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Riots in Turkey

Zelenius said:
I keep hearing reports about lots of Kurdish separatists with Kurdish flags among the protesters. Is this true?

There is a very good chance that Erdogan may get overthrown by the secularist military. They've done this several times before with overly tyrannical or overly religious prime ministers, and usually without large protests like this. I hope he falls and a more secular leader takes his place. I don't want any American involvement though.

In the early 1960s not only was Turkish PM Adnan Menderes overthrown by the military, he was eventually executed!
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The last coup in Turkey was in 1980. In the 30 years since they've had a stable democracy as far as I can see.

Slate
So, is Erdoğan a dictator?

That's a hard case to make. Turkey has a relatively stable democracy and Erdoğan has enjoyed the support of an almost-majority of voters in recent years. Erdoğan won his last two elections with 47 percent and 49.95 percent of the popular vote, the only two times in nearly two decades that any party had earned more than 45 percent of the vote in a parliamentary election. Based on those vote totals, Erdoğan's backers say he has the closet thing to a political mandate that anyone has seen in Turkey in decades.

His time in office, however, has been marked by widespread changes that have alienated some of the nation's old powers who thrived in a more secular Turkey. Perhaps most notably, Erdoğan has placed the military under civilian control, and broken down old rules to allow for wider public expression of religion, something that had been barred under previous secular governments. Those on the left, meanwhile, are largely more tolerant of Islam's increasing influence in the country, but instead take issue with Erdoğan's forceful leadership style that allows little room for opposing views.
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What happens next?
While the Arab Spring may have conditioned many in the West to assume that wide-scale protest in the Middle East will lead directly to regime change, that appears to be a long shot in Turkey. As the AP explains: "Erdoğan is unlikely to fall." Still, the massive protests have the potential to serve as a turning point for Turkey in general and Erdoğan's moderate Islamist government in specific. The prime minister, long one of the more powerful men in the region, is set to leave office next year thanks to the current term limit. But it's no secret that he doesn't plan to ease into retirement. Most observers expect him to shift his attention to challenge current Turkish President Abdullah Gul, who has been much more sympathetic to the protesters.
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Turkey has both a President and a Prime Minister. I'm not sure of the particulars.

Bottom line, I've not seen any sources claiming Erdoğan would be able to ignore the constitution and remain in some kind of dictatorship position.

I could be wrong, like I said, I don't know that much about Turkey's government. But I think we in the West may be making some false assumptions about Turkey and dictators and military coups that may not be relevant in Turkey currently.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
The last coup in Turkey was in 1980. In the 30 years since they've had a stable democracy as far as I can see.

Slate
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They've had most of the machinery of a democracy, and have mostly functioned as one over the past 30 years(holding elections), but Turkey doesn't have a very good human rights record. It has been at war with its large Kurdish minority for the past few decades, though there has been a recent ceasefire. Thousands have died in this conflict. For a long time the Turkish government even banned the Kurdish language being taught or spoken in schools or in radio broadcasts, but they have eased those restrictions over the past decade or so.

The Turkish government also officially denies the Armenian Genocide, even to the point of prosecuting or harassing citizens who say it actually happened. Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was assassinated by Turkish nationalists for claiming the Genocide happened.

Dink was prosecuted three times for denigrating Turkishness under Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code.[2][4][5] He was acquitted the first time, convicted and received a suspended 6-month jail sentence the second time, which he had appealed at the European Court of Human Rights. At the time of his death, the prosecutor's office was preparing to press charges in a third case.
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I think these recent mass protests may embolden the Kurdish separatists to start another insurgency against Turkey.

I am not an expert on Turkey, but this could get ugly. Not like Syria, but Turkey could become destablized.
 
Zelenius said:
I knew there was a "coup" more recently, but I couldn't remember the date.
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Well let's ask our resident Turk, (or expat in Turkey?)

What say you Sideroxylon? Is Turkey a democracy experiencing an "Occupy" movement against the influence of the well off, or a faux democracy that needs an Arab-Spring type event?

Or something else?

I've been influenced by a Turkish woman on another forum I post on. She's pretty adamant Turkey does not need an Arab Spring. She has commented that most blogs are wrong though I don't know which blogs those would be.

She favors the President and dislikes the PM.

