cut other people’s telecom lines to the US or some such thing, I would have called them anti-democratic, too.
To me, a decent society is based on (among others) the state’s monopoly on the use of force, with the legally acceptable force limited to implement decisions made by the legislative (and judiciary). Random guy simply has no right to ‘protest’ against something by force.
(Also your shift key is a little broken, it appears, making it somewhat difficult to read your post.)
my bet of the little i worked on politics is that someone have campaign money, got the park land in return. I highly doubt there was much calls for discussion on the mater.
This happened in Germany some time ago. The plebiscity for demolishing the park was voted against twice, then they came up with a third voting in the middle of a holiday, with 8h of warning or something similar. When the bulldozers came to the park people were still believing they were there illegally because the permit was not voted for.
I don’t know to which event exactly you’re referring, but I can assure you that
> 8h of warning or something similar.
this is most certainly false. Could you elaborate a bit?
(Also note that practically all votes/plebiscites take place on Sundays in Germany so that as many people as possible can vote.)
But there is a documentary about it... fairly recent one, I just can't find it knowing only that it was a park in Germany.
but the idea is the same. even if you vote for your representatives for one reason or another, in the end, the party that ensure majority, gets to decide on the details.
You seem to labor under the false belief that simply because something is voted upon, it is infallibly a correct decision.
Not every law, resolution and ordinance passed is actually good for all the persons it effects. Laws can be extremely adverse for sections of the public, but pass anyways due to disregard or active dislike by larger groups. Expecting people to knuckle under without further resistance simply because they've been outvoted is ridiculous.
Protesting via passive resistance is an excellent way to peacefully make known that something is extremely adverse to your section of the public, without damage to property or persons.
Your "decent society" is a society of insects, bowing to authority unconditionally rather than with individual consideration, without the will to resist evils where they encounter them.
Your equation of the "passive violence" of standing in front of a bulldozer with the active violence of spreading nuclear waste in an area seems purposely made to incite an outraged response. The lack of consideration for the difference in proportion between delaying construction and permanently poisoning an area with nuclear waste shows a damning extremism of thought. It is such equivocations that allows the justification of atrocity when other methods would better do.
Your choice to end your comment with a snide remark on zalew's lack of capitalization makes me wonder whether you believe a word of it, or are simply crafting your response to be purposefully invective for your amusement.
And you seem to labor under the false belief that simply because someone protested something, it is infallibly a correct decision.
I really don’t know. One of the confusing (to me) things here is that Erdogan, i.e. the prime minister of the whole of Turkey, appears to control both whether the mall is being built and the local police force, or, in other words, apparently the whole country (as opposed to a local district) can decide on whether to build a mall in some place or not.
And then I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of the rural and likely conservative population of Turkey actually wants to move into what they think is the 21st century.
No, it appears rampant corruption in the construction industry (with the perception it is privately benefiting the Turkish PM and his political party) led to a decision not 'in the name of the people'. [1]
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
If we assume the reporting so far is reasonably accurate, they are protesting against the erosion of democracy by an increasingly authoritarian PM and corrupted political party which he leads.
It is darkly ironic that you'd attempt to portray their efforts as anti-democratic.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/01/erdogan-grip-tur...
I think this is serious misunderstanding of what is now going on in Turkey. The 'mall in park' thing was just a trigger. I understand that you are somehow comparing this to Stuttgart protests but from what I read about it I think this is totally different situation.
Example: I was born in a country occupied by Russians. And there were some protests (even violent) triggered by things like our hockey team beating Russian team at the Olympics. Of course that this had nothing to do with ice hockey and everything to do with the tension and unhappiness that builds up for years.
> This is disgusting, the "right" to profit/property is the least important thing, it should never trump people's well-being or the environment.
which I interpreted as just that.
[0] Whether that ‘more’ is better is, given the levels of violence, rather subjective.
So what? If yours "democratically-elected government" orders you("in the name of the people", of course) to kill jews, will you comply?
> are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
So what? When majority votes, does it protect personal interests of someone else?
> e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision?
You have so much subordination to government-made law, so even if you would really want to overthrow tyrannic government, you would stop because there is no law allowing you to revolt?
Initial protest was quite small and not many people paid attention to it until the police used ridiculous level of force to disperse the protesters. That's the action that triggered mass protests all over the country.
So true democracy is a bunch of people who stand up for their community, or at least that is far less flawed or corrupt than the system as it stands.
As for the right wing idiot thing - I disagree. I love the place I live in, if some arseholes come along and threaten, intimidate people here, then of course I think it just to counter-protest, vastly outnumber them, and make it clear that they are not welcome.
Even with that background, the reporting by the mainstream media about the events of the last couple of days has been a disgrace, and social media is filling the void.
The following is the most insightful analysis I've seen on this topic "Is there a Social-Media Fueled Protest Style? An Analysis From #jan25 to #geziparki "http://technosociology.org/?p=1255
"There is now a menace which is called Twitter," Erdogan
said. "The best examples of lies can be found there. To me,
social media is the worst menace to society."
Oh, also he had portrayed himself as a victim. This is the achilles heel of Turkish people. They love you unconditionally if they think you are victim. (I am Turkish)
AFAIK, general population is no more or no less liberal compared to 10 years ago. Honestly they weren't/aren't quite liberal.
I should note that Hürriyet is historically quite unfriendly to Erdoğan; in particular (IIRC) it raised quite a bit of noise when Doğan Holdings, which owns Hürriyet, underwent tax fraud investigations that may have been politically motivated.
[1] for example: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1fi07t/im_so_conf...
(from saurik's comment)
It might very well be sort of 'we are going to kill this park one way or the other' type of situation. Once all the trees are dead, they could properly develop the park with relatively few protests.
