Slashdot Mirror
Turkish PM: "To Me, Social Media Is the Worst Menace To Society."
PolygamousRanchKid writes "Turkey's prime minister on Sunday rejected claims that he is a 'dictator,' dismissing protesters as an extremist fringe even as thousands returned to the landmark Istanbul square that has become the site of the fiercest anti-government outburst in years. With Turkish media otherwise giving scant reports about the protests, many turned to social media outlets for information on the unrest. 'There is now a menace which is called Twitter,' Erdogan said. 'The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.' 'The people are finally standing up, speaking up and fighting for their rights,' said Hakan Tas, a deputy for the Left Party in Berlin's local assembly, who took part in the protest."
Technically he's not a dictator, just trying to take the next step to become one.
I suppose its only fair to link to some of the social media photos.
I do not understand your logic. His family might be still there. He could have many cultural ties to Turkey. And he could have a German and a Turkish passport and therefore be Turkish and German. BTW: There a many bonds between Germany and Turkey, because of the numerous Turkish immigrants in Germany, all the Germans going to Turkey for their holidays, and in addition a lot of economic and trade connections. Turkey is almost a EU member state.
He's not a dictator in any sense. A majority of Turks are very clearly supportive of him. There is very little doubt about this.
The issue here is the conflict between the urban and rural folks in Turkey. Rural areas are not really developed, thickly populated and essentially exist in conditions that modern urban dweller would find atrocious, similar to those found in early 1900s. But to them, that is normal existence and all they know. Also to them islam is the way of life, like christianity was a way of life to farmers of late early 1900s in USA. These people will vote for islamic parties and they are in a clear majority in Turkey. As a result, every attempt to institute democracy in Turkey led to rise of islamist movements. Western dogma has for long been suppression of democratic movement in order to prevent this through installation of various dictators.
Essentially Turkey is going through the same thing that Arab Spring nations went through, but instead of requiring a military/rebellious deposition of installed leaders, they succeeded in stripping power from the guardian of secular society (army) via democratic legislative process after a few tries.
The people protesting are the urban minority who learned to enjoy the pleasures of secular Turkey that doesn't exist outside large cities. Ergodan is representing his constituents in his actions, as a democratic leader should.
That is the reality of democracy: it's the image of the people. If most voting people of the nation are rural farmers that live in a strict religious society, then democracy will eventually evolve into society that favors them over everyone else unless certain safeguards are in place to prevent this. Because in its core, democracy is nothing but dictatorship of majority.
And in Turkey, majority is currently clearly calling the shots and wants secular elements of society that it views as degenerate removed.
Who said anything about extremism? Erdogan platform is about repelling secular society through legislative means which his constituents view as oppressive towards their beliefs. It's the exact opposite of extremism.
Not at all. Erdogan is pushing a repressive islamic society which constituents see as being their beliefs. Islam is a law, a total control plan for both state and individuals alike. It is that law first and a religion second, and when people say this, they're not kidding. Of course Erdogan sees this as a chance to become a dictator, but this is Turkey : he'll get shot long before he gets anywhere near it.
But the greater problem is simple : because of technological advancement and job replacement the promise that Turks consider was made to them, a huge middle class supported by low-skill high-wage manufacturing jobs is not available for them. They are being asked, just after the first generation of manufacturers, to go back to the comfort level of the early modern age at best. Or at least, that's what the message of the secular elite is : they cannot, and will not, lift the countryside up, so if they could please hole up and die. Needless to say, the countryside doesn't oblige and unlike in the west, vastly outnumbers the progressives and the liberals (well not all that vastly, about 2-to-1 ratio). Meanwhile preachers provide a "solution", and Erdogan has unleashed them (as the liberals wanted - heh - you have go to wonder what they thought would happen).
