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Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

reuters.com

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Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#81

Post by ihsw »

James001 wrote: post #37
JohnStrange wrote: post #22

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.

One could say that Erdogan would be satisfied with martyring himself (Islamist to the end), but I highly doubt that. He believes he is Turkey and that it cannot stand on its own two feet without him, so I don't think he would risk his life intentionally.

Now he is digging his heels in.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#82

Post by mikeash »

ilostmykeys wrote: post #46

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.

What else should they have done? Siding with a military coup against a nominally democratic government would look terrible, and when the coup lost they'd look like complete idiots. Remaining neutral wouldn't have been much better.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#83

Post by Bartweiss »

jayess wrote: post #10

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

For a while, they basically put the EU over a barrel via the refugee issue. In return for making some effort to restrain refugee flow, Turkey demanded the prospect of membership (bearing in mind that the talks alone were legitimizing, even without actual membership).

At this point, with EU membership looking less inviting and Turkey looking downright autocratic, it's hard to imagine it will happen. But the talks did their job, helping to shore up Erdogan's standing after Tahrir Square while he consolidated his power.

It's one more consequence of the slow. late reaction to Iraq and Syria: the EU had to sell out to anyone who could offer them some kind of damage control.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#84

Post by hx87 »

morgante wrote: post #48
hx87 wrote: 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.

Democracy and levels of state repression being orthogonal notwithstanding, not being democratic (or a EU/NATO candidate) does not imply that a state is totalitarian.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#85

Post by mtgx »

JohnStrange wrote: post #22

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…

> NEVER trust or vote for a party that has the word "justice" in its name.

Also see Poland's "Justice" Party. Almost the same story there, too.

Not a scientific experiment by any means, but I've also noticed that leaders who have been lawyers, also tend to presume themselves "above the law", and they usually try to interpret the law to suit them.

This might be because from their point of view the "law" is not something set in stone, and therefore being a "criminal" is all "relative". That law can be changed on a whim. And they've been dealing with legal loopholes their whole careers as well. Knowing that, they can probably excuse various crimes much more easily in their heads.

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

#86

Post by AndyNemmity »

jayess wrote: 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?

Absolutely, I watched every bit of news as it happened, and the video channels.

The military that were holding areas were told it was a drill. It was by far one of the worst coups from an organizational standpoint I've ever seen.

That leaves you with either

1. A extremely poor, unfocused, and uncoordinated coup that had real intentions, but was rushed and ultimately had no chance of succeeding.

2. Erdogan knew a coup was going to happen, and pushed them to go forward with it while he was safe, with protection from fighter jets, etc.

3. A staged coup, and the fighter jets were always part of Erdogan's attempt, at the beginning flying low as a show of support, and at the end, validating he can land safety with no lucky/unlucky coup member getting to take him down.

And, I don't really know. It's one of those, but there isn't enough evidence in any direction to really make a claim of anything in my view.

I will say, none of it makes any sense. Erdogan telling everyone to take the streets to stop this felt ridiculous during it, but afterwards makes a ton of sense.

Most of the military didn't know they were in a coup. And the only shutdowns were things that could potentially alert the military on what was going on, facebook, cellphones, etc.

But I think you have to take it at face value, and go with option 1 unless other evidence comes.

It was already pretty shaky that they had a list of judges to immediately sack 2 hours after the coup. I mean, that's incredible timing.

Edit: I'd also like to add,

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/cia-officials-turkey-cou...

Ignore the tone, but it was incredible during the coup,

Robert Baer, a veteran former CIA officer said

“I have been involved in coups before,” he said. “They should have taken CNN Turk and closed it down the first minutes, the radio station, social media, the internet. Even if they didn’t arrest [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan, they should have taken care of all of that right at the beginning.”

Baer also revealed that he had discussed the possibility of a coup with Turkish military officers in the past few months.

“I’ve been speculating with Turkish officers a couple months ago about a coup and they said, ‘Absolutely not,’” he said. “And clearly they’re not involved, so there’s limited support for this.”

-----

At the time when we said it, everyone focused on how inappropriate it was to be giving the coup leaders advice, but if you remove that from the equation, what you have is legitimate criticism as to the plan, and more questions that don't have answers regarding who actually started this in the Turkish military.

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

#87

Post by mikeash »

James001 wrote: post #37
JohnStrange wrote: post #22

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.

This seems a little too conspiracy-ish to me. My feeling (and I am clueless and so probably wrong) is that the coup was real, but compromised from the start. The government knew it was coming, infiltrated it, and ensured it wouldn't pose a danger, but at its core I think it was real.

I guess that line gets blurry, anyway. If you find someone with a legitimate grievance and then encourage them to rebel and give them support, is that real or fake?

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

#88

Post by AndyNemmity »

imartin2k wrote: post #43
glass_of_water wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's possible the coup was staged as an excuse to purge the opposition and seize more power. Edit: changed "quite likely" to "possible" to address valid criticism.

In my book, "quite likely" would be, say, 80-90 %. And that is absurd. It is imaginable that the coup was staged, but it is not more likely than the other, more realistic explanations. In fact, it is still rather unlikely, even if one cannot rule it out completely. That being said, as another commentator mentioned: These lists have existed before, since tensions have been going on for years. So now Erdogan just had t…

Agreed. There are 3 possible options in my view, and any of them could be true. There just isn't enough evidence for any of them to be likely.

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

#89

Post by tim333 »

jayess wrote: post #61
sitkack wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have video of this? Interested.

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

Erdogan gives his version to CNN: http://edition.cnn.com/2016/07/18/europe/turkey-president-er...
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