Democracy is not just about elections, says Turkish President

I'm here to learn.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Well let's ask our resident Turk, (or expat in Turkey?)
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Sid is an Aussie in Turkey.

It's hard to find definitive "that's like x" similarities for such complex developments. I think it's safe to say that Erdogan totally lost it in the time since at least his last election victory and would be better off in a padded cell maybe near to the ICC than running the country, if the public good is concerned.
 
Zelenius said:
I think these recent mass protests may embolden the Kurdish separatists to start another insurgency against Turkey.
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The AKP was moving towards a peaceful solution. If they go, it might mean a return to the bad old days where expressions of ethnicity other than Turkish is suppressed. As I understand it, 1980 coup military government was responsible for the language bans.

I am not an expert on Turkey, but this could get ugly. Not like Syria, but Turkey could become destablized.
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Its going to hurt economically. For a start, We are coming up to summer tourism season and this won't help that. Then we may well have jittery investors pulling out.

What I am most worried about is conservative youths taking to the street as well and we get a return of the political gang violence of late '70s. That would suck.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
Well let's ask our resident Turk, (or expat in Turkey?)

What say you Sideroxylon? Is Turkey a democracy experiencing an "Occupy" movement against the influence of the well off, or a faux democracy that needs an Arab-Spring type event?

Or something else?

I've been influenced by a Turkish woman on another forum I post on. She's pretty adamant Turkey does not need an Arab Spring. She has commented that most blogs are wrong though I don't know which blogs those would be.

She favors the President and dislikes the PM.

Democracy is not just about elections, says Turkish President

I'm here to learn.
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I think as often seems to be the case with Turkey, the answer is something else. As you have pointed out, we have had a democratically elected government in the Justice and Development Party (AKP) for the last 11 years. And this period has been one of reform with much being driven by a drive for EU compliance. We have done well economically - though secularists here tend to deny that. The government has also made some honest attempts at peace with the Kurdistan Workers Party and its terrorist and insurgent actions that have resulted in the deaths of many.

In many ways this conservative government seems to be our most liberal and progressive option in this country. The secularists have their own dogmas of how the country should be that have been handed down to them from Ataturk.

That is not to deny that Erdogan has shown an inability to deal with criticism and from the very beginning he showed that by filing cases against satire magazines for doing things like drawing his face on a cat. I reckon he got to where he is, and to where this party is, by an uncompromising leadership style but unless he can show some humility then things can get worse and he will be gone.

The President, who is an AKP member, has rebuked the PM. I hope he and others can nip this in the bud and cast him out if necessary.

And here you guys can read about our coups:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Military_coups_in_Turkey
 
Erdohan is offering some absolutely wonderful out-of-touch quotes recently.

The rioters are just hooligans and alcoholics.
Social media are a huge danger to society
The riots are started by -wait for it- "foreign agents".

LOL


I don't think he'll fall over this unless the army removes him, the protesters are a vocal minority.

But his critics are now coming out of the woodwork, despite this wondefully democratic leader jailing journalists at will. He following the "democratic" playbook of Vladimir Putin.

And now he's coming out with all these Arab Spring classic about-to-be deposed-dictator-quotes.
Pretty funny IMO.
 
The protestors are a vocal minority. A large educated urban elite vocal minority.

We will know when Erdoğan totally loses it - he'll start blaming Jews.

Erdoğan has been called a dictator but this is just hyperbole. He has twice been democratically elected with his party polling strongly. However he has been hypersensitive to criticism, heavy handed in attempts to implement his moderate but naïve conservative social policy. His party has provided a gravy train and power positions for conservatives who once did it hard under the Army/secularist power.

If he cannot change, which is how it looks, then he should go but lets keep this party. The secularists here are not as you guys know secularists. On the whole they are not liberals. They are anti gay rights - almost everyone is here. They are for the suppression of expressions of ethnicity other than their view of Turkishness. They may well be more likely to hold isolationist views like "the only friend of a Turk is a Turk" and the propensity to see conspiracies any time something goes wrong. And they are too hung up on religious symbols like headscarves than worrying about real secular issues.

It would be a massive step back for scolding Generals and a biased judiciary to again be directing government policies.
 
