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How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

nytimes.com

51–60 of 224 posts

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#51
Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say?

Evicting professors and others from universities. Blocking access to social media. Closing down newspapers and other new outlets.

And it doesn't matter who's doing it. Erdogan. Carlos Maza. Antifa. None of them are doing anything constructive.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#52

Turkey's GDP peaked at $950 billion in 2013, just before Erdogan became president. By 2017, it had slid to $850 billion, and after the intellectual purges, slid to just $766 billion in 2018. [1] People may argue from ideology for or against politics like these, but I can think of no clearer indication of these policies' failure than the impoverishing of a country. [1]: https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/gdp

GDP is not a north star metric. GDP in the US is high and we have more suicides than ever.

Many authoritarian (or especially populist) governments KNOW they will lower the GDP because by limiting low-wage labor immigration or focusing on nurturing a native culture or preserving the environment and not buying into a soulless consumerism/globalization they are creating a GDP cap.

"growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell" --edward abbey

(I don't know anything about what's happening in Turkey, I just don't believe in GDP as a metric to chase)

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#53
post #41
post #38

The USA is purging intellectuals as well through outrage culture, online mobs, and the weaponization of political correctness. Both the far right and far left do it routinely to their advantage, they both seem to think the ends justify the means. Whoever has the loudest megaphone and can effectively stir up a sufficiently large outrage mob is the winner. Facts do not matter, evidence can be deemed "offensive" and is…

Do you have any sources for this purge of US intelectuals?

Are you genuinely unfamiliar with the weaponization of online mob activity, organized bullying, shaming, doxing, revenge porn, outrage culture, review spamming, mass harassment of peoples employers/schools, etc? I thought this stuff was all well known in the tech community.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#54
post #7

"People have had enough of experts" - Michael Gove God help us

Many experts are just preachers in different attire. Honestly, should we really listen to scientist who gets labeled experts based non replicable studies? The problem is that all of them gets the same doctors titles but only some of them are doing honest research, and our current society has no good way to deal with this. As a result laymen notice that significant parts of science is pure bullshit, no wonder there ar…

Really? The point michael gove was making, if you're not aware, was to try and shun any attempt at "expert"-ing.

Within the context of Brexit, the leavers had their own group of "experts" i.e. the ERG but any attempt at economic prediction was clearly shunned on the grounds of it being "Project Fear" despite no specific biases being demonstrated. Because that's the only way, along with blatant lies, to get people believe that leaving the largest trading block - possibly even with no replacement deal with anyone - could possibly be a good thing (At all costs being the current mantra i.e. No Deal)

It's not the lack of listening to certain experts that bothers me, it's them clearing playing the card. Gove, and most of the others on the leave side, is very well educated and damn well knows that careful thought ("expert"ism) is important.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#55
post #29
post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right now there are people who have stated criticism of political bias (pro-conservative, conservative-leaning speakers, center-left, etc) that are being punished in the US academic world.

I'd be curious about some substantive examples. I have seen that assertion frequently made, and even have attended multiple seminars on the topic (I have some friends very worried about this issue) as well as some FIRE meetings and fundraisers. Yet I typically see the same few examples repeated and amplified. FIRE loves to talk about the cases it has challenged under Title IX -- and it always wins, because the law co…

Note I'm not the best one to provide you with numerous examples because I don't know where the document is that has detailed all of the examples in the last few years. But hearing about this is fairly frequently.

1. There have been protests about conservative speakers at campuses and universities whom have pulled shady stuff on trying to prevent the speakers from coming. (there was a Dave Rubin one where he was magically moved from a theater to a hockey arena). Substantially high costs on security. (Also video cases of where the security isn't actually enforced [Milo at the Depaul thing.. ]

2. There have been punishments against professors who question the progressive/extreme-left movement. (losing tenure, being brought up that they're "violence-inciting", etc)

3. A Portland professor being brought up on disciplinary actions for doing a POC on how you can get a paper with outrageously false claims published without question. (https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2019/01/08/author-recent... This was a team of three that was involved one in the UK)

4. "Diversity offices" - I don't know direct examples here, but from what I've heard they've created trouble.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#56

Turkey's GDP peaked at $950 billion in 2013, just before Erdogan became president. By 2017, it had slid to $850 billion, and after the intellectual purges, slid to just $766 billion in 2018. [1] People may argue from ideology for or against politics like these, but I can think of no clearer indication of these policies' failure than the impoverishing of a country. [1]: https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/gdp

GDP is not a north star metric. GDP in the US is high and we have more suicides than ever. Many authoritarian (or especially populist) governments KNOW they will lower the GDP because by limiting low-wage labor immigration or focusing on nurturing a native culture or preserving the environment and not buying into a soulless consumerism/globalization they are creating a GDP cap. "growth for the sake of growth is the i…

It is incredibly hard to shrink the GDP though. That's what Erdogan managed nonetheless - installed a kleptocratic oligarchy under the guise of religious conservatism. All outside investment vanished and national players became beholden to the gov rather than to meaningful investment. Unemployment is high, as are food prices, despite super cheap labour migration from Syria (essentially used as slaves) and massive cash infusions by the EU.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#57

Turkey's GDP peaked at $950 billion in 2013, just before Erdogan became president. By 2017, it had slid to $850 billion, and after the intellectual purges, slid to just $766 billion in 2018. [1] People may argue from ideology for or against politics like these, but I can think of no clearer indication of these policies' failure than the impoverishing of a country. [1]: https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/gdp

> Turkey's GDP peaked at $950 billion in 2013, just before Erdogan became president. By 2017, it had slid to $850 billion

Do you realise that Erdogan has been in power since 2001? So if economic downturn is his achievement, then the economic growth is his achievement, too.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#58
post #7

"People have had enough of experts" - Michael Gove God help us

I really dislike people bringing that quote up, because the full sentence was "People have had enough of experts (...) who are consistently getting it wrong". [1]

It's still not necessarily true, but by taking just part of that quote is misrepresenting what he said.

Just thought that'd be good to keep in mind next time you might consider digging it up.

[1] https://youtu.be/GGgiGtJk7MA?t=71

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#59
My favorite concept right now is the “meritocracy of ideas” - a fancy way of saying that the best ideas win. Somehow I feel that this is a core driver for success, in an organization, small or big. So by excluding smart people and their ideas you may significantly limit yourself and the futures your organization.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#60
I don't really know what is so special about the school which they decided to base the entire article on. This is just a small sample of the ongoing intellectual purge in Turkey. Every university rector is appointed by Erdogan, most professors in STEM, if they haven't fled, avoid any kind of political stance to continue teaching with the hopes of raising intellectuals who will help save the country. This is the university side of the situation, most of the successful students leave the country as soon as they graduate. This migration is on a scale that is record high in countries history, according to some unofficial numbers more than 300.000 young and smart individuals leave the country every year.

And I have a problem with this story about its portrayal of Turk-Kurd relation. Turkey is an extension of a multi-national empire. For most people living there, Turkish is not an ethnicity. Most of Kurds, Armenians, Greeks, and more identify themselves as Turks. Portraying Demirtas as a charismatic Kurdish rights activist that wants to unite everyone with peace is despicable journalism. Demirtas is a proud terrorist supporter, he has stated his love and respect for Abdullah Ocalan repeatedly. Abdullah Ocalan is/was the leader of P.K.K., a group that is seen as a terrorist organization by every major intelligence agency of world, he is responsible for the murders of tens of thousands of innocent men, women, children.

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