Slashdot Mirror
Turkey Blocks Twitter, YouTube Access Over Image of Slain Prosecutor
jaa101 writes ABC (Australia) reports Turkey has blocked access to Twitter and YouTube, over the publication of photographs of an Istanbul prosecutor held at gunpoint by far-left militants hours before he was killed in a shootout last week. From the article: "Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said a prosecutor had sought the block on access to social media sites because some media organisations had acted 'as if they were spreading terrorist propaganda' in sharing the images. 'This has to do with the publishing of the prosecutor's picture. What happened in the aftermath [of the prosecutor's killing] is as grim as the incident itself,' said presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin."
Some of us would argue that in practice it is neither of those things, and that while it sounds great on paper, has little to do with actual reality.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Nothing says "legitimate government" like curtailing freedom of speech.
What is so special about mosques that having them make us better? It all the same monotheism sickness. #KillThemAll
There are several pillars of democracy, without which democracy will fail.
The first and foremost among those is freedom of the press. Erdogan is actively cracking down on that right now. He's destroyed a significant portion of the independent press and numerous journalists have been charged with insulting him (yes it's a crime). Enough journalists have been punished that he's reined in those that remain independent for fear of jail.
Another important aspect of democracy is an independent judiciary. The judiciary was gutted and filled with sycophants last year.
Tying in with this is a separation of powers so that they can check the powers of leaders. Erdogan is pursing right now the destruction of all separation of powers by concentrating those powers in the office of the presidency (also one of the offices that doesn't have term limits).
There are many other areas where he's torn down civil society including gutting the power of NGO's, putting religion into schools and others. As you said he's working very hard to undue the legacy of Ataturk's turn away from the middle east and embracing European values. Those values are exactly what made Turkey strong and brought wealth to the people of Turkey. Erdogan is working very hard to undue that legacy by turning back towards the middle east and disavowing the very European values that made the country strong. I suspect he wants to recreate the Ottoman empire. By the time the majority of people realize what he's doing it will be far far to late with much of the damage already done.
I take consolation in the fact that the Turkish economy is going to come crashing down when the US interest rates go up. Much of the phenomenal growth of the economy in Turkey over the last decade was due to US quantitative easing and low interest rates. With near zero rates and excess cash investors could borrow US dollars at 1% and invest them in turkey at 5% and make a killing. But as US interest rates climb that money will go away unless Turkish interest rates go up as well. Erdogan has been pressuring the central bank to keep rates low with the result being 6-8% inflation. This will only get worse as the US interest rates increase if the Turkish central bank doesn't react and raise rates. Erdogan keeps accusing the independent central bank of treason for not lowering interest rates. His probable next action will be to remove the central banks independence and in doing so he'll wreck the Turkish economy harder and faster if he's dumb enough to do it. Even if he doesn't eventually one of two things will happen, either the central bank will raise interest rates to halt inflation and stall out the economy or they won't and inflation will go into double digits and existing wealth will implode. Either will be catastrophic to the economy.