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How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

nytimes.com

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Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#91

Post by lordCarbonFiber »

tomohawk wrote: post #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.

You cannot have freedom of speech without freedom of association. When it comes to deplatforming it does matter who's doing it, because there is a fundamental difference between a private entity (corporate or living person) and a government (only one has a monopoly on violence).

The government shutting down your youtube channel; that's a problematic infringement on speech; Google shutting down your channel, that's within their rights.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#93

Post by jayess »

tepidandroid wrote: post #79
tuvan wrote: post #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 unive…

It's interesting to note that the NYT publishes this damning piece mere weeks after Erdogan green-lighted Turkey's purchase of Russian S-400 missile systems despite the U.S threatening to kick them out of the F-35 program if they did so. The story appears at a time when an important NATO ally is straying from the pack and leaning instead towards Russia's sphere of influence. My prediction is that we will be seeing mo…

NYT has always been a tool of the political establishment.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#94

Post by 99052882514569 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #44

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

Meh, I'm no fan of Erdogan, but statistics like that should be used with caution. This precipitous decline does not show what you imply it shows. This is what happens when your currency tanks, numbers like "GDP in USD" get all out of whack. Compare and contrast with GDP per capita PPP[1]

[1] https://tradingeconomics.com/turkey/gdp-per-capita-ppp

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#95

Post by geggam »

username90 wrote: post #42
mhh__ wrote: 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…

You forgot the profit layer providing motive. This is one the layman is aware he is being left out of.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#96

Post by zzzcpan »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #91
tomohawk wrote: post #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.

You cannot have freedom of speech without freedom of association. When it comes to deplatforming it does matter who's doing it, because there is a fundamental difference between a private entity (corporate or living person) and a government (only one has a monopoly on violence). The government shutting down your youtube channel; that's a problematic infringement on speech; Google shutting down your channel, that's wi…

> because there is a fundamental difference between a private entity (corporate or living person) and a government (only one has a monopoly on violence).

Only works for private entities in markets with a lot of competition and no dominance. Otherwise there is no difference whether a government does it or a private entity under pressure.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#97

Post by philjohn »

Vinnl wrote: post #58
mhh__ wrote: 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

The full quote is worse ... he's essentially saying to the base that all experts always get it wrong.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#98

Post by ska »

p1necone wrote: post #70
devmunchies wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'd like some kind of standard metric that adjusts gdp to spending power on food, housing etc, and weights based on standard deviation amongst the populace (lower being better). Unadjusted gdp seems like an entirely pointless metric when as you point out you can look at places like the USA where despite having high gdp there's still widespread poverty.

Standard deviation of what, wealth? Income?

You're on the right track though, at minimum you need to use something like purschasing power parity (PPP) to account for some effects, and wealth distribution to account for others.

Doing these comparisons meaningfully isn't easy to get right.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#99

Post by cat199 »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #44

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

No fan of Erdogan, and dont doubt that his policies have impacted investment to Turkey, but this ignores:

- greek debt crisis

- brexit

- recent market turmoil

- syrian conflict

all of which have huge impact to Turkish economy as well.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#100

Post by ryacko »

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #91
tomohawk wrote: post #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.

You cannot have freedom of speech without freedom of association. When it comes to deplatforming it does matter who's doing it, because there is a fundamental difference between a private entity (corporate or living person) and a government (only one has a monopoly on violence). The government shutting down your youtube channel; that's a problematic infringement on speech; Google shutting down your channel, that's wi…

The EFF defends Backpage when credit card companies are pressured to withdraw services to Backpage.

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2015/12/sheriffs-threats-again...

The EFF does not defend Wikileaks when pressure was placed for hosting companies to withdraw services to them.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/how-lieberman-got-ama...

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