Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot

bloomberg.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 103 posts

Re: Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot

#51

Post by from »

esafak wrote: post #40
from wrote: post #24

Anybody else tired of hearing about the woes of the "opposition" in all these 2nd/3rd world countries? They're always framed by journalists as these heroic freedom fighters, uncorruptible, etc but in reality it seems like they just want the proceeds of looting to go to themselves and their party instead of the current people in power. Barrow may be a better than Jammeh in the Gambia but not by very much, Aung San Suu…

Don't lump countries together.

Is there any reason to think that this Kılıçdaroğlu guy is immune to the environment and all the pressures that create people like Erdogan? There are a million other examples of what I described above. Maybe he'll be different but I don't think there's any reason to assume he's anything special.

Re: Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot

#52

Post by mrwnmonm »

esafak wrote: post #43
darthrupert wrote: post #21

I genuinely don't understand why Erdogan is called a dictator in the west. He's not an ideal democratic leader, sure, but seems to be far from a dictator.

There are existing measures of democracy. Do you dispute them or Turkey's ratings? https://freedomhouse.org/country/turkey/freedom-world/2023

[flagged]

Re: Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot

#54

Post by aaronbrethorst »

somenameforme wrote: post #26
aaronbrethorst wrote: post #5

Good thing that free speech advocate Elon Musk is in charge at Twitter, so that that platform can offer the people of Turkey an unvarnished look at Erdogan's flaws /s https://twitter.com/nycsouthpaw/status/1657411486380093442

Some interesting context here: https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1657428707995181058 Turkey is presumably making a legal demand. So Twitter's choices are censor a handful of individuals in Turkey or have Turkey block Twitter for everybody. The thing that will be interesting is Twitter posting the demand from Turkey. If this is normalized, it would be another great step forward in transparency for Twitter. It'd be s…

'I may not agree with what you have to say, but I will defend until it may have monetary consequences for me your right to say it.'

- Elon, presumably

Re: Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot

#55

Post by ayhanfuat »

ianai wrote: post #34
paganre wrote: post #3

this is good to hear, but a little bit hard to believe. back in 2019, local elections in Istanbul was annulled by the Supreme Electoral Council (YSK) without any real basis [1]. thankfully voters showed up in larger numbers and the opposition won with a greater margin. opinion polls show razor thin margins right now and if the opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu wins it will unlikely be by a landslide. like everyone…

How long should we expect for results?

It should be clear in 24-28 hours from now.

Re: Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot

#57

Post by yongjik »

alephnerd wrote: post #39
mrtksn wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He might very well face prison. Corruption allegations are in the scale of billions and these allegations are all done by his ex partners. The evidence is patchy but some allegations are very credible. We even had video records and phone records collected by the police but he got away because those who collected these records were connected to a religious cult which is very unpopular among the population and suspecte…

Hot/Unpopular Take: For the sake of developing Turkey, it might be best for them to adopt the South Korean model of the incoming President pardoning the outgoing president of wrongdoing and ongoing crimes. That is the only way to ensure peaceful transitions in countries where democratic norms are still being developed.

Ummm South Korea is actually infamous for throwing almost all ex-presidents to prison, even if they get pardoned eventually. The pardons are always done for "political reasons" and hugely unpopular. We want our ex-presidents to remain in prison, it seems.

There are obviously pros and cons (every Korean will admit that some of these "investigations" are politically motivated hack job, they just disagree on which ones are hacks), but it does send a message that nobody can stay above the law forever, so I think it's not that bad.

Re: Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot

#58

Post by mrtksn »

radu_floricica wrote: post #50
mrtksn wrote: post #13

Nevertheless, it doesn't mean he wouldn't try to keep power. He said "we will accept defeat as we did in the Istanbul elections" but in those elections he managed to cancel the election by claiming that the ballot for the mayor was stolen when the ballot for the council was not. How convenient, since his party won the council. Both of the ballots are voted together and put in the same envelope but somehow only one of…

Isn't that a promise NOT to accept the result? The mayor is currently convicted to prison time for a triviality - not sure if he's actually in prison or still fighting the appeal.

The current mayor who had to win the elections twice is convicted to 2 years, 7 month and 15 days of prison for insulting public officials. Essentially, when answering a question he said "those who canceled the elections are idiots" and in the context of the question he doesn't mean the people he is accused of insulting and the ruling was criticised even by many Erdogan supporters.

He was expected to be the candidate for president because he is very poplar but because his sentence is longer than 2 years, once the ruling is approved(the appeal is still being reviewed by the higher court) he will have to leave his public office and go to prison.

Re: Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot

#59

Post by alephnerd »

mrtksn wrote: post #45
alephnerd wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hot/Unpopular Take: For the sake of developing Turkey, it might be best for them to adopt the South Korean model of the incoming President pardoning the outgoing president of wrongdoing and ongoing crimes. That is the only way to ensure peaceful transitions in countries where democratic norms are still being developed.

Interesting, I haven't heard of this. However, wouldn't that mean that those in power would have nothing to fear to do the worst tings possible? The Turkish "tradition" is to switch power every 20 years and destroy those who previously held power. Before Erdogan, the secularists were in power and they are just as corrupt and oppressive. Their dominance in business and public life was systematically eroded and unfairl…

> However, wouldn't that mean that those in power would have nothing to fear to do the worst tings possible?

Yep. That's the MASSIVE downside of the Korean model and why there is an insane amount of cynicism against politicians in South Korea.

But the alternative is 3-5 years of violent demonstrations.

The Korean model of pardons started in the 1980s when Korea was transitioning from a Military Dicatorship into a (kind of) Democracy.

The elected dictator Chun Doo-hwan (1979-1988) was pardoned by democratically elected Roh Tae-woo (1988-1993) who was then pardoned by Kim Young-sam (1993-1997) after being "advised" by incoming president Kim Dae-jung (1998-2003).

The same thing happened in the 2010s when Lee Myung-bak (2008-2013) was pardoned by Park Geun-hye (2013-2017) who herself was pardoned by Moon Jae-in (2017-2022).

(Edit: pardons were given towards the end of the 2nd president's term, as rightly pointed out below)

All this was done specifically to ensure social stability at the expense of "true democracy", but the results show for themselves. Turkey in 2023 is comparable to South Korea in the 1980s-90s, and can only grow if bygones are kept as bygones and people concentrate on the future.

The alternative is 5-10 years of political polarization as well as incentivizing people to hold on to power to keep criminal immunity, thus perverting governance for the sake of minimizing personal liability.

Re: Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot

#60

Post by akira2501 »

exabrial wrote: post #19

Some GeoPolitlcal context: * If you don't know about Erdogan, theres too much for a HN thread. * The 1936 Montreux Convention allows Turkey to deny any country at war (not with Turkey) to deny warship passage, except to return home. * Turkey is an incredibly important part of NATO because of their ability to choke Black Sea access. * This has kept Russia's warm warm navy in check, particularly for the Ukraine conflic…

> military analysts generally agree this was a good decision

Lines like this always get me. It seems to somehow imply the opinion of military analysts are necessarily good for society at large, or that they're even moderately representative of the democracies they originate from.

> and it was at the request of bi-partisan lawmakers.

Likewise. What was their actual reasoning for backing this decision?

Post reply on HN