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Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

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131–140 of 144 posts

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#131

I am mostly a-political, 3000 years later none of this will matter. A few billion years later andromeda "collides" with milky way. So let people play. That being said, how does a successful military coup increase a country's democracy in any conceivable way? How is this a "last ditch effort for democracy" as so many people here seem to be thinking? And why is the answer always "oh it was a fake"? How does it work in…

>how does a successful military coup increase a country's democracy in any conceivable way?

A conceivable way is they overthrow a dictator and hold elections.

In practice through research finds "though democracies are occasionally established in the wake of coups, more often new authoritarian regimes emerge, along with higher levels of state-sanctioned violence." http://rap.sagepub.com/content/3/1/2053168016630837

I don't think a coup would have been a good idea in this case - Erdogan was elected and fairly popular so the argument for a coup would be weak. One reason to think it may not have been a real coup attempt.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your theory is shockingly convincing. However, it would require Erdogan to be quite an intelligent, long-term thinking person. Which, in my eyes, has to be questioned considering how he is so emotional and short-tempered that he picks any tiny, meaningless war he can get, even if it means suing teenagers who "offend" him. That's what, based on my limited understanding, is what distinguishes him from Putin. Putin is i…

That's a really good question. Erdogan confuses me for the same reasons as Trump - he's a petty, immature strongman who has no sense of proportion, but somehow he makes enough clever moves to advance his position. I'm not sure if they're political savants, depending on good advisers, or just lucky and grabbing hold of domestic anger. Erdogan seems to be a joke of despot compared to the likes of Putin or even Assad, a…

"joke of a despot" good one. Probably he'd be offended.

Re: Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

#135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The daft vote by the least educated and deliberately, cynically manipulated and misled half of one country This kind of attitude towards that half is maybe part of the reason they voted that way, education level aside. Not everyone benefited from EU membership.

> Not everyone benefited from EU membership. How can you possibly know that?

I agree with Chris2048, in time before the actual vote in UK polish media tried to present both options and their arguments, one of the interviews was really memorable for me, the conclusion was that "no fisherman in UK will vote for stay". Of course I know, that the interviewee did not represent all of their trade and some probably voted stay. But the sentiment of it was very familiar to me, it was just like some polish farmers, mostly living off (very) small farms (<10ha). Before Poland joined EU it was feared that those people will have troubles, and let's be honest: with or without EU being a small farmer really sucks. The way that fisherman spoke about more than a decade of hardship and bureaucracy EU created for them was just what I'm hearing here. About new (higher) norms, about artificial production limits, even the part about how other EU countries are taking advantage of it to kill our industry was easy to relate to... And the emotions, last year in my region woman broke down in cries at paper-filling training, because she just couldn't stand it any more. If this was UK she would vote leave. Sure you may say that in a way she failed to make use of great opportunity EU provides, possibly because of lacking education, and there is some truth in that. But blaming people for being uneducated, stupid and cynically manipulated solves non of the problems, this is just an excuse to deny that EU has any problems at all.

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

#136
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, then why didn't Turkish people join the coup? The coup lost all of its momentum when people started marching on the street. Perhaps next time they should consider assassination over a military take-over when all of the top military officials have been replaced by the President several years ago. Look at Syria. The civil war is still on-going. This is not Thailand. There is no King / Emperor to bless.

It is thought that the coup was planned for few or several weeks later. They learn that the prosecuter is close to the end. Coup members immediatly come to their work, leaving their holiday or annual leaves. They start to prepare for the coup. At 15:00 or 16:00 central inntelligence learns that something is going on due to a leaker. At 18:00 military meeting and intelligance agree to close the airspace. At 21:00 or 2…

Do we know that the Kemalist sections of the military participated in the coup? I have not read anything about it. These would be the only ones who would care enough to follow the "protect secularism against islamists" protocol. If the initiators were, as being reported, related to the Gülen movement, then they are religious nuts as well, and what they cared about was simply to bring Gülen in power.

Related: These tweets by Turkish journalist https://twitter.com/ikoker/status/755104366235901952

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

#137
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?

It appears that there were multiple F-16 sorties flown.

Apparently, Early on, a "coup" F-16 dropped bombs near the presidential palace.

