Turkish Politics

https://mobile.twitter.com/michaelh992/status/1525525543562747907?cxt=HHwWhoC9_cbZ4KsqAAAA

In relation to news that Ankara is potentially usings it NATO right to block Finland/Sweden from joining.

Something about a "terrorist clampdown".

Erdoğan doubles down on Turkish opposition to Swedish, Finnish NATO membership

His full statement, translation mine:

Edited by amateur55 on May 17th 2022 at 2:42:35 PM

Hm...so not an actual speedbump but in fact a wall? Or just making sure the speedbump actually is painful because he's vindictive....

HAH, Greece withdrew from NATO cause of the Cyprus invasion. Amazingly cheeky to bring up.

Secret Signature

Vindictive? Who would pass up such a great opportunity to extract concessions?

Edited by Smeagol17 on May 18th 2022 at 10:01:10 PM

I know the Turkish government has always been very repressive of the local Kurdish population, and recently has been quite eager to jump on good opportunities to crack down on Syrian and Iraqi Kurds in order to quash any revitalization of separatist sentiments in Turkey's Kurds... but what about the Turkish general public? How do they view and treat Kurds?

Edited by MarqFJA on May 18th 2022 at 10:39:23 PM

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Turkish public largely opposes Kurdish autonomy or linguistic rights like education in Kurdish. This is the only legitimate point Kurds have regarding oppression. In the democratic, post-Erdoğan Turkey that will soon be established, these concerns could be addressed through dialogue in a political platform, the parliament.

Otherwise, there is no repression. Kurdish isn't banned like it used to be, and they can speak their language and publish Kurdish material as freely as Turks. The public perception of Kurds is suspicious, but not hostile.

The public position on KCK-affiliated groups is another story. They are all (and in my opinion, rightly) considered terrorists and enemies of Turkey as a whole (and definitely not only of Erdoğan as the Western media makes it seem). Way too many people lost loved ones in this conflict and there's too much bad blood to ever consider making peace. In particular, the US position on YPG is incredibly frustrating. The group is directly and demonstratibly linked to PKK, which US classifies as a terrorist organization. They share a majority of militants. They preach the same ideology and pledge allegiance to the same guy, PKK founder Abdullah Öcalan, whose image they willingly display everywhere. This guy isn't some think tank or political prisoner, he's a mass murderer who's ordered the killing of thousands of people.

Even if the US delisted PKK it wouldn't be this outrageous, as this whole 'oh, YPG is totally separate from PKK' pretend-game they've been playing is ridiculous and insulting to say the least.

Edited by amateur55 on May 18th 2022 at 11:07:26 AM

How much of this opposition is verified as not being exaggeration by Turkish state propaganda and fear of punishment for dissent? And assuming it's at least largely true, what's the reason behind this opposition?

I may not know much detail about the Kurdish-Turkish conflict, but I do know that when you oppress a population and respond to any outlet for peaceful protest with even more oppression, it's natural to end up with members of said population turning to extremism and violence. From what little I know, Kurdish terrorism rose in response to the Turkish government's own state terrorism and cultural gencoide against the Kurds. If you're going to lambast the KCK-affiliated groups for terrorism, it's only fair to blame the Turkish government for beginning the cycle to begin with and perpetuating it, especially since it's the party that has the decisive advantage in the conflict militarily, economically and politically.

Ah, because the YPG had proven themselves to be the most effective force in Syria against ISIL, which has been deemed to be the greater evil. And probably also because everyone but Turkey and Qatar doesn't want to see the Assad regime rolling over them and exacting revenge for their revolt.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

OK; I am a little uneasy about saying this because I know next to nothing about specific Turkish politics regarding the Kurds nor about the details of Kurds' views on Turkey, but: I think the problem is that to a large part of Europe and USA, the Turkish approach to the Kurdish question is seen as going beyond legitimate security issues (such as these brought by PKK's known terrorist function) and more into ethnic supremacy or a desire for domination, sometimes crossing over into violating other countries' sovereignty.