It is insane, of course, but it seems that some governments are prepared to do absolutely anything to their citizens so long as they think they can get away with it and while they usually can get away with it they also have no understanding that getting away with these kinds of things are like a cliff-drop: you can go closer and closer to the edge and then you go one step too far and the entire thing unravels.
Usually at this point the governments try to oppress them a little more, rather than back away, and that is when the real explosion happens.
A chemical weapons expert interviewed by a Swedish newspaper said that it is unlikely that Turkey actually used agent orange. They do refer to it Orange Gas but I don't know if that is actually different from Agent Orange?
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/polisen-anvander-kemiska-st... Unfortunately only available in Swedish, but Google translate should make it at least somewhat readable.
I'd find it hard to believe that anything closely resembling it is used by any sane police force, that seems like it would be classified as chemical warfare?
Why would Turkey resort to chemical warfare when they don't have to, why risk the wrath of the international community when you can 'just' use tear gas and such?
> > It is incredibly toxic and forbidden by the UN after the horrific effects it had on both the Vietnamese and Americans exposed to it.
It's not forbidden by the UN, the active ingredient is 2,4-D and is the 3rd most used herbicide in america.
The other ingredient 2,4,5-T is non toxic, but making it commonly contaminates it with the very toxic 2,3,7,8.
I still haven't heard anything about it actually being used there, but would that seem at all reasonable to you? A police force that uses tear gas and don't want to kill people, would they plausibly use such a derivative for the same purpose?
When they say it's a derivative, they most probably mean that they saw something orange, and that is why they call it Agent Orange. Unfortunately, the average person seeing teargas is fairly ignorant about chemistry and biology. It makes no sense to spread a herbicide in a demonstration. It is harmful in the long term but has no impact on people in the short term, thus is just no use in that situation.
Agent Orange was called AO because the containers it came in had an orange strip. The substance itself is colourless, just like the same herbicides today. And is not particularly toxic to humans, the problem in Vietnam was trace amounts of dioxin in manufacturing the 2,4,5-T component.
All the media and reddit pictures are from the side of the protesters, a few pictures of people who get knocked in the head with a tear gas container != cops beating and shooting innocent people as they would have you believe.
Also from empirical evidence as an American who spent two weeks in Istanbul last year I've found the city and police to be totally welcoming and open ... to include bar crawls around taksim, walking 20 miles on foot through every nieghborhood in the city, to visiting some of the holiest artifacts in Islam at topkapi palace.
I'd like to see the other side of this... I understand the government has been culling the ranks of the top military to weaken their influence and push the Islamist agenda.. I do, but that said, turkey is not syria or iraq, it is a large cosmopolitan and wonderful country I would hate to see it destroyed.
Edit: I'll add for reference if it matters I'm a large, shaved headed and tattooed, obviously american man, who was a solo traveler.
http://gothamist.com/2010/06/01/cooper_union_student_loses_e...
At this point they're lawless thugs with guns.
How to help: Even sending a picture, with your city name and a support message (even only a support message) may be will change his mind. Please send your tweet with support message and #direngeziparki #direnturkiye or #direnankara hash tags. (which means in order "resist gezi park", "resist turkey", "resist ankara". gezi park is the start point of the protest, Ankara is (the captial) city where cops hitting people right now)
Even writing in your language will help us to reach more people. You could write whatever you think about "fascism". For sure he got 50% vote, but it does not mean he will not listen the other 50%.
First, it's not an Istanbul thing anymore, many Turkish cities, especially Izmir and Ankara witnessed large protests and clashes with the police in the past couple of days.
On paper, this started with a small group of protesters sitting in the park to stop its demolition and cutting down the trees on Monday. That evening and at 5am on Tuesday morning they were violently attacked by the police. The attacks continued on Wednesday. The appalling police brutality unfortunately is nothing new in Turkey but this time it triggered an unexpected reaction from a wide swath of people.
People's discontent with AKP has been rising for some time, although they have provided a stable economy for the past 10 years. Some of the recent events have really notched it up, though, e.g.:
* The fact that government made no official plans to celebrate the May 19th holiday, which is an important day in the creation of the Turkish Republic (mirroring their approach to the October 29th holiday, which is like July 4th for Turkey)
* Lack of adequate response from PM Erdogan to the bombing in Reyhanli. Rather than cancel his visit to the US to visit the town, he went with his original plan. A lot of people thought that he brought such terrorist activities on Turkey due to his agressive rhetoric on Essad and his strong support of the dissidents there.
* The recent ban on the sale of alcohol between 10pm and 6am (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/31/turkey-alcohol-l...). This was an unheard-of move that angered a lot of people, not because Turkey consumes a lot of alcohol but it was interpreted as a step to the Islamic Law.
What really surprised me (and I witnessed many a protest and a few military coups there) was the exponential growth of the protest and its apolitical nature. Before, people used to write the usual leftist slogans on the walls, this time there were a lot of funny graffiti about Erdogan, the police and the pepper gas (examples at https://eksisozluk.com/gezi-parki-isgali-duvar-yazilari--385..., for Turkish readers).
Due to the wide use of social media there were some disinfomation as expected, spread around by excited people, e.g. that the police was using Agent Orange. This was due to the China-like complacency of the Turkish media. In fact, when CNN International was transmitting live from the riots in Istanbul CNN Turk was running a documentary about penguins! The reason for this is two-fold: the intimidation of reporters in the past 2-3 years (e.g. see the OdaTV case, where the owner of a TV station and reporters were swiftly jailed with scant evidence when they criticized the government: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/world/europe/soner-yalcin-...). The other reason is the financial blackmail that the government exercises over large media conglomerates, e.g. when the Dogan group got a colossal $2.3B tax fine in 2009.
