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This also fails to account for the various ways the election itself can be influenced, such as gerrymandering and so on.
Might I add that sometimes, people are just that fed up/angry or disgusted with the current leader/system that they go to the polls (if they go) with an "anyone but them" mindset, not really caring who wins if it isn't the current one getting a repeat performance.
The opposition has won the mayoral re-run in Istanbul, with an even wider margin of victory than the initial race. Looks like Erdogan's plan backfired, even he's accepted this result.
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-48739256
According to the Swiss news Erdogan's candidate did run a very matter-of-fact electoral campaign and did concede quickly after the result became clear. So perhaps we won't see an outburst of immaturity/sense of entitlement.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard FeynmanTurkey's Erdogan re-converts Istanbul's Hagia Sophia into mosque
Erdogan said in a decree shared on Twitter that he had handed the majestic domed building over to the government’s directorate of religious affairs to open it up to worshipers.
Soon after the decision, state media broadcast video of crowds gathering outside the the sixth-century structure.
Earlier in a big win for the president's conservative Islamic agenda, Turkey's highest administrative court threw its weight behind a motion brought by a religious group, annulling a 1934 ruling that turned the building into a museum.
Erdogan had proposed restoring the UNESCO World Heritage site into a mosque, placing the almost 1,500-year-old building at the center of a struggle between those who want to preserve Turkey’s secular roots and the president’s aspirations.
In a televised address to the nation, Erdogan said the first prayers inside Hagia Sofia would be held on July 24.
"I underline that we will open Hagia Sophia to worship as a mosque by preserving its character of humanity's common cultural heritage," he said, adding that that it was Turkey's sovereign right to decide what the building would be used for.
Rejecting the idea that he decision the decision would prevent different faiths from coming together, he said: "Like all of our other mosques, the doors of Hagia Sophia will be open to all, locals or foreigners, Muslims and non-Muslims."
Hagia Sophia was the Byzantine Empire’s main cathedral before it was changed into a mosque following the Ottoman conquest of Istanbul. Under Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of the modern Turkish republic in the 20th century, it was turned into a museum that attracts millions of tourists each year.
Many in Turkey will welcome the decision, and see it as an emphatic victory for Erdogan’s plans for the secular but predominantly Muslim country.
“Mehmet the Conqueror took the holy city with his sword, he always wanted Hagia Sophia to be a mosque,” Ozlem Kaya, 52, a homemaker from Istanbul, said ahead of the decision, referring to the 15th-century Ottoman sultan who captured the city, then known as Constantinople.
“With Erdogan, Turkey will be a more powerful country in the near future,” she said by telephone. “There is no need to be secular anymore.''
The Hagia Sophia site has been a part of a centuries-old struggle over the identity of the region that sits on the fault line between the East and the West, and between Christianity and Islam.
The Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew, the spiritual head of some 300 million Orthodox Christians worldwide and based in Istanbul, said ahead of the ruling that converting the Hagia Sophia into a mosque will “disappoint millions of Christians around the world” and will “fracture” the East and the West.
“As [a] museum, Hagia Sophia can function as place and symbol of encounter, dialogue and peaceful coexistence of peoples and cultures, mutual understanding and solidarity between Christianity and Islam,” he said in a statement posted on Facebook last week.
Tuma Celik, 56, a Syriac Christian and a member of Parliament with the Turkish pro-Kurdish People's Democratic Party, or the HDP, said he was against turning the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. "This court decision has made what we all know and experience in reality very clear, that today’s Turkey is not secular,” he said via Whats App.
Founded in 1923, modern-day Turkey was built on the secular belief of separating religion and state.
However, almost a century later, the country still wrestles with how its secular governance intersects with the fact that it is predominantly Muslim. Turkey’s Christian community, for example, is believed to number around 100,000 people, a tiny fraction in a country of more than 83 million.
The conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a museum originally was part of a broader effort by Ataturk’s government to secularize the country. Today, Erdogan is widely believed to be doing the opposite.
Since assuming power, Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, or AK Party, have made Turkey more religious and conservative, including by relaxing strict secular laws that barred women from wearing Islamic headscarves in schools and public offices.
After the ruling, U.S. State Department Spokesperson Morgan Ortagus said: "We are disappointed by the decision by the Government of Turkey to change the status of the Hagia Sophia. This building is an important part of the "Historic Sites of Istanbul" UNESCO World Heritage Site, in recognition of its rich multicultural history."