Having said that, on the specific issue of Syria policy I am generally inclined to give Turkey a wide berth. Assad's policies and these of his friends set the bar for "good policy" pretty low.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

About public perception, all I could judge by is the people I interact with, whether IRL or on social media. Haven't seen many people who support said rights, and those who do vote for HDP, who get around 10% of votes. I could confidently say at least the remaining 85% oppose them, with 5% being undecided or lacking an opinion.

Why do they oppose them? Beside practical difficulties, it's because more linguistic rights would give rise to a national sentiment among Kurds, more than they already have, and they would want their own ethno-state, whose foundation if we gave them autonomy we would have formed ourselves. Why people feel so attached to some land is beyond my understanding, but I'm guessing that it's the trauma of Ottoman Empire losing much of its territory to ethnonationalists at the end of 19th century and the fear of losing even more land.

I personally am pro-Kurdish secession, as it would be the quickest path to make the problem go away. The Kurdish-majority regions are the least economically developed and valuable parts of the country, and a nation's strength is no longer determined by its geographical size as we aren't in the middle ages anymore. However, that's a fringe position.

I do agree that Turkey has committed heinous human rights abuses against Kurds in the past. The key word being past. Today, besides not being educated in their first language, they have all the rights I have. Which is not much, as Erdoğan's Turkey isn't exactly a beacon of democracy, but they aren't discriminated against in an ethnic basis.

I respectfully disagree. How has Turkey's approach been unreasonable in any sense? Said 'other countries' don't have control over the regions we conduct our operations in, the state apparatus and the institutions have been taken hostage by a narcoterrorist network who regularly glorify a hateful figure and spread their anti-Turkish propaganda to their subjects, indoctrinating people who have nothing against Turkey with hostile ideology, all the while being armed to the teeth by the US in the name of 'supporting democratic forces'. Are we to do nothing? Should we sit and watch as they form a de-facto country who is, sooner or later, turn on us after they gain a status? And how are these forces 'democratic' in any sense? Who elected them? As far as I know, all their leaders are appointed by Qandil. How is that democratic?

Meanwhile we keep losing people for literally no reason every single day. The news of fallen soldiers and police officers have become a fact of life. Turkey is a conscription country, those who die are ordinary Turks. That is not to mention all the civilians who get killed in bombings by TAK, which is, in US' own words, 'the PKK's urban terrorist unit'.

Edited by amateur55 on May 18th 2022 at 12:48:36 PM

Hmm, so the situation went from "the Kurds are being oppressed for ethnic reasons" to "everyone is being equally oppressed, so ethnicity is irrelevant" ?

Pretty much.

Here's what Wikipedia says about the situation recently:

"On 6 and 7 October 2014, riots erupted in various cities in Turkey for protesting the Siege of Kobani. Protesters were met with tear gas and water cannons; 37 people were killed in protests.[61] Following the July 2015 crisis (after ISIL's 2015 Suruç bombing attack on Kurdish activists), Turkey bombed alleged PKK bases in Iraq, following the PKK's unilateral decision to end the cease-fire (after many months of increasing tensions) and its suspected killing of two policeman in the town of Ceylanpınar (which the group denied carrying out[62]).[63][64] Violence soon spread throughout the country. Many Kurdish businesses were destroyed by mobs.[65] The headquarters and branches of the pro-Kurdish rights Peoples' Democratic Party were also attacked.[22] There are reports of civilians being killed in several Kurdish populated towns and villages.[66] The Council of Europe raised their concerns over the attacks on civilians and the blockade of Cizre.[67]...By 2017, measures taken to curtail efforts to promote Kurdish culture within Turkey had included changing street names that honored Kurdish figures, removing statues of Kurdish heroes, and closing down television channels broadcasting in the Kurdish language.[70] In July 2020, Turkey's Council of Higher Education banned students studying the Kurdish language and literature at Turkish universities from writing their dissertations in Kurdish.[71]...

