Turkey coup?

Axon wrote:

Do you know who wrote the most recent version of the constitution? The former military coup winners.

Doesn't that mean that the former military coup winners wrote a constitution for a democratic nation and then stepped down? That doesn't really align with the "military coups are always worse" narrative.

Yonder wrote:
Axon wrote:

Do you know who wrote the most recent version of the constitution? The former military coup winners.

Doesn't that mean that the former military coup winners wrote a constitution for a democratic nation and then stepped down? That doesn't really align with the "military coups are always worse" narrative.

Wam bam, agree with this man.

Except that isn't what happened. The last proper coup was 1980. The military wrote the Constitution, had a "referendum" on it in 1982 and then elections in 1983. The parties were basically puppets of the military.

List of human right's abuses and other authoritarian responses in the aftermath of the coup is;
650,000 people were under arrest.
1,683,000 people were blacklisted.
230,000 people were tried in 210,000 lawsuits.
7,000 people were recommended for the death penalty.
517 persons were sentenced to death.
50 of those given the death penalty were executed (26 political prisoners, 23 criminal offenders and 1 ASALA militant).
The files of 259 people, which had been recommended for the death penalty, were sent to the National Assembly.
71,000 people were tried by articles 141, 142 and 163 of Turkish Penal Code.
98,404 people were tried on charges of being members of a leftist, a rightist, a nationalist, a conservative, etc. organization.
388,000 people were denied a passport.
30,000 people were dismissed from their firms because they were suspects.
14,000 people had their citizenship revoked.
30,000 people went abroad as political refugees.
300 people died in a suspicious manner.
171 people died by reason of torture.
937 films were banned because they were found objectionable.
23,677 associations had their activities stopped.
3,854 teachers, 120 lecturers and 47 judges were dismissed.
400 journalists were recommended a total of 4,000 years imprisonment.
Journalists were sentenced 3,315 years and 6 months imprisonment.
31 journalists went to jail.
300 journalists were attacked.
3 journalists were shot dead.
300 days in which newspapers were not published.
303 cases were opened for 13 major newspapers.
39 tonnes of newspapers and magazines were destroyed.
299 people lost their lives in prison.
144 people died in a suspicious manner in prison.
14 people died in hunger strikes in prison.
16 people were shot while fleeing.
95 people were killed in combat.
"Natural death report" for 73 persons was given.
The cause of death of 43 people was announced as "suicide".

After that, the military actually never had a proper coup but would send memos to governments to behave or else.

See, the problem here is that Turkey was a cold war ally and a lot of this bad press was not exactly reported widely in the US media. The narrative that the Turkish military are the "good guys" in Turkey is one that not only suit the Turkish military but US foreign policy.

There isn't really a "good guy" in Turkey to hang your hat on. I'd be a big Kurdish sympathizer, for example, but would be slow to see them as angels.

LeapingGnome wrote:
Axon wrote:

Turkey needs to work this out at the ballot box. It may take decades and a whole series of elections.

Seems like you are assuming the dictator will allow elections, or that they will be legitimate. I think this is quickly heading toward a situation where Erdogan is a dictator until he dies.

He doesn't have enough support in the military to be the dictator of Turkey. It's not his power base. He is going to have some latitude to act but notice who he isn't trying to purge in vast numbers. That is telling.

It is certainly much more likely now. He has replaced quite a few in the military - he started that before the coup. Not like the military will want to try another coup for quite some time now.
Military is by nature very hierarchical, you don't have to get rid of as many at the top to limit their power, as you might in the juridical system etc.

Axon wrote:

The narrative that the Turkish military are the "good guys" in Turkey is one that not only suit the Turkish military but US foreign policy.

That's pretty much what I meant. Good as in aligns with US foreign policy goals in the region which are remarkably close to those of the Turkish deep state.
(because we set that up)

It makes you wonder how the coup could fail if all these tens of thousands of people were behind it. It's almost like they're all convenient scapegoats.

boogle wrote:
Axon wrote:

The narrative that the Turkish military are the "good guys" in Turkey is one that not only suit the Turkish military but US foreign policy.

That's pretty much what I meant. Good as in aligns with US foreign policy goals in the region which are remarkably close to those of the Turkish deep state.
(because we set that up)

Wasn't only Turkey. Here's a rabbit hole for you. Fair warning, have your tin foil hat at the ready

I know bro, and that's where we felt the need to have some subtlety, unlike America's playground (tm) (Central and South America).

The whole not communist == good thing didn't pay out in the long run.

So, it may look as if Erdogan's backlash maybe coming up against it's limits already. It appears that both side of the political spectrum were attending a rally calling for proper use of the law to address the attempted coup. Postive signs. Lets hope Erdogan reacts proportionately to them.

He won't. He'll work to crush them.

Yeah there's no way this ends well.

A bit of hope, lads. The world isn't that bad

Not with the beer and whiskey you've got access to over there. Here, the good stuff is for rich people.

Axon wrote:

A bit of hope, lads. The world isn't that bad :)

The world isn't bad or good.
It's just the world.

Next he'll be claiming the military hired some Kurdish pilots to take out the Meclis...

A weird and depressing side note regarding Wikileaks and its leak of "Erdogan emails":

Yes — this “leak” actually contains spreadsheets of private, sensitive information of what appears to be every female voter in 79 out of 81 provinces in Turkey, including their home addresses and other private information, sometimes including their cellphone numbers. If these women are members of Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (known as the AKP), the dumped files also contain their Turkish citizenship ID, which increases the risk to them as the ID is used in practicing a range of basic rights and accessing services. I’ve gone through the files myself. The Istanbul file alone contains more than a million women’s private information, and there are 79 files, with most including information of many hundreds of thousands of women.

We are talking about millions of women whose private, personal information has been dumped into the world, with nary an outcry. Their addresses are out there for every stalker, ex-partner, disapproving relative or random crazy to peruse as they wish. And let’s remember that, every year in Turkey, hundreds of women are murdered, most often by current or ex-husbands or boyfriends, and thousands of women leave their homes or go into hiding, seeking safety.

Real smooth, Wikileaks.

IMAGE(http://images.dailykos.com/images/278040/story_image/IMG_20160724_120708.jpg?1469382713)

Tanglebones wrote:

IMAGE(http://images.dailykos.com/images/278040/story_image/IMG_20160724_120708.jpg?1469382713)

That has to be an unrelated thing right? The "DNC" and "SSN" make me think that Wikileaks is saying that they didn't release some American data on accident, NOT that they purposefully released the data on hte Turkish women.

They still could have, sure, but I don't think this tweet confirms that.

Yeah - it's regarding the DNC/American data, but it's from this most recent week of leaks, so seemed relevant to the discussion at hand. I don't know whether they've made a statement about leaking Turkish dox.

Dixie_Flatline wrote:

Real smooth, Wikileaks.

Assange is not the guy I'd look to to guarantee the safety of women.

Robear wrote:

Not with the beer and whiskey you've got access to over there. Here, the good stuff is for rich people. :-)

Access to the top shelf booze is a constitutional right. Well, it may as well be.

Erdogan shuts 131 media outlets and issues 47 more arrest warrants for journalists in Turkey.

Tanglebones wrote:

Yeah - it's regarding the DNC/American data, but it's from this most recent week of leaks, so seemed relevant to the discussion at hand. I don't know whether they've made a statement about leaking Turkish dox.

They definitely are taking the stance, though, that to scrub vulnerable personal data like SSNs would be to hard the integrity of the data. I understand the notion that any redaction or curation would mark the data as something less than a direct pipe, but that stance strikes me as deeply irresponsible and a little naive about how data is consumed by humans.