How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals • Hacker News Board

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#161

Post by nbabitskiy » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 9:44 PM UTC

Chyzwar wrote: post #131

nbabitskiy wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As it looked for a foreigner, reading almost exclusively mainstream media, when I happened to come by, not only were not pro-staying experts shunned, rather I was stunned for the outcome, because I never heard anything pro-leaving, or any expectation it would end this way. Surely Brexit guys mean it not like Erdogan (i.e. jail time), but more like "if media don't serve as a feedback channel, both voters and elites co…

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I didn't really mean "Russian propaganda machine" as nobody use it as bona fide media. I mean all over the world, in Fox, Guardian, Figaro or NYT, and all non state-owned Russian media, opinion pieces are not worth opening for some time. And it gets worse, since while the quality of reporting is worlds apart, the essence of it is converging. E.g. it's amazing to what extent (imho) all this media are over-reporting Trump, Putin or Brexit anti-heroes. It's hard to imagine, that any real person, with a life and a job, can be so invested in those people.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#162

Post by Gibbon1 » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 9:45 PM UTC

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…

> people who identified as non-turks were severely penalized in the past,

The word you are looking for is murdered.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#163

Post by monksy » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

ryanobjc wrote: post #133

monksy wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note I'm not the best one to provide you with numerous examples because I don't know where the document is that has detailed all of the examples in the last few years. But hearing about this is fairly frequently. 1. There have been protests about conservative speakers at campuses and universities whom have pulled shady stuff on trying to prevent the speakers from coming. (there was a Dave Rubin one where he was magic…

So a lot of the argument about how "right wing commenters" are unfairly, well, whatevered, is based on some very serious anecdotes. And you know what we say to those - not today. A few things: - Protests are valid free speech expressions. - Holding an entire protest as invalid due to a small number of individual's actions is unfair. - Many of those conservative speakers aren't trying to spread discourse, but trying t…

> So a lot of the argument about how "right wing commenters" are unfairly, well, whatevered, is based on some very serious anecdotes. And you know what we say to those - not today.

For what I meant by right-wing, I meant the popular definition that is used today: Anything right of extreme left.

> not today

Lol. Good luck with trying to suppress others based on their beliefs or opinions.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#164

Post by cat199 » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 9:49 PM UTC

The modern turkish state has been suppressing various kinds of intellectuals since its foundations via forced secularism

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secularism_in_Turkey

what has happened is a shift in who is being suppressed, rather than the ab-initio creation of suppression. This is hinted at but not actually elucidated in the article:

    This measure was both practical and symbolic: 
    The decaying Ottoman Empire had given way to a
    rebellious new nation that required statesmen (like 
    himself) who were dedicated to secularism, modernity 
    and nationalism.

AKA required actually means required here, not just 'required in some sort of abstract sense of fitting in with the zeitgeist'

the omission is unsurprising, since previous suppression fits secularist editorial bias of NYT, whereas current suppression does not.

this is neither to say that I am in favor of either, nor that there was/was not intellectual freedom under ottoman times.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#165

Post by Steko » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 9:50 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #150

Steko wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

He's not criticizing 'the institutions' so much as their ideas and modernism itself which, funny enough, is one of the 14 handy 'heuristics' for identifing nascent facism that Eco listed in 1995 [1].

It's a good list. At the risk of courting Godwin I'd suggest that 'concentration camps' would be a good 15th point but I guess it's covered more generally.

[1] https://kottke.org/16/11/the-14-features-of-eternal-fascism

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#166

Post by zwaps » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 9:59 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #122

radres wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At least 100 000 people lost their jobs. 6000 is only the number of academics. We are talking about Stanford/MIT grad, >40 h-index young academics (at least in science which is not the focus of the article) Some of these high-achieving people couldn't even leave the country even though there were a lot of positions waiting for them. Some people tried to go to Greece on boats which many of them died on the way.

It sounds like someone needs to organize some good, seaworthy boats to come pick these people up and take them someplace better, and help them get set up. After all, if they're intellectuals, they should be a huge asset to any country that takes them in. There's a reason we have the term "brain drain": countries that get the brains usually benefit greatly, while the countries losing them suffer economically.

I know you didnt mean this, but perhaps these people don't want to leave?

Turkey is not a hellhole. Sure, it is a divided country, but it has a rich history and lots of beauty (I say that not being a Turk, nor being from Istanbul).

