There was no "deepfake". There wasn't even a badly photoshopped picture. Someone took a screenshot from a pornographic film where the actor bears a resemblance to him (albeit faintly), and then released it from a Twitter account belonging to an impersonator of an insider. He quit the race for two reasons 1) His predicted vote count was decreasing a lot, he lost a lot of support 2) There was a lot of pressure from the opposition. He knew that if Erdogan won, millions of people would blame him and his political career would be over.
Turkish presidential candidate quits race after release of alleged deepfake
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Re: Turkish presidential candidate quits race after release of alleged deepfake
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'd say they're betting on their possibility to extract wealth from Turkey, and their bet, with their money on the line, is that Erdogan is bad for their possibility to extract wealth from Turkye.
We are not talking about imperialist sources trying to colonize a nation. Capitalism has its shortcomings, which can surely be discussed, but it isn't an evil plan to reallocate the most resources from a zero-sum game to the "foreign capitalists".
Of course not. We are talking about possibility to have businesses who will mostly employ local workers and mostly use local resources, some will maybe even pay fair local taxes, but whose majority of profits will move out of the country. Thus, wealth extraction.
Re: Turkish presidential candidate quits race after release of alleged deepfake
#73It seems Kemal Kilicdaroglu (the main opposition candidate) is accusing Russians for the deepfake video.
He tweeted in Turkish and Russian https://twitter.com/kilicdarogluk/status/1656705798557384727
Re: Turkish presidential candidate quits race after release of alleged deepfake
#74This is not Kemal Kilicdaroglu who is the main challenger to Erdoğan, and in fact could help his chances. 1. https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/turkeys-erdogan-la...
Al Jazeera says the opposite, his voters are closer to Erdoğan.
No. He used to be in the CHP: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muharrem_%C4%B0nce
Re: Turkish presidential candidate quits race after release of alleged deepfake
#75> The former school headteacher and longtime member of the Republican People’s party (CHP) said an alleged sex tape circulating online was a deepfake, using footage taken from “an Israeli porn site”. This seems pretty easy to determine then. Surely someone will recognize the original video, if it came from a publicly available source like that?
This seems like an impossible task. I can’t fathom recognising a video and finding the original. And yet, there seem to be people on Reddit capable of doing this. I feel like this candidate need only ask for help from Reddit to recover from this setback … if what he says is true.
Like you suggest, impossible for a single person, but almost trivial when you crowdsource it.
Re: Turkish presidential candidate quits race after release of alleged deepfake
#76man... the guardian writer who came up with this sub-title: >> Muharrem İnce pulls out just days from close election race saying alleged sex tape is deepfake
Friend of the subeditor who came up with "6,000 RIM jobs on the line".
Re: Turkish presidential candidate quits race after release of alleged deepfake
#77I miss those days here in the US were somekind of sexual impropriety would end someone's political career. Now it seems, at least for one US Political Party, sexual impropriety is a requirement to be considered for higher office.
Ah, the good ol days of sex scandals in America - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gczkM8cL2hs
Re: Turkish presidential candidate quits race after release of alleged deepfake
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
Many countries update their constitutions much more regularly and don't have that sort of thing happen to them. Why do you think the US would be any different?
The US has a large number of fairly undemocratic institutions such as Congress (supremely gerrymandered in many states), the electoral college (frequently favors the person who lost the popular vote) and the Senate (which rewards the same number of reps to 39,000,000 people as it does to 500,000 people). These institutions offer routes for extremist positions to take power which they could then entrench with a more m…
These "undemocratic" institutions only exist precisely because the constitution is hard to change. The electoral college, the gerrymandering, the shape of the Senate, they are all things that the constitution already allows. The takeover of power has already happened, the US is trapped in a 2-party system that basically everybody hates, but it's so entrenched into the culture that it's unthinkable to change it.
Re: Turkish presidential candidate quits race after release of alleged deepfake
#79For context, The Economist calls this the most important election in the world this year. https://www.economist.com/leaders/2023/05/04/if-turkey-sacks...
As an American who has spent years living in Turkey, I agree with that article, at least from an American or "Western" perspective.
Hilariously the Turkish diaspora living across Europe will be voting for Erdogan.