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After the coup, Turkey turns against America

economist.com

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Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#201

Post by toyg »

sebastianconcpt wrote: post #136
vintermann wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Karl Popper considered a government democratic if it could be replaced without violence, and while that's not exactly my definition, I think it's a good start - a bare minimum. A provision in the constitution for military coups doesn't excuse it. That just means the Turkish constitution is a bad one, that doesn't offer its citizens democracy. Handing over control to the people "once the situation is stable again" is…

No violence when one Castro passed power to the other nor when Maduro continued Chavez. Democracy means nothing. Republic means everything.

Neither change was prompted by the citizenry, which really is the unstated core of Popper's definition (which has other problems, eh, but is a decent start).

Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#202

Post by unprepare »

afsina wrote: post #126
reitanqild wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is he merciful to the Kurds that helps fight IS or is he bombing them? Is he trying to force Germany to punish a comedian? Is he trying to reintroduce death penalty? Has he purged more than 2000 judges? Is it reasonable to think he has verified that all of them were bad judges during the two-three last days?

Too much drama? - PKK is killing your soldiers what do you do? This has nothing to do with IS. - Ok, he has a temper and does not have a good sense of humor but please, did you find "that" poem funny? - Oh come on. You know it was not about being bad judges. Though yes, reintroduction of death penalty is a very bad idea. Also things are being done too hastily. All allegations are need to be verified.

>he has a temper and does not have a good sense of humor but please, did you find "that" poem funny?

solid reasoning behind pursuing a criminal conviction to be sure.

Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#203

Post by ivanca »

tptacek wrote: post #150
ivanca wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Stop repeating the same nonsense, an elected leader cannot crush his opposition and still be expected to be called a democracy.

First, please don't call other comments "nonsense". It degrades the thread and makes your own comment far less persuasive. It's also something the site guidelines tell you not to do. Second, just because a coup is overthrowing an elected government that, having achieved power, is subverting democracy, doesn't mean the coup is itself democratic. A military coup is the opposite of democracy. Democracy has been restored…

> Democracy has been restored in plenty of countries previously ruled by authoritarians without recourse to the military.

Would a military coup in China be the opposite of democracy? Then what do they have now? A different opposite of democracy? I think you wanna paint a black and white pic of the subject but that is impossible

Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#204

Post by ivanca »

tptacek wrote: post #187
ivanca wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It may not be democratic, but it certainly not the opposite of democratic. Let's put it this way, let's say 60% of people vote to kill the other 40%. And then a third party enters and stops such madness. You know who is more democratic of them all? The third party, for allowing the existence of more than one party. A coup can be more democratic than any election. It's all about context.

You are confusing "justified" with "democratic".

For democracy to exist the "demo" part must persist. So no, I'm not.

Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#205

Post by Kareeeeem »

pluma wrote: post #51
emilsedgh wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Its not just Erdogan. People of Turkey seem to be supporters of this path. Although its very sad.

Erdogan always had strong support from Turkish expatriates. I had always heard this explained as fundamentalists leaving Turkey because its secular laws were more restrictive (e.g. headscarfs are banned in universities[0] because of the strong separation of church and state) and Erdogan catering towards those fundamentalists. I don't know what changed in Turkey but it now seems that his support has grown not only out…

> Erdogan always had strong support from Turkish expatriates. I had always heard this explained as fundamentalists leaving Turkey because its secular laws were more restrictive

Wanting to practice your religion in it's most basic form makes one a fundamentalist?

Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#206

Post by toyg »

amyjess wrote: post #170
emodendroket wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, you could argue that maybe the military would be better, but a military coup of an elected leader doesn't just "seem" undemocratic; it is undemocratic by any reasonable standard.

"Undemocratic" isn't a bad thing. Democracy is nothing more than two wolves and a sheep deciding what to eat for dinner.

This sort of analysis has already been done in the last century, but it seems like it's recently been drowned out by misinformation.

Suffice to say, a modern democracy is supposed to have strong safeguards for minorities; take filibustering, for example, or the various human-rights courts and treaties. Modern democracy is not just "one head, one vote", or there would be no safeguards against a new Holocaust.

Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#207

Post by titzer »

vintermann wrote: post #156
jessriedel wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No existing democracies are pure democracies, in the sense that the have non-democratic elements, often enshrined in a constitution, that constrain the government. In the US, unelected judges with lifetime appointments strike down laws passed democratically, in accordance with a constitution that none of us alive had any input in writing. We've all gotten used to that idea, but it was extremely controversial when it…

I am very much against the thing you describe, whether they call themselves supreme courts or guardian councils or defenders of the constitution. Yes, I am a radical democrat. I think the safeguards supposedly provided by such institutions are largely illusionary. All sorts of minorities, for instance, may be protected in flowery words, but it isn't worth the paper it's written on unless the majority (of power, sadly…

> All sorts of minorities, for instance, may be protected in flowery words, but it isn't worth the paper it's written on unless the majority (of power, sadly, not of individuals) actually care about it. A constitutional safeguard that doesn't have the support of actual power is worked around, it's just a question of lawyer rhetoric. In the end, the only check that can exist on us is ourselves.

Flowery words are actually better than nothing, and at least the US constitution tried to set up institutions that made sure that law complie(d/s) with that supreme law of the land. Radical democrats would do well to look at the kinds of Jim Crow laws that appeared after the Civil War which were completely unconstitutional and were judged so and overturned against popular demand by judges given the power to strike down laws.

I really don't have faith in the mob. It's clear the framers of the Constitution didn't either, and there are plenty of examples of the tyranny of the majority that should give us pause.

Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#208

Post by jessriedel »

fredThrind wrote: post #200
jessriedel wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No existing democracies are pure democracies, in the sense that the have non-democratic elements, often enshrined in a constitution, that constrain the government. In the US, unelected judges with lifetime appointments strike down laws passed democratically, in accordance with a constitution that none of us alive had any input in writing. We've all gotten used to that idea, but it was extremely controversial when it…

The US is hardly a good comparison: the US constitution is deeply anti-democratic when compared to other liberal democracies, and even when compared to the States of the US because it is almost impossible to amend ( http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_ch... ). The fact that judges are forced to invent new rights in the U.S. because a bunch of long-dead guys couldn't predict the future is, in its…

That's really not germane to the point I'm addressing.

Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#209

Post by pbhjpbhj »

grandalf wrote: post #181
jbmorgado wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ah, ok, so that is the only part of all I said that you can pinpoint it's not accurate. Very well, I agree that Erdogan being half mad (so mentally ill from your interpretation) is not easily proved. His speeches and the construction of the new palace (and the reasons given for it: https://www.yahoo.com/news/cockroaches-made-want-palace-says... ) indicate that he shouldn't be totally sane. But I agree it's something…

I do not agree with the rest. I do not see how his support of ISIS is necessarily harmful. ISIS is a grassroots movement with a goal of Islamic solidarity. ISIS is opposed to US intervention in the region because it views such intervention as harming Islamic solidarity. I do not think that (aside from some demand for Erdogan's loyalty to the US) that being supportive of such a movement in the region is necessarily a…

> I do not see how his support of ISIS is necessarily harmful. //

How about because they are unlawfully killing, raping, torturing, people and using violence to impose their form of Islamic Caliphate on unwilling people - doesn't that make it harmful in your opinion?

Re: After the coup, Turkey turns against America

#210

Post by titzer »

fredThrind wrote: post #200
jessriedel wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No existing democracies are pure democracies, in the sense that the have non-democratic elements, often enshrined in a constitution, that constrain the government. In the US, unelected judges with lifetime appointments strike down laws passed democratically, in accordance with a constitution that none of us alive had any input in writing. We've all gotten used to that idea, but it was extremely controversial when it…

The US is hardly a good comparison: the US constitution is deeply anti-democratic when compared to other liberal democracies, and even when compared to the States of the US because it is almost impossible to amend ( http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/view_from_ch... ). The fact that judges are forced to invent new rights in the U.S. because a bunch of long-dead guys couldn't predict the future is, in its…

All systems at that scale are flawed, and even the founders knew this. Thus they biased decisions toward conservatism (in the classic sense--resisting change) but actually _did_ amend the Constitution, right away, with a Bill of Rights to make it even clear the construction of the document was to protect people from their government. The process is difficult, but it's happened _27 times_ (the first 10 times in bulk).
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