As for the "police sprayed my friend yesterday", it wasn't just that, the level of brutality was amazing.
After the initial protests, indeed it really boils down to an unrest against police brutality in first days. I cannot see any compelling reason other than that. And now they are just protesting for sake of protesting (sadly with vandalism and aggression).
People gathered back at 1pm, and did yet another peaceful sit in. Protestors red eachother and the police books, sang songs. Police attacked them yet again with tear gas and pressurized water. Strike #2.
They kept doing do over and over again for the next few days even though the protestors STILL were not causing damage. Strike #3.
They, "unknown" civilian groups were photographed, carrying sticks and beating people while the police is holding them. Police beating people. Police aiming with tear gas guns at people and hitting them with it at close range (can cause severe trauma by the sheer speed of the canister), and then dancing afterwards in joy. Strike #4.
Also, you seem to be a Turkish speaker, so you know the significance of all those things that you're saying "Seriously?" to. Trivializing it won't help.
For example, while there are no doubt many shopping malls in Istanbul, I doubt there is "at least one in every neighborhood!" (unless that word is better translated as something more like a suburb)
This makes it harder to trust all of the details of the more serious accounts of police aggression, or the simplifed context of things like "The whole country is being sold to corporations by the government". As another commenter has pointed out, even photos can end up being from unrelated events.
This is not to say that this person's perspective is not extremely important, or that the Turkish state is not committing indefensible acts of aggression. It's just harder for outsiders to piece together a full and accurate picture of what is happening. Fortunately, multiple individual perspectives can help corroborate and enhance the picture to quite a degree.
Edit: Certainly media has biases too, although there are at least in theory standards for verifying reported facts, and the bias is (often) more about what they choose not report or what context is not given.
Edit: good points by buro as well. This account and others may well be very reliable, I'm more speaking from experience with past events that were reported in similar ways where key important facts turned out to be wrong or missing. (I know, that happens sometimes in traditional media too)
This is true for well-reported or over-reported events too. It's always an individual who reporting things, and thus the process of reporting itself involuntarily bakes in the opinion or ideology of the agent reporting the issue. It's up to us to take whatever we'd want to as credible.
Also in the context of Internet it is more likely to be the absolute truth, after Streisand effect and everything else is done with.
My assumptions in situations like this: No smoke without fire.
Just did a small search on Youtube and found out that reports of civilians been crushed under Panzers is TRUE [1]. And now the discussion on testing credibility and stripping out emotions from reporting standards sounds bullshit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H...
[Edits: Added a link to a video of individual being crushed under a anti-riot Panzer vehicle. Not very graphic, but serious.]
And yup, there are a phenomenal number of shopping malls, some only a couple of hundred meters from another.
I did spot check quite a few, looked at a few of the websites, and they are all multi-level, large shopping malls.
In fact this one is a mere 300m from Gezi Park: http://www.demirorenistiklal.com/
The great thing about the internet is that it is possible to get a sense of whether a claim is true or not very swiftly.
On the one fact you doubt and then use as an example to undermine the rest of the argument, a quick search verifies that claim. (Should you revisit the doubt you extended to the rest of the argument in light of some evidence to the claims that you used to undermine it?)
Of course there is emotion in there too (the government selling the nation to corporations), but we're mostly rational and will spot that surely.
The fundamental question is whether or not the reports in general speak of a true event, and overwhelmingly they do appear so. The level of consistency in the very many reports and sources is too much to be attributable and dismissed as any individual being emotional... of course they are emotional; some of their friends, family and fellow citizens are dead, others are in hospital or jail.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=shopping+mall&hl=en&l...
These results seem pretty lousy and not particularly different from those from Istanbul.
That's a really bad set of results for NYC though.
They are usually huge. I was very surprise because in my home country, Portugal, we used to believe we had a lot of malls (we do) but Istanbul is just unbelievable.
Back to Istanbul, in Levent (near the financial district) you can have three right next to each other. On one of my stays there my hotel was actually around the corner from one of this malls.
I also have some difficulty with the idea that people are heading out to the streets, risking life and limb, in multiple cities across Turkey just because of a mall in Istanbul.
The notion that we can figure this out just by hitting google maps seems obviously wrong.
* The original claim on the blog
* Some research a poster here helpfully did using Google maps and web searches to verify
* Stories from multiple people who have visited Istanbul in person and can compare to other european cities
... you are still banging the drum of "You can't answer a question just by checking the internet!"
I wonder: what kind of evidence would get you to the point where you might believe such a claim?
This kind of comment appears in practically Every. Single. news discussion. Can't we just make a blanket statement like this as a sticky, and put it at the top of each story? A kind of brief disclaimer or IANAL?
"Shopping centers can be considered as a very young concept in Turkey, since the history goes back only to the late 80s. However, once the malls appeared on the shopping scene, the Turks embraced them. Almost every neighborhood has at least one." http://www.wittistanbul.com/magazine/top-9-shopping-centers-...
That said, it's not a literal statement. It's about rapid gentrification. It's happening all over Europe if not the world. It can get especially nasty when mixed with corruption, since there is great incentive to support large businesses over local ones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/world/middleeast/05iht-m05... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.1011/abstract
Take the Arab Spring: is there more liberty, better law, better civil rights in the countries where the dictators were overthrown? I'm unclear on that, and certainly some places have moved from secular, predictable dictatorship to a very unpredictable, unstable situation.
The original protest was about the ruling party abusing their majority at the polls in such a way that they didn't feel bothered to listen to any opposing view or legitimate concern.
After the unjust and extremely heavy-handed police response, the original protest turned into something much larger, with new support from concerned regular citizens. In fact, since the police response has not become any better, some of the people that voted for the ruling party seem to have changed their positions in support of the protesters.