Let's remember that the current position as a developing nation is historically rather new. There is a strong sense of nostalgia and, until recently, there was some realistic hope that Turkey would claw its way back.

I'd personally argue there arent many comparable places where you can (or could) indeed live a good academic and intellectual life in a non-western, non-east-asian society.

I know people who were ousted from their jobs, and yes they can all move elsewhere. But that's not the personal tragedies lie.

If you grew up in a city full of thousands of years of history from East and West, it is entirely possible you will never be quite as happy living in sterile, uniform, blocky corporaty cities in the US or Canada.

Those academics who stayed in Turkey despite their credentials, probably have such a preference.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#167

Post by philwelch » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 10:01 PM UTC

lordCarbonFiber wrote: post #91

tomohawk wrote: post #51

Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? Evicting professors and others from universities. Blocking access to social media. Closing down newspapers and other new outlets. And it doesn't matter who's doing it. Erdogan. Carlos Maza. Antifa. None of them are doing anything constructive.

You cannot have freedom of speech without freedom of association. When it comes to deplatforming it does matter who's doing it, because there is a fundamental difference between a private entity (corporate or living person) and a government (only one has a monopoly on violence). The government shutting down your youtube channel; that's a problematic infringement on speech; Google shutting down your channel, that's wi…

The problem is that Google is a monopoly.

IIRC, it used to be the case that shopping malls were, in some situations, treated as public squares and couldn't just expel people. For example, if someone like Steven Crowder hypothetically set up his infamous "change my mind" table in the middle of the mall, the mall actually didn't have the legal power to expel him. This was in the era when a lot of towns didn't actually have a real public square, they just had shopping malls, and the landowners of the shopping malls had an effective commercial monopoly on the city square.

YouTube is in a very similar situation. And frankly, it's not even just the outwardly political channels like Crowder that are getting the short end of the stick.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#168

Post by zwaps » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 10:02 PM UTC

Istanbul these days is a tragedy, at least it feels like it.

One of the three greatest cities in human history, and so many signs of "almost making it back". But now, everything has the stench of moving into the wrong direction. Seriously, you can feel it in the people, the shops, the buildings.

It makes me really sad never to have been there in its prime.

Turkey was never not a troubled country, but Turkish friends tell me Erdogan has sucked the optimism out of the intellectuals and academics that prevailed in years prior. What is left now is the typical Turkish melancholic nostalgia. It seeps through the streets of the city nowadays.

Tragic.

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#169

Post by somlor » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 10:07 PM UTC

philwelch wrote: post #156

itsgrimetime wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Deplatforming is just bad. If you can't win your argument without getting rid of anyone who disagrees with you, what does that say? You're wrong about this. If you think that the best ideas naturally win out you're either ignorant (think of how fast bad ideas can spread), or purposefully pushing this "both sides"/horseshoe theory/false equivalence to further impede those who are actually trying to stop fascism. The…

> Antifa: organization with no leadership structure, composed of citizens who are dedicated to preventing fascism from spreading, using means that are historically proven to work. "Historically proven to work"? Since when have leftist street gangs ever stopped a fascist movement from rising to power? It was the fear of leftist street violence that won whatever small degree of public support the SA had, bolstered the…

The "43 Group" comes to mind. https://vimeo.com/64299989

Re: How Turkey Purged Its Intellectuals

#170

Post by antod » Wed, Jul 24, 2019, 10:12 PM UTC

tepidandroid wrote: post #79

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…

It's interesting to note that the NYT publishes this damning piece mere weeks after Erdogan green-lighted Turkey's purchase of Russian S-400 missile systems despite the U.S threatening to kick them out of the F-35 program if they did so. The story appears at a time when an important NATO ally is straying from the pack and leaning instead towards Russia's sphere of influence. My prediction is that we will be seeing mo…

or... damning articles about the situation in Turkey have been popping up regularly for 5ish years now. IMO they need to keep popping up frankly.

Likewise, Turkey's increasing moves away from NATO towards Russia were always going to reach a threshold where some steplike point was crossed (the F-35 vs S-400 thing) and some public consequences happened.

I would've thought if this particular timing was a case of "Manufacturing Consent" rather than just a coincidence, it would've happened earlier.

I'm basically of the opinion that it is pretty clear Turkey is heading in the wrong direction, and the powers that be in the west have no reason to manufacture that story.