There are also political parties that supports minority politics,[73] like the Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP), which holds 58 out of 600 seats in the Parliament, a multi-ethnic society and friendly Turkish-Kurdish relations.[74] Critics have accused the party of mainly representing the interests of the Kurdish minority in south-eastern Turkey, where the party polls the highest. The Turkish Government under Recep Tayyip Erdogan blames the HDP of holding relations with the armed militia PKK[75] and has dismissed and arrested dozens of elected Mayors since the 2016[76][77] and since the municipal elections in March 2019 dismissed another 45 Mayors from the 65 Mayorships the party won.[78] Since 2016 also Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ (at the time HDP party leaders) and several other members of Parliament of the HDP are imprisoned as part of the 2016 purges in Turkey.[76]...

According to human rights organisations, since the beginning of the ongoing Kurdish–Turkish conflict in 1978, there have been over 4,000 Kurdish villages depopulated by Turkey and some 40,000 people have been killed.[82] The conflict resumed in 2015. In December 2015, Turkish military operations against Kurdish rebels in Turkish Kurdistan have killed hundreds of civilians, displaced hundreds of thousands, and caused massive destruction in residential areas.[83]"

Are you saying that this summary is wrong, incomplete, or that the situation has drastically changed since the "20teens"?

I won't try and explain all of those as it would be too time-consuming. What I can say is in all cases either people were persecuted for protesting the government, which shouldn't be ground for persecution but well, Erdoğan, or the cited instances of violence didn't have anything to do with the state at all, like mobs attacking the HDP headquarters.

So according to the BBC, Erdogan has now apparently declared the Greek Prime Minister an Un-person? Or something?

Not entirely sure what this means (in practical terms, not the broader "Turkey and Greece hate each other" sense), but it sure doesn't bode well for him playing nice with the Finland/Sweden NATO admission thing.

MBS is scheduled to visit Erdogan...

Hanan Elatr is angry about what Erdogan's doing with MBS, but said that she'll speak out against what the Saudis did to her husband.

There's a burning of the Swedish flag in Turkey over plan to burn a Koran in Sweden.

I'm surprised this thread isn't that active.

It seems Turkey has 'postponed' NATO talks in reaction to this far right protest in Sweden. I can't rly say I'm sympathetic to the ppl in Turkey burning the swedish flag or the people Sweden burning the Quran. They seem like almost the exact same kind of people, fundamentally.

I'm wondering how much of this is Russia stirring the pot, and how much is grassroots. This only benefits Russia after all and they've had their hand in other far-right mjvements as a way of destabilizing democracies.

I heard this is causing concern that the Finnish are considering a break in the negotiations due to this incident.

Not every setback is an evil plan by the Kremlin. Every nation, be it Sweden or Turkey, has their own brand of nuts who prefer sabotage. And they have reason to dislike each other outside the context of Russia, namely with regards to the Kurds. The Turks believe that Sweden and Finland will stop paying lip service to not support Kurdish movements the moment they get accepted into the alliance. Sweden and Finland find Erdogan's authoritarianism and treatment of the Kurds anathema to their values

Honestly, while I personally find it tasteless, both flags and books are dead friggin' objects.

Whoever gets worked up over this should get their act together and stop crying over spilled milk.

Certified: 48.0% West Asian, 6.5% South Asian, 15.8% North/West European, 15.7% English, 7.4% Balkan, 6.6% Scandinavian

I think some people are entitled to getting worked up over fascists doing book burnings, frankly.

Edited by Diana1969 on Jan 25th 2023 at 1:36:34 PM

Is it the book burning they should be worked up over, or the fact that fascists exist in the first place?

I don't understand where the humor is in this.

Whatever the opportunism of the Turkish government, I'm not seeing the "spilled milk" of some Scandinavian fascist doing some Islamophobic book-burning bullshit.