As a result, I think the Turkish PM lost whatever credibility he had abroad, along with his perceived role as a mediator for the Syrian conflict. I hope these demonstrations conclude in a peaceful way and cause Erdogan to rethink his (obviously limited) understanding of how democracy should work. If not, I'm afraid the country may not be able to hold off the fraction of the Turkish military that would want to step in and take over once again.
Besides the philosophical question of whether it's a good thing for a city, I just don't understand the economics of it. How do all these places coexist? Where does the demand and up-front money come from? Is there actually real demand at all, or is it just completely manufactured/delusional (build it and they will come!)? When I lived there, people's shopping needs seemed fulfilled, and the population has flatlined since then [1]. I heard tell of some EU grants involved. Overall, it just doesn't seem sustainable from an economic perspective, even in the short-term.
[1] http://www.citypopulation.de/php/poland-zachodniopomorskie.p...
Thousands of people of all ages gathered without any formal notice, just by friend to friend, neighbour to neighbour; didn't allow provocation; resisted days of assault; assured the security of the park; almost all of the other big cities supported by protesting; protesters cleaned up their own mass, junks collected;
I guess this is a simple description without political adds.
Any of those places reporting troubles? Or is it all in the streets and park itself?
* Evidence collection site for police violence: http://delilimvar.tumblr.com/
* Police and pro-government militia attacking innocent people: http://pic.twitter.com/QTunT6irOF
http://f.cl.ly/items/263f2A3T0b093I2D0r2G/alsancak%2002.06.2...
http://24.media.tumblr.com/339ecfc6a17e0d372896dcf1065672b6/...
* Streets and residential areas indiscriminately turned into gas chambers: http://youtu.be/WaDT1KPEuB8
* More photos: http://geziyardim.com/
* [Turkish] Live feeds: http://www.geziparkicanli.com/
Him and his wife were caught in the midst of a riot and teargassed. They saw tons of public urination and most of the protestors are 25 or younger and drunk + smashing beer glasses all over...
Wait, I thought Syria/Assad is the bad guy. The Turkish people support Assad but the Turkish government doesn't? Now I'm confused.
Turkey people haven't support Assad or the groups against to him. Turkey folks always supported helping to syrian refugee, thats all. As folk wanted, Turkey government helping the syrian refugee while supported the groups againist to Assad. The supporting groups goverment's initiative.
The problem of the Turkey is between folk and government. Its not unfixable, we'd like to government's support even small groups like gay's, homeless people, women rights. We don't want despot behaviours form cops to folk. Basicly the protests are about small problems, to be have better democracy, as well as better even some part of europe/usa.
edit: typo
And the "people" don't always support things that a western person would agree with. People always assume that if there is a popular revolt it would always be in the direction of democracy and secularism - it's not so at all.
Don't support a popular revolt just because it's by the populace. Support it if you think it's right. And if you don't understand the situation then reserve judgment.
Isn't this what is going on? Terrible if you're a native of Istanbul, but hardly something to worry about if you're one of the 50 million Turks that doesn't live in Istanbul and doesn't share that city's liberal standards?
How does a NIMBY protest turn into Tiananmen Square? Does someone in government actually say, "They don't want malls? THEN GIVE THEM TANKS!!!"
Why would a government that has "sold out to corporations" restrict the sale of lipstick and alcohol?
Governments are groups of people that are at least partially restrained by the wills and opinions of other, much larger groups of people. People are very complex. If you are expecting the government to have rules that it follows 100% of the time, you will be disappointed.
A rule such as restricting lipstick sales is something that is mostly inconsequential that the government can still point to and say "See, we don't just blindly do what megacorps tell us to!"
What it really does is to keep the government in power by pandering to extremists. Rational and well-informed people don't respond well to the imposition of corporate oligarchy. If that's what you intend to do, you've lost the support of those people. Now you need the support of someone else. Religious extremists fit the bill nicely, because although hardly anyone will actually prefer corporate oligarchy, there are people who place more value on "conservative values" than they do on economics, so you ban some lipstick and you restrict abortions and those people support you no matter what else you do.
You see the same thing with the Republican party in the US.
"Court suspends planned Artillery Barracks project to replace Gezi Park. An administrative court has suspended the conversion project in the lung of Istanbul."
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/court-suspends-planned-arti...
Once the government starts attacking its people, all bets are off... emotion will trump reason and bad shit happens, often to innocent bystanders or property in the vicinity.
The police "attacking" is NOT a free pass to turn cars, throw stones or loot shops. You are always ultimately responsible for you own actions, and you're also responsible for being associated with bad actions if you stand by quietly when they are going on.
What are you disagreeing with? I didn't state a position on the matter, or at least didn't intend to.
> The police "attacking" is NOT a free pass to turn cars, throw stones or loot shops.
Yes of course; I never stated that it was.
That behavior however, is a predictable occurrence when there is enough anger in a mob and herd mentality kicks in.
OK. But as it did not end peacefully, not really relevant.
> The government escalated the situation when they tear-gassed peaceful protestors.
How is this relevant except to excuse the behaviour? The protesters didn't respond to the escalation by consolidating their resolve and standing their ground, they started destroying random people's property.
> Once the government starts attacking its people, all bets are off... emotion will trump reason and bad shit happens, often to innocent bystanders or property in the vicinity.
You indicate that the government bear the responsibility for this "bad shit" happening. They might trigger it, in the same way a big row triggers that someone hits someone else.