As to the long term effect of this, we have history : at the later years of the Roman empire, when both Christianity and islam came to be, they both chose against democracy, something they had seen the effects of, something they both found lacking. They did this with support from the vast majority of the population (and so did several other religions and dozens of more political groupings). Of course the big difference is that Christianity introduced the concept of King, whereas islam went with caliph. Of course there's an important difference being that a king is bound by rules (a sort of basic constitution), whereas a caliph is a dictator, who is the law, free to kill anyone for any reason, ... And of course the other big difference : Christianity chose to introduce equality between people, at least in principle, including between men an women (like in the -then- old republic), and where they could : initially between Christians only (similar to old Roman laws which were different for citizens of the Roman republic versus others). This attitude would lead to the destruction of slavery in the west (and it's replacement by other only slightly better arrangements, feudality), whereas islam chose more inequality and direct ownership of people. This did not even exist in the Roman empire at all. It would not be until the islamic states, a few centuries later, that torturing and killing slaves for sport would become legal (Roman gladiators were volunteers, basic arrangement, you fight to the death with 9 other gladiators, survivor is no longer a slave, gets a million bucks. You die, your wife and kids are free, get $100k to get started. Often victorious gladiators chose, as absurd as it sounds, to do it again the year after. The Champion won at least 11 times before he lost). We now know that slavery allowed them to amass big "muslim" armies at little cost.
Of course saying that this is still part of the islamic religion, and one of the things people like erdogan and muslims in general are trying to bring back, is politically incorrect. Even implying the literal truth said daily at any mosque, that there is no difference between islam and sharia, is sacrilege. We're to deny 1000 years of history to make some people feel good, and of course ignore much of the goings-on in muslim countries. For some reason we have taken the exact reverse of the truth as political correctness, that muslims, who were the main drivers of slavery for 1.5 millenium and were by far the worst offenders when i
Hitler and Stalin were both supported by the majority - and they were still dictators.
Hitler never got more than about 35% of the vote in free elections.
However, the last time the party that got into power in the UK got most of the votes cast was in the 70's, IIRC. Most people have voted for someone else in every election since, until the recent coalition (if you include both Tory and LibDem votes as a block).
He's not a dictator in any sense. A majority of Turks are very clearly supportive of him. There is very little doubt about this.
The issue here is the conflict between the urban and rural folks in Turkey. Rural areas are not really developed, thickly populated and essentially exist in conditions that modern urban dweller would find atrocious, similar to those found in early 1900s. But to them, that is normal existence and all they know. Also to them islam is the way of life, like christianity was a way of life to farmers of late early 1900s in USA. These people will vote for islamic parties and they are in a clear majority in Turkey. As a result, every attempt to institute democracy in Turkey led to rise of islamist movements. Western dogma has for long been suppression of democratic movement in order to prevent this through installation of various dictators.
Essentially Turkey is going through the same thing that Arab Spring nations went through, but instead of requiring a military/rebellious deposition of installed leaders, they succeeded in stripping power from the guardian of secular society (army) via democratic legislative process after a few tries.
The people protesting are the urban minority who learned to enjoy the pleasures of secular Turkey that doesn't exist outside large cities. Ergodan is representing his constituents in his actions, as a democratic leader should.
That is the reality of democracy: it's the image of the people. If most voting people of the nation are rural farmers that live in a strict religious society, then democracy will eventually evolve into society that favors them over everyone else unless certain safeguards are in place to prevent this. Because in its core, democracy is nothing but dictatorship of majority.
And in Turkey, majority is currently clearly calling the shots and wants secular elements of society that it views as degenerate removed.
First of all, I am Turkish and I have been living abroad for longer than 10+ years. What I am telling you here is probably not even mentioned in the Western media which is just as crooked as the Turkish media is right now. You have no knowledge of the facts and what you are saying does not even make sense.
RTE not a dictator "in any sense"? Give me a break. This is a ruthless dictator who had so many reporters, university professors and high command of the Turkish Army/Air Force/Navy arrested and jailed with frivolous lawsuits all the while telling people that he "would be the prosecutor of these lawsuits" (in his own words).
To give you an idea, more than 50% of the Navy high command is in jail. There's about 100+ reporters in jail and the professors in jail are too numerous to name one by one. Two of the accused (one was the editor in chief of a major newspaper and the other one was a professor of medicine) were elected as Members of the Parliament (for whom there is immunity with the exception of murder) and despite that they are still in jail after 5 years with no proven guilt whatsoever. The prosecution is asking for a lifetime sentence for almost all the accused and all they can present as evidence is a bunch of fake CDs with totally inconsistent bizarre documents (already proven to be fake) allegedly proving that there was a plot to overthrow the ruling government and these folks were the masterminds of it. To top it all of, they were given a mere two hours to defend themselves for the final "closing arguments". Think about it: someone is asking you to be thrown to jail for life and all you've got is a mere two hours for your defense!
