Turkey Blocks Twitter, YouTube Access Over Image of Slain Prosecutor 66
jaa101 writes ABC (Australia) reports Turkey has blocked access to Twitter and YouTube, over the publication of photographs of an Istanbul prosecutor held at gunpoint by far-left militants hours before he was killed in a shootout last week. From the article: "Presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin said a prosecutor had sought the block on access to social media sites because some media organisations had acted 'as if they were spreading terrorist propaganda' in sharing the images. 'This has to do with the publishing of the prosecutor's picture. What happened in the aftermath [of the prosecutor's killing] is as grim as the incident itself,' said presidential spokesman Ibrahim Kalin."
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Re:Stupid (Score:4, Insightful)
Some of us would argue that in practice it is neither of those things, and that while it sounds great on paper, has little to do with actual reality.
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Re:Stupid (Score:5, Informative)
Turkey was somewhat enlightened under the rule of the army. These days are over now that the Saudi-paid Erdogan has jailed a serious portion of the officer corps and the journalists.
Back into Sunni stone age at lightspeed. There is NO SUCH THING as a Mohammedic Democracy.
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Insightful)
There are several pillars of democracy, without which democracy will fail.
The first and foremost among those is freedom of the press. Erdogan is actively cracking down on that right now. He's destroyed a significant portion of the independent press and numerous journalists have been charged with insulting him (yes it's a crime). Enough journalists have been punished that he's reined in those that remain independent for fear of jail.
Another important aspect of democracy is an independent judiciary. The judiciary was gutted and filled with sycophants last year.
Tying in with this is a separation of powers so that they can check the powers of leaders. Erdogan is pursing right now the destruction of all separation of powers by concentrating those powers in the office of the presidency (also one of the offices that doesn't have term limits).
There are many other areas where he's torn down civil society including gutting the power of NGO's, putting religion into schools and others. As you said he's working very hard to undue the legacy of Ataturk's turn away from the middle east and embracing European values. Those values are exactly what made Turkey strong and brought wealth to the people of Turkey. Erdogan is working very hard to undue that legacy by turning back towards the middle east and disavowing the very European values that made the country strong. I suspect he wants to recreate the Ottoman empire. By the time the majority of people realize what he's doing it will be far far to late with much of the damage already done.
I take consolation in the fact that the Turkish economy is going to come crashing down when the US interest rates go up. Much of the phenomenal growth of the economy in Turkey over the last decade was due to US quantitative easing and low interest rates. With near zero rates and excess cash investors could borrow US dollars at 1% and invest them in turkey at 5% and make a killing. But as US interest rates climb that money will go away unless Turkish interest rates go up as well. Erdogan has been pressuring the central bank to keep rates low with the result being 6-8% inflation. This will only get worse as the US interest rates increase if the Turkish central bank doesn't react and raise rates. Erdogan keeps accusing the independent central bank of treason for not lowering interest rates. His probable next action will be to remove the central banks independence and in doing so he'll wreck the Turkish economy harder and faster if he's dumb enough to do it. Even if he doesn't eventually one of two things will happen, either the central bank will raise interest rates to halt inflation and stall out the economy or they won't and inflation will go into double digits and existing wealth will implode. Either will be catastrophic to the economy.
Re: Stupid (Score:1)
Though I understand your skepticism, I assure you there is. Or rather, there was...
Secular Turkish speaking here.
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Naming is an entirely different issue. It's a natural law that if a country has "Democratic" or "The people's" in the title then it isn't.
Sort of like degree courses with "Science" in them. [ducks for cover]
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You cannot build a church in the Sunni state of Turkey. You can build mosques in the US.
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There's a semantic gap between "secular democracy" and "not quite as fucked as Turkey".
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Wow, so being able to have a different imaginary friend is a hallmark of democracy?
I always thought that having a choice of government is.
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Like these [greatistanbul.com] or this one [rt.com]?
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And 3 x 5 = 8, for sufficiently 2ish values of 3 and 4ish values of 5.
