I wouldn’t throw that many stones. Trump in 2016 and almost again in 2020, perhaps if he hadn’t fumbled COVID.
But the thing is, he wasn’t in any way obviously a “person like him” at the time he was elected. He was a pro EU membership, pro western, pro market liberalism, progressive who symbolised an end to the era of military veto over turkish politics.
Yes, this is how I remember it. So either he hid it well, or it’s just another case of power corrupting absolutely.
AK had at least a decade of good government, human rights friendly reforms, strong economic growth, cleaning up political corruption, and finally asserting the primacy of civilian government over the military.
There were lots of good reasons to vote for them at the time. And what they opposed wasn’t “modernist” politicians - though they were strongly secularist - so much as an oligarchy of corrupt economic incompetents implicitly backed by the threat of military intervention.
What’s strange and sad is how, since then, they’ve become the corrupt and destructive incumbents they originally defeated.
Well, something went wrong, for sure, and I wonder whether there were clues at the time, or whether it was a sudden switch. If so, what caused it? From the outside, it certainly seemed like an overnight flip-flop.
I work with someone who wants to go all around the world before he retires, but Istanbul is the one place he’s been multiple times and wants to go again. From his descriptions of his last trip right before the pandemic started, it sounded just like you described. So I don’t think Erdogan has changed Istanbul much.
I would go again tomorrow. It’s a great city.
I thought that Turkey was always in a tug of war between secularism and fundamentalism, and that the key factor before was that the military would always step in, and put their foot on the secularism side.
And that this time, that failed.
I definitely don’t feel I know enough about the political detail to know for sure.
Erdogan, from a distance, does seem like one of those political leaders who started their career as an idealist but having won power, lost the ability to imagine being out of power again. (another example: Evo Morales). I suspect also that he, and AK members in general, having dealt with the political corruption they had to defeat to win power, and the regular hints at military intervention leading up to the half-assed coup attempt a few years ago, would find it quite easy to talk themselves into a mindset where no opposition is seen as legitimate. Where any means to retain power are justified because the voters are being misled by dark conspiracies.
I do also wonder how being screwed over by the EU changed their attitude toward the West in general.
Well, that’s always a possibility. Even if it’s only a perception of being screwed over (and I have no opinion on this, having not studied it at all), such an experience would fit into the historical narrative of Turkey/the Ottomans being treated like children or worse by the western Europeans.
Or maybe it all just comes down to priorities. The Turks have always been engaged with what was going on around them, in their neck of the woods, more than anything else. Where we can sit back and view things like the Kurdish question or Armenia-Turkish relations or the civil war in Syria as distant events, the Turks probably view them as much more important, much more vital problems. And those issues tie in with internal struggles over Turkish identity in ways that we probably can’t really fathom completely. /shrug
Woof.
Well, I was trying to frame things somewhat generally. I agree though that in reality this topic is, ahem, pretty open and shut unless you are Turkish…
He went all Fundy. When he got elected he was much more secular, and then he switched to catering to the Fundamentalist crowd to cement support, as every current leader who has dictatorial ambitions (outside of China), Fundamentalists don’t use any critical thinking skills and are easy to manipulate and solidify support.
Many of the younger, more secular Turks think Erdogan just believed all his party’s cynical corruption myths about previous administrations: Corruption is just how governments work.
Then once he became enmeshed with some corrupt acts and public scandals, the purpose of his govt. turned to making sure to squash free journalism, take over the courts and parliament, and make sure they never lost power. Because once they lose control they will go direct from the Palace to Prison.
Turkey continues to export it’s extrajudicial abuse and killing of opposition figures.
What is a gas pistol with live ammunition? Are they used together? Hmm.
What part of “pistol” and “ammunition” are you not grasping?
As the article points out, the ammunition they found couldn’t be used by the pistol they found, so they’re wondering where the gun is that the ammunition was for.
You’re exactly right. I was wondering if he bought the pistol and ammunition together but he was scammed and he got an airsoft pistol instead as they can look very real.