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Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

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Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#61
post #56
post #26

The 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?

Do you have video of this? Interested.

Here's the FlightRadar24 track of his jet: https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/tk8456/#a5a3952

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#62
post #10

How Turkey could possibly still be in accession talks to join the EU is baffling and appalling to me.

They probably aren't now.

That they were recently is surprising to many. IIRC the main bargaining chip that kept them in contention was consideration for the current collection of refugee crises where certain actions by Turkey could help a lot and other could further exacerbate the problems (both from an administrative PoV within the EU and a humanitarian PoV).

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#63

The 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 pro…

The coup was never real to begin with. There have been so many holes in this narrative that it's like swiss cheese. Why did the military not fire on Erdogan when he was in their sights? Why did Erdogan even risk flying into Istanbul when he knew there would've been a significant chance of being shot down? The answer of course is that he knew there was no risk cause it was a fake coup to begin with.

He wanted to consolidate his power and it was a really smart and ruthless move.

It kind of shuts down the potential for any real coup to happen.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#64
post #10

How Turkey could possibly still be in accession talks to join the EU is baffling and appalling to me.

I believe Brexit triggered this stuff.

For example I saw some posts from turkish people on reddit, where they concluded that the few reaming Kemalists (there was a kemalist purge in 2011, with most of them replaced by Gulenists after some false accusations), would attempt a coup during EU-join talks, because they thought joining EU was a better deal than risking a coup.

When Brexit happened, it became clear the EU was a pointless effort, thus everyone waiting on the EU to put their plans forward, now didn't had to wait anymore, so all the corked schemes will now suddenly go forward.

People I talked with, many told me it wouldn't surprise them if we keep seeing a festival of coups, counter-coups and political manuevers now that EU is not in the way anymore.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#65

Obama and Hillary made a huge error in judgment by siding with a fascist. It's amazing how we haven't gotten ourselves in deep sh!t already given how badly our leaders judge situations. But maybe we have, and we just don't know it yet.

Without making this too political, this is exactly why good judgement is so much more important than "experience" alone. Hillary is proving herself once again incapable of making good decisions in such tough situations, and who knows to what future catastrophes her bad decisions will lead, if she becomes president.

At least Obama is threatening to throw Turkey out of NATO, but knowing Obama's ABC policy (Always-Be-Compromising), it's just an empty threat, and Erdogan likely knows it.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#66

Reactions like these makes you wonder if the coup attempt was staged.

Perhaps, though people are often too quick to conclude that crises are staged just because governments are prepared to quickly exploit a particular category of crises to push a pre-existing agenda with motivations only tangential to the crises, and ultimately the debate over whether the crisis was staged detracts attention from criticism of the response (especially when the crisis wasn't staged, and the claim that it was staged can be convincingly rebutted and used to discredit those questioning the response.)

See, e.g., 9/11 truthers.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#67
post #8

21,000 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..

Educated people ask questions. He doesn't want an educated populace.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#68

Obama and Hillary made a huge error in judgment by siding with a fascist. It's amazing how we haven't gotten ourselves in deep sh!t already given how badly our leaders judge situations. But maybe we have, and we just don't know it yet.

Yes, how dare they not support a coup against a democratically elected government!

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#69
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> totalitarian Probably the most misused term/epithet in international relations. At its worst Turkey is no more repressive than Russia or China and less repressive than Iran. Once you use "totalitarian" to describe authoritarian regimes, you run out of room to describe those that actually qualify as totalitarian, such as North Korea or Eritrea.

I don't think anyone claims Russia or China are democratic. Nor are we planning to add them to the EU or NATO anytime soon.

> Nor are we planning to add them to the EU or NATO anytime soon.

Well, neither is on the North Atlantic or in Europe.

Okay well, Russia sort of is, but...

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#70
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This happened before in Iran's revolution, School Deans, and even Hospital Directors were replaced by pro-revolution islamists regardless of education or qualifications. We might see Turkey transform itself into what Iran became. After this they need a War (a la Iraq-Iran war) to keep people distracted and then the changes will be permanent.

The problem with that plan is that Turkey has only one equal on its borders (Iran), and cooking up a cassus belli (supporting the Rojava Kurds & the Syrian government...?) there isn't going to be easy. Everyone else is either friendly (Azerbaijan), an overmatch (Russia & NATO), or a pushover but with overmatching alliances (Armenia & Syria). I suppose they'll have to settle for a Kurdish insurgency...

There's still Syria.
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