Bet you couldn't even point to it on a map. Oh there it is, near New Zealand, that one's shaped like a bird...
Re:Stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
Turkey is a secular democracy. Moron.
For a long time Turkey was secular, but not much of a democracy. The generals called the shots. Then as it became more democratic, and it turned out that secularism wasn't much of a vote winner. It is still mostly secular, but many people, including the governing party, are trying to make it more Islamist.
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Re:Stupid (Score:5, Interesting)
On paper, maybe. Ataturk would be rotating in his grave if he saw what this old moron made out of what he fought for.
Re:Stupid (Score:4, Interesting)
Secular democracy? Present day Turkey? You must have missed the memos from Erdogan. The king of Jordan said it best, (I paraphrase): Erdogan thinks of democracy as a bus, when he reaches his destination, he's going to get off."
And currently Turkey is turning a blind eye to Daesh if not actively supporting them.
Erdogan is whore. He and his band of religious nutjobs will turn Turkey into an Islamic theocracy in 10 years with no democracy left.
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This strategy may lead to WWIII, as we've done barely anything to stop Boko haram or ISIS until now. These two groups are now allying and merging operations. Let this continue with a "fuck it" and alas, WWIII. Otherwise I would not care either.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2014/11/isis-now-has-military-allies-in-11-countries.html [nymag.com]
Muhahahaha (Score:1)
This whole ISIS thing would be over in no time IF we cleaned out the heart of the Mohammedic Terror: Riad and Mecca.
But you know what ? Riad and Mecca have BOUGHT US LEADERSHIP. c.f. "House of Bush, House of Saud". Google it, view it and get your eyes opened.
They have also bought the British. Google "Prince Charles Sword Dance with Saudis".
ISIS is financed and ideologized by the same folks who did Afghanistan, 9/11, Chechnya, Boston and quite a few more things. In other words, by the Wahabist Sunnis who are
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ISIS and WW3? Only if we want it to be.
Have you lately taken a look at a globe? Now, let's see where they are. Oh. And now let's take a look where we are. Oh.
If there's going to be WW3, then only 'cause we're afraid that "our" oil would be in the hands of those nutjobs.
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Not everyone on /. is in the USA, you know.
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Mohammedism (Score:1)
==scourge of the earth.
Their goal is to abolish ALL AND ANY freedoms we have. They are mortal enemies of essentially everybody else. Just read their nasty little book to learn the details. Their goal is to kill or convert hindus, budhists, Christians and everybody else.
Turkey and their Sunni bastards (paid by the Saudis) just proved this AGAIN.
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Really? Merkel is now a leftie?
Wow, the CDU sure changed since I last checked!
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So the LINKE now controls the CDU? Wow. Just wow. I mean, I imagined Gysi being shrewd, but that goes beyond my wildest imaginations.
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Look, if it was up to me we'd throw all the religious nutjobs in one big bag and have them fight over who has the coolest imaginary friend. And whoever gets out alive wins a bullet to the head.
But the world ain't perfect, ya know.
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Infinitely. Or would you claim that the average 20-30 year old really knows how the internet works? And that was the last generation that didn't have "just works out of the box with my OS" internet and actually had to take a look into how it works. And even to them trumpet is only a musical instrument. What's to expect of the generations following?
We will never get a generation that knows how the internet works. These people will always be a minority. When it comes to freedom on the 'net, all we can hope (a
Righteous Indignation (Score:3)
Now, post 9/11, you just come to the realization that your government has laws with very similar wording...
Erdogan is no different than past regional thugs (Score:5, Insightful)
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Silence!
This blocking stuff always makes the news (Score:1)
And it always turns into some stupid religious/political argument. I really don't care about Mohammed this and Mohammed that. The more important story to me is how well people are circumventing it, and what is being done to help. Leave the philosophers to masturbate in their echo chambers.
Another religious fail state (Score:1)
There seems a correlation ignorance, religion and lack of democracy
bypassing the Turkish censorship (Score:1)