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How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

nytimes.com

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Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#101

Post by dmitriid »

anticensor wrote: post #85
dmitriid wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

He had significant checks and balances when he was the prime minister. Many of them are removed, nearly half of the executive powers lie upon the president, without any balance, currently. This is thanks to "presidential order"s ( Cumhurbaşkanı Kararı ), which is separate from "presidential decree"s ( Cumhurbaşkanlığı Kararnamesi ), which can be struck by the constitutional court.

> Many of them are removed, nearly half of the executive powers lie upon the president,

That I know, too. And that happened (as in many authoritarian states) so that he could maintain the illusion of legitimacy: "hey look, I'm not a prime-minister forever, I am now president".

But do give Erdogan some credit. He is not stupid. And it's disingenuous and deeply simplistic to paint what happened in Turkey as "Erdogan became President in 2013, look Turkey immediately slid into recession because of that". "Checks and balances" alone cannot explain Turkey's growth prior to 2013.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#102

Post by stcredzero »

zzzcpan wrote: post #89
stcredzero wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's hardly the takeaway from this article. The article talks about academics being persecuted. In Turkey the state took jobs and freedom of mobility away from those with ideologies that the regime did not favor. Good point. To look for authoritarianism, look for powerful organizations and people taking away jobs and economic security from "those with ideologies the regime did not favor." It works for more types of…

> look for powerful organizations and people taking away jobs and economic security from "those with ideologies the regime did not favor." That's going to make those people desperate and ready to fight the government. Next step for the government is going to be imprisoning lots of people and manufacturing consent and all that.

and manufacturing consent and all that

That's another good heuristic. Look for those who manufacture consent, and try to suppress dissent.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#103

Post by [deleted] »

dang wrote: post #33

All: please don't post unsubstantive comments or ideological flamebait in this thread or any other HN thread. Please do follow the site guidelines. They include " Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive. " https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

[deleted]

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#104

Post by capkutay »

devmunchies wrote: post #52
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

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 mean why use any metrics at all of you're going to try to correlate them with something seemingly unrelated with no context like # of suicides?

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#105

Post by doctorpangloss »

99052882514569 wrote: post #94
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

Engineers have a hard time disliking someone for emotional reasons though. Like it’s not enough that Erdogan is a bad guy, it has to be about numbers.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#106

Post by cheriot »

Dumblydorr wrote: post #68
baxtr wrote: post #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.

How do you define meritocracy? Ideas are infectious and they clearly do not need truthful or academic merit to spread like wildfire.

Meritocracy requires some sort of result that holds an idea up against reality. The scientific community uses experimentation and replication of successful results. The economy uses "creative destruction" to a similar end.

People believing an idea doesn't add to its merit.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#107

Post by JumpCrisscross »

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

Erdogan also "said he opposes high rates because they stoke inflation - a view that contradicts economic theory" [1]. It seems the exodus of intellectuals had a secondary effect in de-intellectualising his policy.

[1] https://www.cnbc.com/2019/06/20/reuters-america-update-1-erd...

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#108

Post by lunchables »

devmunchies wrote: post #52
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

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…

>GDP in the US is high and we have more suicides than ever.

I think this is my favorite new "correlation does not equal causation" example.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#109

Post by devmunchies »

lunchables wrote: post #108
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…

>GDP in the US is high and we have more suicides than ever. I think this is my favorite new "correlation does not equal causation" example.

I wanst implying that they were correlated at all. Simply that a high GDP isn’t a useful metric since the people in the US are still unfulfilled in other ways.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#110

Post by giardini »

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…

tuvan says> "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. "

Reminds me of pre-war Germany's educational system once the nazis took over. Curiously enough, Erdogan may agree -

"Erdoğan cites Hitler's Germany as example of effective government":

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/01/turkish-presid...

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