Just search for "Ergenekon" and/or "Balyoz" on Google and you will see what I mean. Before becoming the mayor of Istanbul (which was a long time ago), RTE and his family was just another low to middle class family and now he is richer than the Queen of England. Of course, that must all be by the sweat of his brow ;). How else would that be possible? Before being elected a member of the parliament, there were s
Theocracy is government by religious elite. Representative democracy is government by elected elite.
If religious elite is elected democratically, as has happened in Turkey, theocracy is in fact democratic.
They are also a needed conter-weight to Iran
And a buffer state for Russia. After all, one of the original Cold War reasons for supporting Turkey was to deny Russia unrestricted access to the Mediterranean.
I live in Turkey currently (American living abroad) and its not at all an "Islamic" country. The people are very tolerant of pretty much everything and most (not all) of the Muslims are extremely liberal/secular when compared to many other Islamic social groups. For example, I've seen Imam's, Christian ministers and Jewish rabbis sharing coffee and conversation with each other and a couple of gay men that had nowhere else to sit in the coffee house. Maybe 20% of the women in my area wear headscarves, no burkas or anything like that... and they'll happily have conversations with women in mini skirts and bikinis (hey its a beach town :) ). Most of the Turks drink alcohol, they have some good beers and almost everyone drinks raki (anise liquor). When the mosque calls for prayers, most of the Muslims around here go about their daily life. Many don't ever attend Mosque.
That being said the AKParty acts much like the GOP in the US. They stay in power because there is a strong Anatolian middle class of conservatives and the AKP constantly make noises to maintain their support. A few months ago they made a lot of noise about outlawing abortion, nothing came of it, but the AKP poll numbers went up. The same for the recent anti-alcohol law... "no shop sales after 10 PM and before 6 AM" but you can still go to restaurants and bars with no problem until 5 AM or whenever they finally close.
While the CHP (the left wing, secularist) party is setting itsself up as the 'secular' alternative to the AKP... they tend to be ultra nationalists. The military has, more than once overthrown the government via a coup and taken control of the country, because the military didn't like the way the government was acting. The CHP tend to be Kemalists (following Ataturks views), but they have a pretty poor track record with other kinds of human rights. Kurds, for example, were treated worse under the CHP and military lead governments than under the AKP. The CHP would have no problem jailing people for speaking against Ataturk or Turkey... and actually kicked an author out of the country for writing a book that included support for the claim that the Ottomans in the beginning off the 20th century were responsible for the Armenian genocide (the nationalist position is that it was a war and lots of people on both sides died).
For some the AKP has provided more freedom. For example, until recently, women were not allowed to wear the headscarf in public institutions (schools, colleges, etc.) and women who kept the headscarf had many fewer job options.
Basically the situation in Turkey is a question of balancing extremism on both sides of governance with the more moderate public. There is no simple answer.
Get a life, not a lifestyle. - Hikem Bey
Dude, I could drive a bus through the factual errors in your post. By the fifth century, the Roman Empire had no trace of democracy, it was a brutal dictatorship. Nor did kings have any real restraint in medieval Europe. Not did Islam have its origins in the late Roman Empire - Byzantine, MAYBE, but by the seventh century their control if Arabia was sketchy at best. Nor was Byzantium remotely democratic.
That dog won't hunt, and it's amazing to me that people are actually agreeing with you!
Sources: phd in New Testament and early Christianity, university of Virginia.
"He who would learn astronomy, and other recondite arts, let him go elsewhere. " -- John Calvin, commenting on Genesis 1
At worst you could reasonably claim he's building a theocracy. But theocracy isn't incompatible with democracy in any way
It doesn't matter the form of government if the controls for power are circumvented and the government can impose its will with impunity. Violent repression of dissent, absolute gagging of the media and halting of communications, blatant disregard for equality and minority rights all bear witness that this isn't the will of the governed.
Millions long for immortality who do not know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon. -- Susan Ertz