Edit: I'm pretty sure that what's going on isn't that random peaceful protesters turned violent, but rather that this protest, like most other protests bound to clash with the police, is "anarchist" catnip. These troublemakers will turn up under the guise of being part of a legitimate, peaceful protest, and at the first sliver of police yielding power, they'll let go and start their regular regiment of vandalism and violence. I'm no sure what the best response is for the legitimate peaceful protesters in this case, though.
Usually if protesters are well versed in such tactics the ring of strongest forms the ring around rest of the mass to protect them from interlopers that would give police a provocation they needed to attack the protesters or to delegimitize them.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I know this acquaintance had no reason to lie to me, it came up in regular conversation. I don't have any archive material to corroborate but I could try to find something.
Considering that the Turkish government is trying to make the protestors look bad so they have justification for going overboard in their earlier treatment of them, it's more likely that plain-clothes police officers looted those stores and overturned the cars.
When something violent and destructive happens, look at who did the last such thing.
What's worst is that Erdogan is a strong-arm leader who most likely won't be going away anytime soon. The best hope for these protesters is that the opposition party gets their act together, which I see no evidence of; they've had the same idiot running against Erdogan for as long as I can remember.
http://www.firstpost.com/world/protesters-defiant-as-turkey-...
https://www.facebook.com/geziparkidirenisi (330,000 Likes in less than 72 hours)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22744728 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22744895 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22740506 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20028295 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22740038
Why would you say something so absolute with out even checking? Are you one of those weirdo instant BBC haters?
Anyway, I think you are wondering why this news is on Hackernews. I'd say it's because there are a lot of politically conscience people here, who care about what's going on in the world.
One point I think people miss is that the content of this site does not necessarily have to be related to tech (though usually is). I personally come here for the discussion that results from the submissions, and world news like this is important to me. And I'd like to be able to discuss the news/situation with other people of similar educations, vocations and mindsets.
At some point people have to be held personally responsible for their wrong doings. They shouldn't be absolved of personal responsibility just because they're in the police force, which is being commanded by some nutcrack dictator.
Please think before you write such things. That's not outright hate speech but it sure leads to hateful actions.
In the end it's people from within the society that join governmental organizations and inflict torture / injustice on rest of the society.
The person who wrote this article and those demonstrators are hoping to show their anger towards the government akin to Egypt's Tahrir Square demonstrations. However this is all reading it backwards. Current government is popularly supported by the people and the support has increased with each consecutive poll since 2002, leading to 50% [3] of the popular vote the last time. This government is leading a commission and effort to write a new constituition to raise the standards of human rights in Turkey. This is one of the biggest selling point to end the Kurdish violence since they now feel their rights will be protected better in the future. Current constitution is put together in 1980 by the people who engineered the last "hard" coup in Turkey [5], a coup literally executed with brute force, guns and tanks. With this government the efforts to get into EU increased tremendously [6] and actually it has been their strategy to balance the power in Turkey against Military's long standing anti-democratic ambitions and practices.
Recent demonstrations at a park in Istanbul got bigger by exploiting the grossly wrong police brutality. Unfortunately where there is demonstration be it in US [7], Spain [8] or Greece [9], in any country the police is very heavy handed. Otherwise the park that is in middle of the city is part of project [10] that will transform the area and close all the motor vehicle traffic and allow only pedestrians. This is going to be done by diverting traffic to underground roads that will be build as part of the project. Decision for the project taken by the people who was elected including members both from ruling and opposition party, and was voted unanimously.
Author of this article and those demonstrators are supporting the old regime. A regime that dictates certain ideology build around a cult leader like the ones in former Soviet Union, China and North Korea. Ours is Ataturk. You have to think like them, act like them, speak like them, live like them. During my mandatory military service I was forced to memorize who is Ataturk which was a list of 10 items that goes like this: 1) Ataturk was the best person in the world 2) Ataturk was best statesman in the world 3) Ataturk is the best military leader in the world. And thise list goes on and on...
Let me give you an example of what this people againts. Can you buy liquor after certain hours in States? Can you walk with an open beer can, alcohol bottle? No, because in States, varying by state, shops can not sell alcohol after 10pm or 2am. For example in England even places where liquor served as part of the service has to close by 1am. When this government made a similar, banning sale of alchol from 10pm to 6am, these people made a big noise. This is one of the arguments they have been telling during these demonstrations.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-16/turkey-raised-to-in... [2] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/25/turkey-justice-central-ku... [3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13740147 [4] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-10/turkey-s-kurtulmus-... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Turkish_coup_d%C3%A9tat [6] http://www.cfr.org/turkey/turkeys-eu-bid/p8939 [7] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/UC-Davis-pepper-spraye... [8] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/29/spain-riot-polic... [9] http://www.businessinsider.com/greek-police-brutality-2011-6 [10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opean5HeR-8
It's nice to see that the fight against heroin prohibition is being fought in Turkey too!
That is extremely serious. My condolences with those who lost their lives, and best wishes for your friend to recover from her injury.
While we all discuss and throw ourselves around when a dying industry (read Hollywood) misbehaves and tries to screw with our Internet freedoms, free speech etc. I wonder what would when happen when the same fate, and it is coming, falls on the Governments of the world.
A dying model of Governance could take things to a rather unprecedented level of nastiness and cruelty.
That said:
> A dying model of Governance could take things to a rather unprecedented level of nastiness and cruelty.
You haven't paid much attention these last 250 years?
Of course people benefiting from Medicare benefits from Medicare, but "championing" Medicare benefits only politicians, because they know better than anyone else that it's going to go away, soon, but they'll happily lie about it in order to get reelected while they wait for it to happen.
Most citizens never hear about it until it's too late because it's not easy to find out about the latest zonings. Trying to have a say in the process? Well, that's a whole new level of obfuscation.
The process is confusing for a reason: to keep concerned citizens like you and me out.
What is happening in Istanbul is happening here too.
