- Austrian Foreign Minister Sebastian Kurz also said it would be unacceptable for Turkey to reintroduce the death penalty, which it abolished in 2004. Abolishing capital punishment was a prerequisite for talks with Turkey on membership of the European Union, to which it still aspires.
But... this is Turkey: the law is whatever Erdogan says it is.
So, it appears he is not the least bit concerned with the EU, or, as ZH would put it, a 'democratic' form of government. Anyone have any plausible reasons for his consolidation of power?
I don't know what to think. This is Zero Hedge, but I don't see it as out of the realm of possibility. Whether or not it was staged as an excuse for a purge, or is it was taken advantage of for the purposes of a purge, the result might be the same. Not good. The markets are ambivalent, though.
My guess is that he's not brazen enough to stage a coup, but that he probably found out that one was in the works and he let it happen (in a semi-controlled way), knowing what the end result would be. We don't need to look a lot further than the fact that no government officials were arrested by the military (which is, like, thing 0 you do if you're trying to overthrow a government) as evidence that some very high up people were complicit or at least wise to what was happening. Roger Cohen think it was ineptitude, but this seems bigger than pure ineptitude. I'm not normally given to wild eyed theories, but this has so many things that went wrong in just the right way that it seems like more than coincidence.
I've thought about this a little bit in the last day, and I'm afraid you're correct. If the coup was organic, or even if it wasn't, the entire cadre of conspirators could only number in the tens, not hundreds or thousands, and certainly not tens of thousands. The whole point of a conspiracy is to keep it a secret. That doesn't happen when ten or twenty thousand people are co-conspirators. Yet here we are with that many people being rounded up and jailed. Maybe Turkey is going to make a pivot toward Russia? I think I read they already kind of shut down Incerlik, right?
I read that too but couldn't believe it. I think the power was briefly cut off, activating backup generators. Apparently one or more jets involved in the coup refueled at the base. By Sunday operations were restored and a commander was arrested and replaced. "Secretary of State John Kerry said U.S. operations against Islamic State won’t be interrupted because of the events in Turkey." http://www.wsj.com/articles/turkey-arrests-incirlik-air-base-commander-1468760920I think I read they already kind of shut down Incerlik, right?
Plausible reasons? Well geez... idealists gain power and then find out that bureaucracies work reeeeaaaallly slowly and they get irritated because they are the self-defined "good guys, trying to do good work" and so they find it is way easier to be a dictator than a democrat, so they consolidate power into their tight little club of yes-men and... suddenly you have an isolated echelon of leadership who is totally disconnected from reality because reality is hard, and sticky, and requires compromise and negotiation, and... fake coup. It is an old model, repeated endlessly in Central America, Africa, the Caucasus, the Balkans... and on and on...
Turkey has managed to piss off both the US and Russia and is facing a lot of pushback at home. It's easier to get your way when the press can refer to you as a "strongman" and crushing dissent is a great way to start. Keep in mind also that Turkey's biggest domestic problem is the PKK. The US is backing the Kurds in Syria, who are the same people as the PKK. What the US and Europe and Russia want out of Turkey isn't at all what Erdogan wants out of Turkey and being able to blithely defy international law and trade agreements gives you the ability to do what you want domestically. This whole "my enemy lives in the Catskills" thing he's got going on is entirely about ginning up a gamepiece to play against US hegemony. I mean, Incerlik is shut down at the moment and Turkey has been a strategic partner of the US military for a very, very long time.
Since it happened, and Erdogan came swooping out of the sky to come back to "save his country", I've had suspicions he was involved. Even the western media was reporting that turkish people felt that this coup attempt was weird and different. If it's filtering down to CNN etc... Idunno. It just makes me suspicious, and I'm not your usual conspiracy enthusiast. I think it's interesting that the PKK came out against the coup as it was happening. the PKK is, as you say, the biggest domestic problem. I wonder if they came out against it not because they didn't want it to succeed, but because they wanted it to be harder for them to be blamed for it if and when it failed. It's also interesting that the man that Erdogan blamed as organizer is a former ally who now lives in like, Pennsylvania or something. If the US doesn't want to extradite him back to Turkey, it may be used as bargaining chips (or at least, I imagine that would be the idea) - i.e. "you won't give me this man, at least give me the weapons to stabilize my country." I'm probably overthinking this.
I think the construction matters less than the blowback. Either (A) Erdogan is sly as a fox and set up his own failed coup (B) Erdogan got lucky and stumbled across a larval coup and arranged for it to blow up when he could handle it or (C) Erdogan's opposition is clumsy enough that his opposition didn't put in the work to actually succeed. Regardless, the end result is classic chilling effects Reichstag-ashes martial law bullshit. George Friedman has said a couple things - the first of which is that there have been rumours of coups swirling about for years, and this is the one that stuck; the second of which is that military coups historically have an extremely high success rate which makes a failed one seem suspicious by default. I'm no expert on Turkish politics. The impression I get of the PKK - regardless of whether they've earned it or not - is that they want the legitimacy of democratic support. They want the people to support Kurdistan. That gives them a reason to pay lip service to the democratic process. I think. I'm skating on thin ice there and will happily learn of my incorrectness. The Catskills Cleric angle gives credo to (B) and (C). I kinda get the impression that this was a bigger deal than the Turkish intended, and that sycophancy is replacing counsel within the Turkish government at exactly the time it shouldn't be.
So, some interesting stuff has happened. deputy mayor in Istanbul Shot in the Head, in Critical State Vast Purge in Turkey as Thousands are detained in post-coup backlash including around 13,000 public sector, non military people. Turkey coup attempt: Risk of Nato suspension as Erdogan's purge intensifies they're also talking about bringing back the death penalty, which would prevent them from joining the EU. not bad for 72 hours work?
...wow. That's an amazing quote if it's something he actually said.
"One death is a tragedy. A million deaths is a GWAR concert." - Stalin It appears the actual quote isOnly your small-minded German philistine who measures world history by the ell and by what he happens to think are ‘interesting news items’, could regard 20 years as more than a day where major developments of this kind are concerned, though these may be again succeeded by days into which 20 years are compressed.
Embedded image 3:44 PM - 18 Jul 2016 https://mobile.twitter.com/wikileaks/status/755171322288861184Coming Tuesday: The #ErdoganEmails: 300 thousand internal emails from Erdoğan's AKP - through to July 7, 2016.
https://wikileaks.org/akp-emails/ It's all Turkish to me, but all the gmail (and hotmail!) addresses and reliance on Google Groups for mailing lists is kind of appalling for a political party anywhere.
To the charge that the lists were prepared beforehand, I wouldn't be surprised if there are always tabs on or lists of "suspected unloyal elements". I'm not sure if I'm convinced of Erdogan's culpability as the master planner of the coup if the rapidity of the arrests is the only evidence. But this is interesting. As to your question: Because he sincerely believes he knows what's best for Turkey, and the slow-moving mechanisms of democratic debate get in the way of that.Anyone have any plausible reasons for his consolidation of power?
Or that he's a kleptocrat who sees challenges to his authority as synonymous with challenges to the Turkish state. For anyone who doesn't think he's a run of the mill klepto-leader, here is the house the state graciously built for him:Because he sincerely believes he knows what's best for Turkey, and the slow-moving mechanisms of democratic debate get in the way of that.
That image suggests the grandeur, but not the grotesque scale of the presidential palace. The Pope was the first big shot to visit, over protests. Putin was next in line.