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Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

reuters.com

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Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#211

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

breadwinner wrote: post #184
amadeuspagel wrote: post #34

The really interesting news here is that in Turkey you need a degree to run for president.

United States from the 1890s to the 1960s required voters to pass a literacy before they could vote. We should bring back this rule. Voters should have a minimum level of knowledge about the world, science and democracy in order to vote. This would have prevented the current disaster which threatens not just our democracy, but by denying climate change, the entire planet.

I suspect that any configurable or discretionary barrier to voting will be used to disenfranchise voters unfairly, at least some times in some places. As it is, I'm aware of an age requirement (18 years) and a criminal status requirement (not a felon, sometimes just not incarcerated).

A literacy/civics/logic/knowledge/etc. requirement would at best discriminate against people who are uninformed, unintelligent, uneducated, unable or unwilling to take a written test, etc. But they are people whom the laws affect and who should be able to vote. I don't think that they are a comparable category to the exceptions mentioned above, but that's debatable.

Most importantly, the test would be optimized to exclude whoever the test designers and proctors consider, knowingly or not, unworthy.

I understand the desire to exclude the dummies. I know thoughtful and educated people who espouse the same wish, but it's just too dangerous.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#212

Post by skissane »

lazyasciiart wrote: post #192
skissane wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it The same is true of the role of Leader of the UK Labour Party–but I wonder how many people would suggest that the UK Labour Party has an "unwritten rule" that its leader must be male?

A lot of people.

So they think the UK's main centre-left party has an "unwritten rule" against female leaders, when its main centre-right party very obviously doesn't (having a female leader right now, its fourth, and having just last month marked the fiftieth anniversary of its first election of a female leader). How do they explain that? I mean, what about the UK Labour Party's ideology leads it to having an "unwritten rule" against female leadership at its highest level, while the ideology of the UK Conservative Party leads them to embrace such leadership repeatedly?

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#213

Post by breadwinner »

DC-3 wrote: post #210
breadwinner wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and that was apparently constitutional. If so we can bring back the law, but this time to disenfranchise dumb voters.

You think at the time they openly said they were trying to take the vote from black people? Or did they say exactly what you're saying now, that they were simply trying to ensure that only smart and educated people could vote.

Your argument is valid, but isn't it clear that the status quo can't continue? Close to half of US voters decided it is OK to ignore climate change. Is it possible to educate them?

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#214

Post by crooked-v »

breadwinner wrote: post #201
lazyasciiart wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it wasn't. https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/timeline_event/literacy-t...

As you see in the article you linked, it was ruled unconstitutional only because it violated the 15th amendment. That amendment makes it illegal to deny the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It is still legal to deny the right to vote if someone is deemed not smart enough.

The literacy tests in question were designed from the start to be ambiguous, so that the same answers could be marked wrong for a black person and correct for a white person. Frankly, there is nothing that could convince me that the Republicans wouldn't try to repeat the same thing if given the opportunity.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#215

Post by crooked-v »

bawolff wrote: post #208
plorg wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Eh, I attended a conservative Christian college and there was a pretty strict religious code of conduct students were required to abide by. I would find it pretty disturbing for the school to retroactively rescind my engineering degree due to my having drunk underage or being an atheist. You can come up with whatever justification you want, but this action is unprecedented and clearly a politically motivated punishme…

My high school wouldn't let you graduate if you had unpaid library fines, i can't imagine what they would do if you caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage. I agree rescinding post-granting degree is weird but we are still talking about behaviour that happened while they were students and that happened relatively recently (such that disciplinary procedures could have realistically started while they were still…

Ekrem İmamoğlu, the man whose degree was taken away, is 55 and got his degree in the early 90s. What is "recent" about that?

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#216

Post by crooked-v »

ChoGGi wrote: post #62
echoangle wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well at least in my opinion, it seems extremely undemocratic. University education is a privilege that some people won’t be able to experience (financial constraints, having to care for relatives, …), and I don’t think it’s a unique qualifier for being a good president. I think if people want to elect someone who didn’t go to university, they should be able to.

Apparently colleges and trade schools count as well.

Except actually they don't, because no matter how you qualify, it will get taken away anyway if you try to use it.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#217

Post by crooked-v »

blackeyeblitzar wrote: post #196

These tactics are often criticized selectively. Why is it a problem when Turkey manipulates elections by banning certain candidates or parties, but not a problem when Romania or Germany or the EU does it? When any country resorts to such authoritarian tactics, it needs to be condemned. Otherwise criticism of people like Erdogan falls flat.

It is also a problem in those other cases.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#218

Post by vkou »

stickfigure wrote: post #207
dragonwriter wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can't run within the Constitution if it isn't changed. OTOH, his concern about whether his actions are Constitutional and the ability and willingness of any other institution to impose meaningful consequences on his unconstitutional acts don't support the conclusion that his future actions will be limited to what the Constitution allows.

A constitutional amendment requires ratification by 3/4 of the states. Even getting one proposed requires 2/3 of both houses of congress. This is not going to happen. Simply ignoring the constitution and cancelling the vote? There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.

> There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.

Given how far it's shifted in two months, how far it shifts every day, and given that there are 46 more months to go, I wouldn't hold my breath on that.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#219

Post by gizzlon »

stickfigure wrote: post #207
dragonwriter wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He can't run within the Constitution if it isn't changed. OTOH, his concern about whether his actions are Constitutional and the ability and willingness of any other institution to impose meaningful consequences on his unconstitutional acts don't support the conclusion that his future actions will be limited to what the Constitution allows.

A constitutional amendment requires ratification by 3/4 of the states. Even getting one proposed requires 2/3 of both houses of congress. This is not going to happen. Simply ignoring the constitution and cancelling the vote? There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.

Are you 100% sure there are no obscure laws or something that can be used to postpone an election somehow? :(

How about simply refusing to accept a loss, calling the election rigged and fake..

Or simply putting a puppet as the candidate. Believe Putin did this some years ago.

Re: Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

#220

Post by BrandoElFollito »

dylan604 wrote: post #175
BrandoElFollito wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me "botn in the country" or "born a citizen of the country" does not mean much. This is like assuming that your birth status makes the person. Think minarchy, castes, ... You can be a naturalized citizen in live with your country, or a born citizen plain stupid and with worst interests in mind.

Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me. I'm one that questions the whole pledge of allegiance forced to be recited by children that have no wherewithal to understand what allegiance even means or the ramifications of that pledge. Yet, I'm okay with bo…

And yet when you look at the great espionnage stories, the perpetrators were citizens of the country.

When you look at people who were "almost born" (came to the country as toddlers) or naturalized because of the love of their new country, purple claiming that they are second category citizens are hard to listen to.

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