The horror!
Educate yourself on urban sprawl and "smart growth": http://www.smartgrowth.org
It is sad to see how many higher density proposals are squelched because they don't fit the vision of Smart Growth planners, or because the developers don't have multiple years worth of cash flow behind them to support the permitting process, public approval process, and zoning approvals process. Oh, and if you happen to want to have small scale low impact manufacturing (such as clothes manufacturing) instead of Mid-Scale retail or B-Class Office space...good luck waiting another few years for the Smart Growth planners to determine if your appeal is "smart" enough for them. These barriers to entry are how Smart Growth developers (like Paul Allen's Vulcan Real Estate) end up owning entire neighborhoods (like Seattle's South Lake Union).
Manhattan was almost completely built out, with an extremely diverse and interesting landscape, long before the planners took over. There is no need for them and their vision.
Or at least that's how it started.
The Occupy Movement was a global one, with protests in over 80 countries. It started there, but it wasn't just a Wall St. thing.
Yes, Occupy was global. I don't know who from where knows how much about it. I was answering a question about why someone might be confused by usage of the term "occupy" when it was unclear whether it was an "Occupy"-brand event vs "hey let's go occupy this space to save it". I referenced the Wall St. thing precisely because that's where Occupy started.
Besides, http://xkcd.com/1053/
Well, it never has been anything else.
It's not a meme. As long as the people are protesting there, the idiots in the government can't claim they have no problem.
Since I see that some friends have got excited about the recent events in Turkey I decided to write something about it and provide some context. I think it is good to know a bit of history of Turkey before AKP to understand what is going on there. It has been more than 10 years that AKP is in power so people might not know or may have forgotten the situation before AKP.
Turkey was ruled by ultra-nationalist ultra-secular militarist groups for decades. The military overthrow several elected governments and jailed politicians. Torture, extra-judicial killings, suppression, and corruption were widespread. The laws that people often object to are from that area and the constitution written by Turkish military, including insulting Turkishness being a crime. These groups who are sometimes referred to as Kemalists had the control of military, judicatory, academia, media, etc. Yet, they couldn't tolerate even the government being in the hands of people they didn't like. The large majority of Turks who are practicing Muslims were excluded. It was illegal to wear a head-scarf in universities and government departments in a country where over 70% of women wears head-scarf. Essentially these women were banned from attending university. Public officials and even university professors would be thrown out and even jailed if they showed any sign of nonsecular tendency. Writers and intellects were jailed for expressing opinions against Kemalist ideology. Erdogan, the current prime minister was jailed and banned from politics for 10 years for reading an old poem while he was the mayor of Istanbul. The existence of Kurds who are around 20 percent of Turkey's population were completely denied (not a joke)! Speaking or reading in Kurdish was banned and the popular Turkish singer Ahmad Kaya was forced to exile for saying that he will record an album in Kurdish. Popular political parties were closed regularly even when they won elections decisively. The news of corruption in police and politics was a regular daily routine as was the news of human rights violations.
In the years before AKP there were several short-lived governments by parties both on the left and on the right. Inflation was very high (hyperinflation), unemployment was high, governments were unstable. The value of Turkish lira dropped to a third in one night. Nightly interest rates tripled to completely ridiculous amount of 139%. You can look at Greece these days to have an idea of Turkey of that time. Turkish foreign policy was essentially dictated by the US government. There was a very harsh IMF imposed economic program so Turkey could pay its debts and a technocrat from world bank was imposed as the economy minister on the Turkish government to make sure they will implement what IMF wanted. The government and the country were in such a bad shape that it is almost unimaginable today after 12 years of AKP.
AKP was formed at that time. Erdogan was still under the ban from politics as well as many prominent politicians from his previous party. But some other politicians from the party were not under the ban. They created a new party: AKP (Justice and Development Party). Its members were moderate and pragmatist politicians from the banned party plus several other pragmatist and moderates from other right of the center parties. The current Turkish President Gul became the head of the party though Erdogan was significantly involved behind the senses. The party won a landslide election and has been continuously doing so for over a decade, increasing its share of votes in every election. You have to know that the length of Turkish governments before AKP to get a feeling of its significance: a few months!
Over a decade AKP has modernized Turkey, removed many of the laws that EU objected to, fought corruption in police and politics, improved the economy to its current amazing state, forced military out of politics, ... Until Syrian crises it had perfect relations with its neighbors. It followed what I would consider an awesome independent foreign policy. It is trying to find a political solution to the Kurdish "problem" and the right of Kurds have improved significantly under AKP. The list of AKP's achievements can go on.
So what is the problem? The problem is that the support base of AKP is not the western oriented seculars, it is the conservative majority who didn't have a voice in politics for decades (the silent majority) as the Kemalist and what Turks call "Deep Government" didn't allow the political parties supported by them. In all elections AKP has lost in the touristic Mediterranean coastal cities and European parts. You can find the map of the last general election results here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_general_election,_2011
Yellow is AKP, red is CHP, and light green is MHP. The south eastern parts are Kurdish areas where independent Kurdish politicians won.
The protests that you see these days are by this secular minority who has been voting for CHP (around 25%, significant, but still a minority).
Now, what are these alternative parties?
MHP is an ultra-nationalist racist conservative far-right party. Look up Wikipedia if you want to know more about them.
CHP is the party of the founder of the Turkey, ruled Turkey for decades in a one-party system, is a Kemalist party. It had strong relations with Turkish military, right now it is essentially the party supported by the elite who ruled Turkey before AKP and their supporters. The elite tried to topple AKP government undemocratically. Try to see if they objected to continuous serious violations of human rights before AKP.