"We understand the Turkish Government remains committed to maintaining access to the Hagia Sophia for all visitors, and look forward to hearing its plans for continued stewardship of the Hagia Sophia to ensure it remains accessible without impediment for all."
Erdogan is not the first person to suggest the building’s status as a mosque should be restored. Thousands of Muslim Turks have prayed outside the building over the years to demand that it be reconverted to a place of worship.
But not everyone is convinced by what is driving the move.
Nearly 44 percent of the population think the move is designed to divert attention from the current economic crisis and nearly 12 percent think the government believes the debate will politically benefit it in case of a possible snap election, according to Turkish pollster Metro Poll. Only some 29 percent believe it is motivated by a desire to return the museum back into a mosque, according to the poll.
What worries me most about this decision is that the Hagia Sophia is full of - as in, much of the interior walls are decorated with - gorgeous and historic mosaics that are one of the world’s great artistic treasures. Many of them depict people (Jesus, the apostles, saints, Byzantine emperors).
Islamic mosques aren’t supposed to contain depictions of humans.
I really, really hope the Turkish government aren’t going to destroy or cover up the mosaics. In terms of artistic heritage it would be a disaster and a horrific crime to destroy them.
Edited by Galadriel on Jul 12th 2020 at 6:32:40 AM
The whole thing is kind of a mess because a lot of non-Kemalists see Hagia Sophia's transformation into a museum as a symbol of decades of secularist repression of Islamic practices. I can sort of see why even Turks who don't approve of Erdogan's authoritarian ambitions (or that of his more secular predecessors) would see this as a victory. Even if it's a victory achieved at the expense of minority heritage and genuine plurality, and at its heart little more than a distraction from domestic issues.
One day, we will read his name in the news and cheer.Torygraph article, so take the wording with a grain of salt, but this particular issue has been discussed in the Central Asian diaspora grapevine for a while and this is the first time I've seen it covered in a major media outlet: Activist groups say that Turkish authorities have been extraditing Uyghur refugees to China through third countries.
Originally from Kashgar in Xinjiang, China - once a stop on the Silk Road - Kuwanhan found refuge in Turkey from a suffocating campaign of repression against China’s Uighurs.
But China, it seems, came looking for her, and, one year on, no one can even say if she is alive.
The widow’s family believes she has been extradited to an unknown fate in China, via Tajikistan. Like hundreds more, she is a victim, they believe, of big business colliding with human rights, another human sacrifice to keep Beijing’s investment rolling into Turkey.
No wonder, then, an increasing number of Uighurs in Turkey are fearful of China’s reach. Ismael Cengiz, a prominent activist known as the Uighurs’ symbolic Prime Minister, says: “There are threats, and they are systematic. They want us to think they can get us anywhere.”
Turkey has, it has been proud to say, been good for the Uighurs. An estimated 50,000 of them are refugees here, and they have flourished under Erdogan, who in recent years has cast himself as a protector of Muslims across the world.
In the Istanbul neighbourhood of Zeytinburnu, their culture has thrived. Uighur poetry is published; shops throughout the district sell elaborate Uighur garments; and restaurants serve the spicy noodle dishes that remind so many of home.
Turkey has also provided them a platform to tell the world of what they say is the genocide being perpetrated against China’s Muslims, with 1.5 million Uighurs held in concentration camps
across the country. So far, so good.
Now lawyers say Beijing is manipulating extradition agreements to drag Uighurs back to the re-education camps. And, activists argue, Ankara’s growing economic dependence on Beijing is compromising its ability to withstand Chinese pressure and to protect Uiyghurs who have fled Xinjiang.
While Turkey refuses to send Uighurs directly back to China,
campaigners say there are those willing to send them to third countries, like Tajikistan. From there, it is easier for China to secure their extradition.
So why would Turks be complicit in this? Money, comes the answer, and ensuring Chinese investment in Turkey continues.
Kuwanhan, believed to be suffering from dementia, suddenly vanished from the state housing she lived in last summer. She surfaced two weeks later with a phone call from a detention centre in Izmir.
Turkish authorities deny Kuwanhan was detained in Izmir deportation centre. But phone call records prove she made multiple phone calls from a fixed-line within the centre to her family.
After several weeks, Kuwanhan - her passport photograph showed a woman smiling shyly and wearing a headscarf - was told she had been cleared for release, the family says. But, in the middle of the call to her son, a guard yelled at her to hang up the phone. She has not been heard from since.