The Blackhawk (possibly with door gunners) and Cobra attack helicopters were "coup" controlled. One Blackhawk was shot down by a "loyalist" F-16. The sonic booms heard later in the morning were likely loyalist F-16s. An F-16 can't stay in afterburner, or fly supersonic at low altitude for very long even with external tanks. The loyalist F-16s were refueled in the air from a Turkish AF tanker.

If there were coup controlled F-16s anywhere near Erdogan's aircraft, it would be stupid to fly in circles. The F-16s could shoot it down from over 20 miles away. It was more likely they were waiting for ground forces to secure the runways before landing.

Note: This is based on my opinions, and available public news sources.

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

#138
post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""Starting from the moment we landed, F-16s started flying above us, very close to the ground," Erdogan said." The F-16s had him locked in, and never fired. Which was odd. It all doesn't really make a ton of sense, but it's possible.

It would be pretty unprecedented for the coup members to shoot down the sitting president's plane. They would almost certainly just prevent him from landing, or allow him to land and arrest him immediately.

The official story is the coup plotters attacked the hotel where he was staying, so it wouldn't be unprecedented given the official story.

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

#139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Not everyone benefited from EU membership. How can you possibly know that?

I agree with Chris2048, in time before the actual vote in UK polish media tried to present both options and their arguments, one of the interviews was really memorable for me, the conclusion was that "no fisherman in UK will vote for stay". Of course I know, that the interviewee did not represent all of their trade and some probably voted stay. But the sentiment of it was very familiar to me, it was just like some po…

Some people are better off than others. But stating as a fact that the EU was no benefit for some people needs a supporting argument, since it can't be demonstrated empirically (as a counterfactual case).

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

#140
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?

It appears that there were multiple F-16 sorties flown. Apparently, Early on, a "coup" F-16 dropped bombs near the presidential palace. The Blackhawk (possibly with door gunners) and Cobra attack helicopters were "coup" controlled. One Blackhawk was shot down by a "loyalist" F-16. The sonic booms heard later in the morning were likely loyalist F-16s. An F-16 can't stay in afterburner, or fly supersonic at low altitud…

The timing of events at Erdogan's hotel in Marmaris seem very odd too. I'm having a job getting accurate info from the press but it seems roughly:

21:15 - Statement read on state-owned TRT says military has "completely taken over the administration of the country to reinstate constitutional order". - That's when I started following it on CNN and similar

2126 - President Erdogan facetimes people to take to the streets to protest. Speaking to a CNN Turk reporter via a cellphone video link he says it will meet a "necessary response". He says he is returning to the capital Ankara. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2016/07/turkey-timeline-coup-a...

Erdogan is spoken to by various media and photographed at his hotel http://qz.com/733810/after-the-military-seized-state-media-t...

Some time later 3 helicopters turn up to get Erdogan at the same hotel he's been photographed at and then left "after about 1.5 hours after Erdogan's departure from the hotel is by the soldiers in the coup attempt was made ​​here attacks. " http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/yerel-haberler/mugla-haberleri/er...

You'd think the normal timing would be try to detain Erdogan, then announce coup then press turn up, not announce coup, allow global live press coverage for a couple of hours, then try to catch Erdogan. I realise there may have been confusion but phones, the internet were working normally. They could have whatsapped 'got him yet?' or phoned or whatever. Or turned on the TV and watched CNN and seen his flight on flight24 before going to his hotel.

Odd.

Update - the daily mail says they went to the wrong hotel http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3695470/The-luxury-s...

But also the soldiers were looking for Erdogan at 3.30am, long after he'd gone. And presumably after the photographers had packed up and gone home. Maybe they don't bother checking the news or AlJazeera's twitter feed? Or just coup theatre perhaps. Mail's account from some hotel guests:

>But they were woken at 3.30am by the popping of guns – which they thought at first were fireworks – and his wife Theresa went to the door to see what was going on.

>She was met by the sight of military rebels running around the hotel armed with machine guns.

>'You want to see what is going on, but she found herself face to face with a soldier with a machine gun in his hands,' continued Mr de Graaf.

>The soldiers were shouting in broken English: 'Where Erdogan stay? Erdogan stay?'

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