Obviously I don't agree with everything that AKP and Erdogan do. However, AKP (and Erdogan) is definitely the best thing that has happened to Turkey over many decades, and Turks know it. That is the reason AKP keeps increasing its share of vote in elections. They are creating a strong developed democratic lawful independent Turkey. When you hear about protests in Turkey against AKP and Erdogan being authoritarian it is good to remember this context.
One final thing: AKP is often criticized for ignoring secular Turkish citizens who have not voted for AKP. Watch Erdogan's victory speech after winning the last election in which AKP further increased its share of votes. His attitude was completely humble and reconciliatory.
The problem, in my humble opinion, is not Erdogan and AKP being arrogant and authoritarian, but rather the secular minority demanding more than their fair share. I mean they objected to the removal of the ban on head-scarves for students attending university and consider it Islamization of Turkey (a country where over 70% of women wears head-scarf).
I think that the problem might be that the (nonsecular) east wants to rule the (secular) west and viceversa.
I agree universities should be "Religion free" there are two ways of achieving that, you don't care about religion, you allow all people form all religions fair and square, or second option, you ban people with "certain" religious beliefs from schools. Guess which one got applied in Turkey.
I think that a person has a right to wear whatever clothing they feel appropriate, assuming they aren't committing indecent exposure and they don't have giant spikes protruding from their clothing that could endanger others.
Can you clarify what individual rights you think exist on university campuses, and how these interact with your goal of keeping universities "religion-free"?
Is it the eastern part trying to impose its will on the western part or is it the eastern part trying to remove what western part imposed on them over decades?
Here are what I see people are claiming to be signs of AKP Islamizing Turkey: allowing women with headscarves attend universities, forbidding shops sell alcohol in late night hours (after 10PM).
In Ontario only government owned LCBO can sell liquor and its shops close at 6PM. The consumption of liquor in public places is forbidden completely in Canada. Surely Canada is not an Islamic state. Are we sure Turkey is a Muslim majority country?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_in_public#Canada
He says he doesn't remember a source but he has heard it several times that over 70% wears headscarf. I found this article by Google:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&...
What you say makes a lot of sense, but can you comment on how this generally "good" government seems to be using excessive force, and the claimed media blackout on the protests?
I understand that the government may be more respectful of democracy than their opponents, but is it possible that the protesters still want more freedom and democracy, rather than supporting the Kemalist ideology?
AKP basically used EU as a cover to weaken other significant forces like legal bodies, media, military. Now, they are in phase 2, using their power to crush all others who do not live like them. For example, until late yesterday, there were no major TV channels airing the news. We communicated via Twitter, and the only live broadcasting TV was from Norway!
With the weaking of all opposing forces, there is no significant power left against them, or at least, that was what they thought.
The recent ban on alcoholic drugs, Erdogan's constant mention of the Ottomans as his ancestors, his constant stress during his speeches that he dreams of a religious and obedient youth is what we are opposing.
The notion of democracy Erdogan has is very primitive. In his speeches, basically he sees the voting which takes place every 4 years as the only democratic right a person can have.
It is true that in the past, the Turkish state oppressed some religious groups or major minorities like the Kurdish; but the attitude this government and its proponents have is basically contained with revenge. Just to give a final example, the Major of Ankara, a significant figure from AKP, just yesterday tweeted the following:
"You should thank God that we believe in democracy, otherwise we would drown you in a spoonful of water."
The propaganda this government makes is, quite literally reminiscent of 1984. How they re-define words, how they contradict with themselves at each sentence is stunning. They usually say they are the forerunners of "advanced democracy", when they cannot envision a life form other than their own. Of course, every such speech of them ends with the following lie: we respect everyone's lives, everyone can live as they please. It is like the old Ford saying, everyone can lead the life they like in Turkey, as long as it is approved by AKP.
As I understand, you have been protesting freely with the support from military, judiciary (it looks that recently Kemalist supreme court tried to close AKP while it had a majority in Turkish parliament and had just won another democratic election), and media for years and you still haven't been able to even stop the increase of AKP's popularity. Is that true? Is his claim that you are minority false?
Now, let me refute part by part:
> Turkey was ruled by ultra-nationalist ultra-secular militarist groups for decades.
> You have to know that the length of Turkish governments before AKP to get a feeling of its significance: a few months!
These are patently false. Yes, there were coups but after each coup, right wing ancestors of AKP were in power "majority" of time. If you look at elections, in Turkey, in almost elections, right wing got around 60-70% of votes. The only left wing politician who was in power was Inonu and Ecevit, the former being a figure from the Independence War, the latter a politician who was embraced by people left and right for his honest, non-corrupt personality.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Prime_Ministers_of_Turk...
1950-60 Adnan Menderes, The Democratic Party: Pro-American, Islam-leaning right wing party. 1965-71 Suleyman Demirel: Justice Party. Right wing party who declared itself as the successor of The Democratic Party. 1975-77: Suleyman Demirel: One more time. 1979-80: Suleyman Demirel: One more time! 1983-89: Turgut Ozal: ANAP. Right wing, pro-capitalist party. 1989-91: Mesut Ozal: Took place of Turgut Ozal, who became the President. 1991-93: Suleyman Demirel. One more time 1993-96: Tansu Ciller: Took place of Suleyman Demirel, who became the President. 1996: Mesut Yilmaz 1996-1997: Necmettin Erbakan. Pro-Islamist, anti-capitalist, right wing party. Current PM Erdogan was the mayor of Istanbul from his party. 2002-2003: Abdullah Gul. Current President, who was then head of AKP since Erdogan was in jail.
> Watch Erdogan's victory speech after winning the last election in which AKP further increased its share of votes. His attitude was completely humble and reconciliatory.
That speech never materialized, as can be exemplified by the use of tear gas against protestors today.