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BobK said:
There are some extracts from various German newspapers in this article. Spiegel
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Erdogan has made a tour or two through Germany filling mid-sized soccer arenas, where he plainly told the Turkish immigrants to be "Turks first" and not assimilate. That made him no friends in the German establishment, to say the least, because he was fueling an already existing problem: While the early immigrants coming from Italy, Greece and elsewhere are well integrated, the Turks who came at the same time have a much larger tendency to stick to themselves and form "parallel societies".

On the other hand Erdogan was rightfully enraged and made no secret out of it by the decades-old renewed promises of the EU to integrate Turkey at some point, while it is clear for quite some time that those are only words and people like Merkel and the Christian democrats don't want that at all - because they see the EU as a Christian club, not because of economic reasons.

Hence the rather harsh criticism of Erdogan in those articles.
 
Childlike Empress said:
Erdogan has made a tour or two through Germany filling mid-sized soccer arenas, where he plainly told the Turkish immigrants to be "Turks first" and not assimilate. That made him no friends in the German establishment, to say the least, because he was fueling an already existing problem: While the early immigrants coming from Italy, Greece and elsewhere are well integrated, the Turks who came at the same time have a much larger tendency to stick to themselves and form "parallel societies".

On the other hand Erdogan was rightfully enraged and made no secret out of it by the decades-old renewed promises of the EU to integrate Turkey at some point, while it is clear for quite some time that those are only words and people like Merkel and the Christian democrats don't want that at all - because they see the EU as a Christian club, not because of economic reasons.

Hence the rather harsh criticism of Erdogan in those articles.
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I have pointed that contradiction out a few times. I met a guy this year who proudly told me that his department was responsible for making sure the Turkish diaspora keep their religion, among other cultural values. He also believed that the murders of Turks were part of a German govt/intelligence plot and that he had privileged information on that he could not share with me. A lot of Turks thought it unusual that such a case could go unsolved. The nutters responsible have of course been caught recently.
 
Sideroxylon said:
He also believed that the murders of Turks were part of a German govt/intelligence plot and that he had privileged information on that he could not share with me. A lot of Turks thought it unusual that such a case could go unsolved. The nutters responsible have of course been caught recently.
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That's not as far-fetched as it sounds, well, maybe not a government plot but to believe that there is more hidden than meets the eye. The trial against the one surviving of the three Neo-Nazi douchebags they're blaming the murders on has just started, and been a farce from the beginning, with evidence destroyed and intelligence "assets" crawling all over it. I wouldn't be too surprised if a scandal or two develops out of this, and even if it turns out that the three aren't the killers.
 
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Some pics from downtown Kızılay earlier this evening.
wUawdwT.jpg


Q3Rf0nW.jpg


1sBoM69.jpg

Always an opportunity to make some dough. Glaziers and the guys selling goggles and face masks are on an earner.
 
A Burger King restaurant on a main road seemed to have given up on replacing their glass frontage and had gone al fresco.
 
The protests continue, despite apology by deputy PM, and arrests over tweets shows govt hasn't noticed this fire has spread.

The apology:
Mr Arinc apologised to protesters injured in demonstrations opposing the redevelopment of Gezi Park.

He said the original protests were "just and legitimate" and the "excessive use of force" by police was wrong.​

After this tear gas was again used on crowds in Istanbul.

And we also have behaviour like this, which goes to the heart of the authoritarian accusations:

Also in Izmir, state-run Anatolia news agency reported that police had arrested 25 people for tweeting "misinformation".

An official from the opposition Republican People's Party (CHP), Ali Engin, told Anatolia they were being held for "calling on people to protest".​

Mind you, I do not see the CHP as paragons of free speech and would expect them to leave such laws in the interests of public unity.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22776946
 
Childlike Empress said:
That's not as far-fetched as it sounds, well, maybe not a government plot but to believe that there is more hidden than meets the eye. The trial against the one surviving of the three Neo-Nazi douchebags they're blaming the murders on has just started, and been a farce from the beginning, with evidence destroyed and intelligence "assets" crawling all over it. I wouldn't be too surprised if a scandal or two develops out of this, and even if it turns out that the three aren't the killers.
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Yeah, I'm also curious what this case will uncover.

I guess some intelligence agencies have been paying a bunch of Neo-Nazi "infiltrators", whilst these guys just fed them useless info.
Or worse, they got information about some of the murders, but decided not to act as to not blow covers, or maybe wait until something (even) more serious would occur.
 
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