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How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

nytimes.com

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Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#141

Post by enraged_camel »

MrLeap wrote: post #134
bediger4000 wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you don't have sources or citations for your viewpoint, just handwaving about "obvious to me", "Typical". You should just come right out and say it, I think.

Sometimes your requests for rigor on a freeform discussion board don't carry the weight of law, sometimes people just respond with what they're thinking instead of doing what they're told. I stand by my handwaving as relevant, common experience that indicates an erosion of intellectual discourse. It should be patently obvious that I didn't have any sources for what I said specifically. There's no parenthetical or APA…

>>Sometimes your requests for rigor on a freeform discussion board don't carry the weight of law, sometimes people just respond with what they're thinking instead of doing what they're told.

Well, you made a claim, and people asked you to prove that claim. I think it is quite reasonable to expect you to carry that burden regardless of medium. Otherwise, you should retract the original claim.

Incidentally, what you said about "people just [stating] what they are thinking" and then not backing that up with evidence is a huge problem in today's public discourse. If we don't hold those people accountable, then what we have is not a discourse, but a cacophony of random voices.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#142

Post by tuvan »

chr1 wrote: post #116
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…

Turkey is an extension of a multi-national empire which had extreme levels of animosity between its nations, people who identified as non-turks were severely penalized in the past, and to this day allegations of having a non Turk grandparent is something that can be used against politicians. Armenian is still considered an offensive word in Turkey, (as is Turk in Armenia), so portraying Turkey as an idyllic multi-nat…

Yes, racism exists. Armenian, Greek etc are used as insults by racist people. This doesn’t mean that it is the general state of public.

People like Trump use Mexican as an insult, that doesn’t change the fact that there are tons of people with Mexican roots that identify as American and are well respected by the non-racist majority of the nation.

I don’t see how PKK is anything like American revolution. PKK isn’t representing any form of official group, they aren’t acting in favor of any specific agenda. There is no ‘real unsolved problem still present in Turkey’ that can justify suicide bombing civilians. They are indirectly funded by USA through military aids to PKKs extension PYD. If you asked what does PKK want to Turkish people, there would be no clear answer, as all PKK ever accomplished was stirring the political climate every single time there was a possibility of political stability in the area.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#143

Post by TeMPOraL »

doctorpangloss wrote: post #105
99052882514569 wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Numbers tend to lie less than emotional appeals, especially given recent history of shouting "bad guys" as a pretext to ruin nations.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#144

Post by ozgune »

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

Also, quick clarification note related to the GDP numbers. Erdogan has been Turkey's Prime Minister since 2003 (head of the executive branch).

In 2014, Erdogan was elected as President. In 2017, Turkey went through a constitutional referendum that made the President head of the executive branch.

I'm noting this because much of Erdogan's popularity is rooted in Turkey's GDP growth between 2003-2013.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#145

Post by hyko »

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…

It’s probably the closest thing we have to a North Star metric when evaluating a country. Everything that people desire is underpinned by GDP, and it isn’t particularly high anywhere on Earth.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#146

Post by csomar »

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

> This is what happens when your currency tanks, numbers like "GDP in USD" get all out of whack.

Your currency tanking is worse than having the GDP going down.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#147

Post by jjtheblunt »

baq wrote: post #24

It begins with experts being blamed by politicians for daring to know things incompatible with a particular world view. When opinion gets more important than fact, democracy becomes populism and in the limit, authoritarianism.

I think that distinct groups of Americans feel this way about both the Democratic Party supporters and the Republican Party supporters.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#148

Post by alan-crowe »

mhh__ wrote: post #7

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

In context, Gove was talking about expert political judgment applied to making short term predictions: experts predicting prompt, dire consequences from Brexit.

Such predictions have been the subject of academic study. One obtains gold-standard data on the accuracy of short term predictions merely by waiting. The classic book is Expert Political Judgment by Philip E. Tetlock https://press.princeton.edu/titles/11152.html

His findings sent shocks waves through the intelligence community. What is going to happen next? Answering that question is raison d'être of the intelligence community. They depend on expert political judgment and Tetlock had found that it was rubbish. This prompted the Good Judgment Project https://www.iarpa.gov/index.php/newsroom/iarpa-in-the-news/2...

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#149

Post by atoav »

As somebody who grew up in a central european province governed by popularist right wingers and then left, this was a question that always bugged me: If I am leaving, am I not making it worse there? But should I really go through unbearable suffering in an environment that is so corrupt, so completely devoid of rationality that the only few semi-okay people you know start acting like trauma victims, never just able to cope with the environment they live in.

I can't blame anybody who fled in such a climate, especially in a nation which has it's unprocessed genocides not to far in the past. The border between what we call civilization and pure, stupid, evil fascism is extremely thin and given the right conditions the transition can be so incredibly fast, when the public starts to realize, it will be too late.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#150

Post by philwelch »

Steko wrote: post #139
stcredzero wrote: post #4

The takeaway for those in the US: To detect nascent authoritarianism, look at who in particular is getting persecuted in academia. Another good heuristic: Look at who's over-serious and who is best wielding ridicule.

Or you could just look for the anti-intellectual movements seeking to marginalize academia in general, which your comment itself appears to stem from.

Criticizing academic institutions isn't inherently anti-intellectual, any more than criticizing government institutions makes you an anarchist.
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