271–280 of 476 posts
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You do realize they voted him in? They specifically chose him to be his leader and continue to do so. Why should the West "wake up"? What do you propose the west does? Should we send the militaty and overthrow him?
In a referendum with tons of irregularities and many reports of government thugs intimidating voters.
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I think we should stop communicating from the top. Many problems right now are because heads of state, not necessarily people. Erdogan, Putin ... We should try to get real people to talk, about who they are, what they want (peace ? surely .. war ? not so sure). So peoples in every nation start to avoid the national/patriot filter when thinking and voting.
Imagine the Turkish coup was organized and executed properly and they succeeded. Who takes power? Does it create a vacuum? A civil war? I often ponder these "alternate history timelines" and try to imagine what the world might be like.
I'm a canuck who has worked with Turks and has visited Turkey. They're a wonderful people from a beautiful country with a real problem of a person in power. Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, yet they produce alcohol and tolerate its consumption within their borders, even by their own people. Let that fact sink in for a moment. Erdogan is subverting the premier secular democracy of the Islamic world, but nobody seems…
Plenty of people care, but what are we supposed to do about it? Here in Europe Erdogan makes the headlines from time to time, right before the referendum he made several speeches where he called the politicians of multiple countries "descendants of nazis" and similar. Everybody knows that he cares more about suppressing the Kurds than ISIS. He holds Europe hostage by threatening to release large amounts of refugees i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we should stop communicating from the top. Many problems right now are because heads of state, not necessarily people. Erdogan, Putin ... We should try to get real people to talk, about who they are, what they want (peace ? surely .. war ? not so sure). So peoples in every nation start to avoid the national/patriot filter when thinking and voting.
I agree with you that we should stop communicating from the top - and this is what some politicians tried to do (at least what some European politicians did, like the Dutch ones before the elections, when things escalated). However, for business interests, you simply can't ditch a country like Turkey[1]. Let's not forget that Bush's grandfather was also funding Nazi [2] (I would like to focus primarily on the years b…
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Erdogan was democratically elected. He's not a dictator (even if he does act as one at this point) and judging from the referendum results, at least half of Turks seem to like his direction. It's easy to say those voters are uneducated or misguided but the fact is that this is how democracy works. Where I am going with this is that we should not blame just the leader but also the people who put him there.
Blaming misguided voters only has merit when freedom of the press is available and people have access to news that does not have significant pro-government bias. Turkey was ranked #155 out of #180 evaluated countries on this year's RSF list [1]. If the government controls the information that the people have access to, it is a little difficult to expect a legitimate democracy, which requires more than simply valid el…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I think we should stop communicating from the top. Many problems right now are because heads of state, not necessarily people. Erdogan, Putin ... We should try to get real people to talk, about who they are, what they want (peace ? surely .. war ? not so sure). So peoples in every nation start to avoid the national/patriot filter when thinking and voting.
Erdogan was democratically elected. He's not a dictator (even if he does act as one at this point) and judging from the referendum results, at least half of Turks seem to like his direction. It's easy to say those voters are uneducated or misguided but the fact is that this is how democracy works. Where I am going with this is that we should not blame just the leader but also the people who put him there.
I'm a canuck who has worked with Turks and has visited Turkey. They're a wonderful people from a beautiful country with a real problem of a person in power. Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, yet they produce alcohol and tolerate its consumption within their borders, even by their own people. Let that fact sink in for a moment. Erdogan is subverting the premier secular democracy of the Islamic world, but nobody seems…
Plenty of people care, but what are we supposed to do about it? Here in Europe Erdogan makes the headlines from time to time, right before the referendum he made several speeches where he called the politicians of multiple countries "descendants of nazis" and similar. Everybody knows that he cares more about suppressing the Kurds than ISIS. He holds Europe hostage by threatening to release large amounts of refugees i…
I'm a canuck who has worked with Turks and has visited Turkey. They're a wonderful people from a beautiful country with a real problem of a person in power. Turkey is almost entirely Muslim, yet they produce alcohol and tolerate its consumption within their borders, even by their own people. Let that fact sink in for a moment. Erdogan is subverting the premier secular democracy of the Islamic world, but nobody seems…
Plenty of people care, but what are we supposed to do about it? Here in Europe Erdogan makes the headlines from time to time, right before the referendum he made several speeches where he called the politicians of multiple countries "descendants of nazis" and similar. Everybody knows that he cares more about suppressing the Kurds than ISIS. He holds Europe hostage by threatening to release large amounts of refugees i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> what are we supposed to do about it? Kick Turkey out of NATO first. If things get worse, impose sanctions.
He's holding millions of Syrian refugees and has threatened to send them to Europe if things don't go his way. Think European nationalism is bad now? You might not have a NATO after that.