> The problem is that the support base of AKP is not the western oriented seculars, it is the conservative majority who didn't have a voice in politics for decades
Not true, as you can see, what Erdogan calls as his ancestors, Menderes, Ozal and Erbakan were in power. What happened is middle-right wing evaporated, and AKP got their votes since they were proposing a capitalist agenda as well. In other words, right wing was majority in Turkey all the time, but the votes were distributed among several parties. When the economic situation became so bad in 2002, the public protested these parties, and voted for the only prominent new right-wing party at the time. The economic success came due to two reasons: 1- The "technocrat", Kemal Dervis who was brought in the late times of the former gov't made sound economic policies, which the new gov't applied. 2-They sold most of the state owned assets and gained money. See for example Turkish Telekom, the only PSTN providers, who also operated majority of the internet in Turkey. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_Telekom
AKP then used its position as the leading party to strengthen its position in the next elections.
> Rather the secular minority demanding more than their fair share.
Fair share? As in, right to live according to their wishes, and not that of AKP?
> I mean they objected to the removal of the ban on head-scarves for students attending university and consider it Islamization of Turkey (a country where over 70% of women wears head-scarf).
Not true. This is lumping all secular people into one big pot. Yes, there were people who objected this, but the fundamental promise of secularity is to form rules so that each person can live his religion freely, that no religion is higher against the rule.
E.g. you consider weakening the power of legal bodies, the media and the military to be bad, but from their point of view, these bodies were supporting an undemocratic power structure that favored the pro-secular minority.
On alcohol, there is not a blanket ban, but fairly strict restrictions (in particular limiting sales of alcohol from 6am to 10pm). And lifting the ban on head-scarfs seems like the lifting of excessive restrictions, not the imposition of Islamic ideas.
As to Erdogan's general ideas on the nature of democracy, can you be more specific?
The legal bodies and free media are fundamental for any democracy. As I said before, AKP gov't used EU-restrictions to crush legal bodies and military, but then after they reached their goals turned their back on the EU since the main goal was different. As to the freedom of media, I think we can agree that it is vital for any democracy and just the fact that these events are not being televised are proof how powerless they are. There are journalists working in the media, who have to share international links since their own TVs cannot show the events.
About his antidemocratic ideals, just from his talks today:
- (when talking about his decision to build a mosque in Taksim) We will build it, whether you like it or not. Decision is made. I will not ask these looters (referring to the hundreds of thousands of protestors) whether to build it or not. - Twitter is a menace. http://www.thetimes.co.uk/tto/news/world/europe/article37807... - You gathered 20,000 people. It is not an issue for me to gather 200,000 people. If you gather 100,000 people, it will not be an issue for me to gather 1,000,000 people. - (Referring to advertisers who have decided to cut their ads from TVs who are not showing the events) I have started an investigation about which companies these are.
His thought on democracy can be summed up as thus: The elections take place. The party who wins the majority can do whatever it pleases until the next elections, since that vote has given them that right. There is no need to reach consensus on any affair. The parliament in Turkey is basically powerless, since they hold the majority and can pass any law they want. He sees democracy as a winner takes all game, that only takes place every 4 years, not as a daily part of life.
Democracy is not a system where the majority can do whatever it wants. It is only a democracy if it can protect and respect the rights of every voter.
Maybe those two links might help to understand the vision of "democracy" of Erdogan :
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4387396,00.html
http://www.quora.com/Turkey-country/How-can-the-Turkish-publ...
As far as I have checked major Turkish media outlets, they are reporting the situation and there is no media black out as claimed in the post you have linked to. I find such claims quite dishonest. You should know that making such easily refutable claims will cast doubt on your whole position, you should be more careful about your claims.
>>However, AKP (and Erdogan) is definitely the best thing that has happened to Turkey over many decades, and Turks know it.
Wrong. Although Erdogan and his goons in the Turkish media do their best to give this impression. Turkey was not a perfect country before. But it was actually secular. And that makes it objectively better than what it is today. Forget about the surface-level improvements Erdogan made. He may be wearing sheep's clothes, but deep down inside he's a wolf who wants Turkey to become another Iran.
When I protested in my homeland I heard accusations of being paid to do this, even the price was specified ($20). Twenty bucks to go into a harsh cold night to be assaulted by police and possibly imprisoned on terrorism charges, what a deal :)
Coming to your main Question, If you look how Egypt Spring started, it was all to getrid of Mobarak, US, the former ally of Mobarak left em all alone as did it in past.
I could share articles like this(http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/50553/wikileaks-u-s-governme...) one but I left you upto you to figure out.
Point is, every _revolution_ got started turned against US; be it Tunisia, Egypt and now Turkey.
Those who are protesting will be crying out loud if some stern Islamic leader comes all of sudden and rule upon them.
I hope you understand that like pretty much everywhere, there are "good and decent" people and some "bad" people. Unfortunately, the "bad" people always seem to be the sorts who want to force other people to live their way, while the "good" people mostly want to live their lives the way they want and not force other people. It's as true of America as it is of Pakistan.
The automatic reaction from some muslims will be that it is US-sponsored. Given the US's long track record of sponsoring coups and pro-western/secular movements, you can't really blame them.
The so called Egypt Revolution was also backed by US initially to kick Mobarak out. Later things got out of control when Ikhwan got dominated.
The so called protest is nothing but an attempt to sabotage Erdogan govt after his recent Islamic moves. Nobody is seeing the fact Erdogan helped Turkey to getrid of IMF and put turkey on right direction.
Thousands of people are protesting in Bangladesh against cruel government who has killed thousands of Muslims so far. Since the govt is secular hence their evil doings are not being promoted anywhere including so called unbaised social media.