How Turkey could possibly still be in accession talks to join the EU is baffling and appalling to me.
They barely were to begin with, and they are highly unlikely to continue in the current atmosphere.
Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
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Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
#22The coup was a last chance effort. Now Turkey has become a totalitarian dictatorship, there is no doubt about that. To be more precise, it already lost its status as democracy years ago when Erdogan had hundreds of prosecutors and policemen fired who dared to investigate corruption within his family.
But with the latest purges you've got to wonder where they want to get the replacements from. Any sane person will probably try to leave the country rather than being clubbed to death by AKP fans.
Moral of the story: NEVER trust or vote for a party that has the word "justice" in its name.
Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
#23This does not bode well for Turkey. It is unfathomable how 21,000 teachers were directly related to the coup attempt. It makes me think that the coup was Turkey's Reichstag fire moment.
Absolutely. From the comfort of the States, I am glad that the coup did not succeed, but only because Turkey falling into chaos would be beyond terrible. That said, the recent fallout has all the markings of opportunism and expansion of power.
Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
#24Why was everyone screaming democracy when they never had one in the first place?
> Why was everyone screaming democracy when they never had one in the first place?
Political correctness. Turkey is defacto ruled by a brutal dictatorship now, the failed coup was the last chance of restoring actual democracy in Turkey. The Turkish constitution is actually good and acknowledge the danger of an Islamic theocracy. The role of the Turkish army is/was to prevent it.They failed.
Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
#25It's starting to seem like they had these lists made up ahead of time and have been waiting for the right time to start cleansing the ranks.
> It's starting to seem like they had these lists made up ahead of time and have been waiting for the right time to start cleansing the ranks.
That much is obvious. Erdogan didn't start laying blame for problems on the "parallel structure" only after the coup attempt, he's been doing it for years. The coup attempt provided the political pretext for stronger action against the group (and, potentially, others that the regime can use the pretext of going after the group to deal with at the same time) than the regime thought it could get away with before.
Governments frequently use crises as pretexts for actions which they wanted to do previously but didn't find political support for, both against specific internal or external targets and in terms of general, non-specifically-targeted policy.
Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
#26The whole thing seemed fishy that night. I was watching Erdogan's plane circle southwest of Istanbul for an hour or so on FlightRadar24. Then suddenly it lands where just a couple of hours earlier coup-controlled tanks were patrolling the runways. Huh? The "coup" had control of fighter jets that were buzzing Istanbul and Ankara (live on TV), yet they let his plane circle, for all to see, just minutes away?
Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
#2721,000 teachers and 1.5k deans. This is the kind of thing that pushes the education system and thus the country back a decade. How are they gonna find replacements? How are the students gonna cope without teachers? What is Erdogan trying to do..
> What is Erdogan trying to do
In his convoluted thinking, he's trying to stop the spread of an anti-establishment political organization that has infiltrated all levels of the Turkish military and civil service.
Or, you know, they're reasonable people who are concerned about the dimming of their country's democracy.
Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
#28It's starting to seem like they had these lists made up ahead of time and have been waiting for the right time to start cleansing the ranks.
Starting? That was clear when they purged the first few thousand.
Even the EU seems to think so: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-turkey-security-eu-hahn-id...
Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
#29Turkey's civil service is not going to be in good shape after this purge. It seems hard to run a modern society in a very precarious neighborhood with undermanned services and not risk your own citizens getting angry or outsiders using the opportunity to strike.
Also difficult to run a modern society when you purge people capable of critical thought.
Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked
#30Reactions like these makes you wonder if the coup attempt was staged.