I’m going to ban anyone who makes fun of me. Ban from what? I dunno.
What’s happening to Kanter is bullshit but my sympathy is limited by the fact that it is due to him supporting a douchebag every bit as bad as Erdogan. It’s like watching a Stalin acolyte being oppressed by Hitler.
Yeah, Kanter’s not exactly a posterchild for sophisticated resistance–he’s no Kaepernick, that’s for sure–but watching the drama play out on the international stage is pretty insane, nonetheless.
Totally insane. He was right not to risk international travel, which is beyond pathetic. Fearing for you from because you said bad things about a despot in Turkey? Fuck that.
Sunday’s rallies were aimed at galvanising support among his conservative power base ahead of a local election at the end of this month.
The prime motive was to condemn global Islamophobia - along with the West’s response to it - and to criticise political opponents inside Turkey as weak.
Crisis averted.
It’s not just that one dude, look here is an opposition party elected Mayor who was insufficiently deferential. It doesn’t matter if you win only 49% of the elections if you have the power to remove the winners of the other parties for being insulting to the dear leader, or “supporting terrorism” a.k.a. being Kurdish.
It’s a pretty epic 20 year long tragedy.
AK started as the party that fought corruption, worked for the economic benefit of the ordinary people, and broke the power of the military to interfere in politics, enforce authoritarian power, oppress the Kurds and stoke conflict with Greece.
20 years on they’re now the corrupt, authoritarian, Kurd-oppressing party. Maybe a bit of skirmishing with Greece comes next?
…
So true. How did they get here from there? Was it just that Erdogan was corrupt all along, and it didn’t show until he had power? Or was it a slippery slope?
He’s been like this all along. For some reason Western governments chose to believe he was some sort of moderate that would defuse hostilities in the Middle-East, when in reality he is an Islamist with a strong nationalist aspect.
Just look at this excerpt from his speech from when he was elected as mayor of Istanbul in 1994.
This is the exact same crap he’s spewing this very moment with regards to Turkey’s economy.
Initial results from Turkey’s mayoral elections day appears to show the opposition party may have won in both Ankara and Istanbul. But then the government news agency (AA) jumped in to announce that the results were being re-examined for invalid votes. Nobody seems to expect this to be a fair process.
https://ahvalnews-com.cdn.ampproject.org/c/s/ahvalnews.com/node/43358?amp
Hope there’s not a fire.
Or a team of commandos “protecting the integrity of the election”.
If they’re all asleep at the same time, while random people can take pictures even, then how are they going to stop someone who is sneaky?
But yeah, Turkey. I’m surprised Erdogan even allowed another election.
Ninja ballot box stuffers.
I’m just saying that in my time playing D&D, we knew to always sleep in shifts!