Erdogan Promises to Transfer Power Peacefully If He Loses Ballot • Hacker News Board

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

#91

Post by exabrial » Sun, May 14, 2023, 3:58 AM UTC

akira2501 wrote: post #60

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?

We may never know the actual reason, but we can speculate, and I'm sure reality is somewhere between the extremes.

The published story is that S400 systems would be able to repeatedly profile F-35 low-observable aircraft. Eventually a probability model could be created from all of these radar returns. Turkey claims that no data would be sent back to Russia, but that was up for debate.

I'm sure there's an element of truth to the above story, but it's not the full one. My take is Turkey does seem to make NATO nervous with Erdogan's rise to power and becoming a dictatorship. Imagine if F-35s were sold to Turkey, then Turkey left NATO. Russia and China would _love_ to examine them up close (likely in exchange for free or heavily discounted arms).

That's just speculation though. There are professional military analysts with more informed opinions than mine.

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

#92

Post by darthrupert » Sun, May 14, 2023, 4:57 AM UTC

parrellel wrote: post #73

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.

About the time you fake a coup to clean house, you start getting the despot label bandied about. That, the ethnic cleansing, the antidemocratic reforms, the arresting and forcing out critics and opponents. Dude's not the absolute bottom of the barrel among world leaders but he's definitely worked through enough of the autocracy bingo card.

Fake a coup? Tell me more.

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

#93

Post by somenameforme » Sun, May 14, 2023, 4:59 AM UTC

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #85

somenameforme wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're absolutely right that North Korea could make the exact same demands if they allowed Twitter, and Twitter would find itself in the same situation. In fact this has already happened with the EU leadership as well, who have plentiful censorship laws to exploit, and were being publicly flexed. Some deal was eventually made there; it's quite unfortunate it was not publicly elaborated upon. But in any case, this is…

Fair point as to the legality in the US. I'm not sure if there are good arguments for complying with blackmail though, since that's exactly what governments like Turkey (and also the EU) are doing. They threaten them to either take down certain speech or the entire site gets blocked. By complying, the companies give legitimacy to those bullying tactics as well as strengthening the rule of the likes of Erdogan. They b…

The one thing I'd hit on here is the notion of bullying. What Turkey, the EU, and other nations are doing is not bullying. Whether we like those laws or not, those are their laws - and they have every legal right to enforce them. This not only gives the people of those countries clear targets to look for change in, but also a more transparent understanding of what their government is doing. This is only further enhanced if Twitter makes the decision to start regularly publishing these demands, as they ought.

But in the US we have constitutional protections against imperiling freedom of speech, and a government determined to imperil freedom of speech. So this results in something much more akin to bullying. The Twitter Files made the leadership at Twitter look both better and worse. It made them look much better in that they often realized what they were being asked to do was wrong. They even realized they (Twitter) were being used in a government sponsored misinformation campaign - in Twitter's own words, they were "feeding congressional trolls." However the files also made them look much worse, because they also invariably went along with these 'suggestions' anyhow. Describing that as bullying would not be inaccurate.

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

#94

Post by denton-scratch » Sun, May 14, 2023, 8:31 AM UTC

fakedang wrote: post #87

denton-scratch wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> large bi-partisan opposition against Sweden's Nato entry Turkey has been trying to get into the EU for decades. I've seen nothing that suggests that's because they want to move closer to European social, political and commercial customs. After all, they could do that without the EU, if that was what they wanted. So I conclude that they just want budget handouts. And I also conclude that their opposition to Sweden j…

> FWIW, I don't think Turkey should be in NATO; and I don't think they should be in the EU. Not until they have some kind of reasonable governance. Said by somebody who clearly does not understand the difference between the NATO and the EU, or the importance of Turkey in Europe. Turkey is extremely important to NATO because a.) they control the Bosphorus b.) they have the largest armed forces in the NATO after the US…

> Turkey is extremely important to NATO because

...because it's in a unique location that's been a keystone of military strategy for multiple countries for thousands of years. It contains (not just controls) access between the Med and the Black Sea. It's at the boundary between the steppes, the Middle East and Western Europe.

I don't agree with the "realpolitik" notion that you have to get into bed with countries that don't share your interests, just because there is a strategic advantage to be had.

> I'm sure the USA has very strong reasons to continue hosting its ICBMs in Turkey

I'm sure they do as well. I doubt there's any need to site "Inter Continental" ballistic missiles in Turkey, though; they're pointed at Russia, of course, which is just across the border, not a continent away. Anyway, I'm opposed to nuclear willy-waving in general.