A lawyer hired by her family subsequently discovered that she had been extradited to Tajikistan, despite having never lived there or having held Tajik citizenship. Sources who knew Kuwanhan say from there she was sent to China.
She was no activist. Those who knew her said that after arriving in Turkey she tried to live a quiet life. In 2012, though, one of her sons was sentenced to 14 years in prison in China for learning the Quran.
Her case mirrors that of Zinnetgul Tursun, another Uighur woman deported to Tajikistan last year with her infant daughters. They too had no links to Tajikistan, and, after arriving, they were sent to China.
A convulsing economy and friction with Europe have forced Turkey to invest in other friendships, in particular China. As a key part of Beijing's Belt & Road investment strategy, Chinese corporations have invested billions in developing Turkish infrastructure, and Beijing aims to double investments to more than $6 billion by the end of next year.
This cosying of relations and Ankara’s increasing dependence on Beijing’s investment has come at a cost for Uighurs. As Cengiz says: “There is so much money at stake, our cause is only second to that.”
Though publicly supportive of the Uighur plight, Ankara is hamstrung by bilateral agreements with China’s Justice ministry. They oblige the Turkish authorities to investigate complaints raised by China against individuals.
Turkey is also keen to improve its international standing on how it deals with terrorists amid claims it was soft on foreign jihadists travelling to Syria in the early years of the Syrian Civil War. Beijing stands accused of playing on that.
The Sunday Telegraph was shown Chinese intelligence documents submitted by China’s Public Security Ministry as part of extradition requests proclaiming the targets to be terrorist suspects. While several hundred Uighurs did travel to Syria to join Uighur jihadist groups, the applications focus instead simply on Uighur identity.
Scores of Uighurs have spent months in detention and deportation centres across Turkey without charge as the result of Chinese judicial demands. Though Turkey has a policy of not deporting Uighurs to China, where they would likely face detention or death, The Sunday Telegraph has uncovered evidence that China has succeeded in getting Uighurs deported to third countries. They are then believed to be sent on to China.
Ibrahim Ergin, a lawyer who specialises in deportation cases, said: “No Uighurs will be extradited directly to China. I don’t think this will change any time soon. So they [China] try to make their lives as miserable as they can, and get them sent to other countries where possible. As China and Turkey’s relations have got better, it’s the Uighurs who have lost.”
Ergin claimed that intelligence briefings sent as part of extradition requests often feature fabricated testimonies. One was based on five testimonies, but three of the alleged witnesses had been executed in Chinese camps, he said.
He described how the Turkish government is being drowned by extradition demands, arrest warrants, and judicial requests from China. Some come directly from Beijing, others through Interpol, and he suspects others are issued by third countries on behalf of China.
Ergin said: “I have a list of 200 Uighur academics in Turkey. In one way or another, China is making demands on all 200 of them.”
But there is more. Ilsan Aniwar, wearing a blue medical face mask bearing the slogan ‘Free Uighurs’, is a key figure in the Uighur community, thanks to his online videos on East Turkestan - the Uighur name for Xinjiang. He claims Beijing is now putting pressure on the Turkish authorities to stifle activism on the concentration camps in China. And he believes there are spies within the camp.
Aniwar said: “There are people working for China inside our community. We used to campaign and raise awareness outside all the big mosques, and fly [Uighur] flags at all the public events. They don’t let us anymore.”
Aniwar’s activism has seen him arrested several times over the last year. He told The Sunday Telegraph that in his most recent period of detention guards attempted to trick him into signing a voluntary deportation request.
He, like all the activists with whom The Sunday Telegraph spoke, are guarded about Turkey. As Ismail Cengiz says, “It’s not in our interest to pick a fight with the Turkish state. They have been very good to us. When nobody else was listening, they took us in.”
The Sunday Telegraph approached a Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesperson for comment but received no reply. Turkey has previously vehemently denied deporting Uighurs to China.

Probably because there's this perception that, in times of crisis, dictators are better because they 'make hard decisions' and 'get stuff done' without needing to ask anyone for permission. Rarely does it cross their mind that when the crisis is over and the dictators start making unpopular decisions, they can't stop them or vote them out, and unless the dictator's name is Cincinnatus they're hardly going to willingly give up their power, either.
Edited by PresidentStalkeyes on May 6th 2019 at 3:54:03 PM
Those sell-by-dates won't stop me because I can't read!