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

#95

Post by trompetenaccoun » Sun, May 14, 2023, 9:46 AM UTC

somenameforme wrote: post #93

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair point as to the legality in the US. I'm not sure if there are good arguments for complying with blackmail though, since that's exactly what governments like Turkey (and also the EU) are doing. They threaten them to either take down certain speech or the entire site gets blocked. By complying, the companies give legitimacy to those bullying tactics as well as strengthening the rule of the likes of Erdogan. They b…

The one thing I'd hit on here is the notion of bullying. What Turkey, the EU, and other nations are doing is not bullying. Whether we like those laws or not, those are their laws - and they have every legal right to enforce them. This not only gives the people of those countries clear targets to look for change in, but also a more transparent understanding of what their government is doing. This is only further enhan…

Freedom of speech is a universal human right. Laws are no basis for arguments about moral right or wrong, slavery and other atrocities used to be perfectly legal around the world and most people claimed those wanting to abolish it were the crazy radical ones. The history of law is one of injustice. We all know that the people of Turkey have a right to speak their minds, depriving them of this makes Twitter complicit.

I get you're trying to view this with more nuance but sometimes there isn't. This moral relativism is a very dangerous view actually, ultimately it boils down to regarding people in Turkey as lesser and not deserving the same rights. We're all one people. If it helps you picture it think of a US state where the local government tries to restrict speech rights or other basic rights. You would have a problem with that if it happens in your backyard, right?

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

#96

Post by retinaros » Sun, May 14, 2023, 10:08 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #86

retinaros wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with your comment but comparin erdogan to those leader is not really fair. what he did for turkey development makes him likely the greatest leader of this era maybe next to merkel and putin. turkey is a top 20 world economy with highly strategic assets, big land, leader in drones, building nuclear reactors, having electronic conglomerates. this is in no way a 2nd or 3rd world country. most of its major cities…

I don't know what you think the suburbs of Chicago are like, but they're among the highest standards of living in the world. (I assume this is the case for Philadelphia as well, but I'm less familiar with any part of the metro area other than Malvern.)

https://youtu.be/MhvvxoIgNPg sure it is

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

#97

Post by kasey_junk » Sun, May 14, 2023, 12:10 PM UTC

retinaros wrote: post #96

tptacek wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know what you think the suburbs of Chicago are like, but they're among the highest standards of living in the world. (I assume this is the case for Philadelphia as well, but I'm less familiar with any part of the metro area other than Malvern.)

https://youtu.be/MhvvxoIgNPg sure it is

Perhaps you are using “suburbs” differently than an American would? I don’t know Philly geography but that certainly appears to be a tour of a dense part of Philly and not what I’d call a suburb.

Similarly here is a video touring some Chicago suburbs: https://youtu.be/Ngv70I82rP4

One thing I will say is that at least in Chicago there is a pretty wide divergence between suburbs (Chicagoland is nearly 30k km2 area so that’s not surprising). But for instance you’ll see pretty significantly different wealth levels in Markham than Tinley Park even though they are reasonably close to each other.

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

#98

Post by rasz » Sun, May 14, 2023, 1:05 PM UTC

dkankalovich wrote: post #29

Yeah, sure. We have the same kind of guy in Belarus. Google "Belarus election 2020" - this is what possible for Turkey.

Had. Officially Lukashenko is in hospital since yesterday, but rumors say he is dead for couple of days now - drank too much putin's tea it seems.

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

#99

Post by somenameforme » Sun, May 14, 2023, 1:17 PM UTC

trompetenaccoun wrote: post #95

somenameforme wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one thing I'd hit on here is the notion of bullying. What Turkey, the EU, and other nations are doing is not bullying. Whether we like those laws or not, those are their laws - and they have every legal right to enforce them. This not only gives the people of those countries clear targets to look for change in, but also a more transparent understanding of what their government is doing. This is only further enhan…

Freedom of speech is a universal human right. Laws are no basis for arguments about moral right or wrong, slavery and other atrocities used to be perfectly legal around the world and most people claimed those wanting to abolish it were the crazy radical ones. The history of law is one of injustice. We all know that the people of Turkey have a right to speak their minds, depriving them of this makes Twitter complicit.…

Your argument here does not really follow. Had Twitter ignored or refused to comply with Turkey's legal demand, then every single Turk would have lost access to Twitter. Instead, a negligible handful did. In many things in life there is no good option nor bad option. There's a bad option, and a terrible one. So focusing on the bad option being bad says very little.

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

#100

Post by akira2501 » Sun, May 14, 2023, 6:52 PM UTC

exabrial wrote: post #91

akira2501 wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

We may never know the actual reason, but we can speculate, and I'm sure reality is somewhere between the extremes. The published story is that S400 systems would be able to repeatedly profile F-35 low-observable aircraft. Eventually a probability model could be created from all of these radar returns. Turkey claims that no data would be sent back to Russia, but that was up for debate. I'm sure there's an element of t…

> We may never know the actual reason, but we can speculate

Democracy manifest.

> a probability model could be created from all of these radar returns

So.. we built a weapon system who's utility is immediately reduced by the amount of time it spends in proximity to enemy radar systems? Then, we tried to use that same weapon system's manufacturing base as a means to create worldwide political allies?

And now.. because the friend of our friend is maybe some sort of enemy, we have to pull the plug on this ally?

And so.. military analysts blithely "support" this. Sounds like they're providing some exceptionally shallow analysis in that very simplistic conclusion.

> There are professional military analysts with more informed opinions than mine.

No doubt. I'm sure their analysis is more designed to benefit their sector than it is to actually inform any of us.