From the outside this seems strange in light of the current autocratic nature of the government in Turkey where we hear stories of wholesale purges from civil service jobs, universities and etc.
Turkey is a weird place. (Context: Turkish person living in the US). It is autocratic in a very specific way — it elects its autocrats. As in, Erdogan legitimately wins his elections, and he is as popular as the votes indicate, which is around 51% - an unfortunate fact for those of us at the remaining 49%.
For comparison, it’s not like Russia at all - Erdogan is very vulnerable to just getting elected out and while he does have more leeway in doing what he wants, he ultimately has to do what the population wants him to do or risk losing the next election.
For the things that Turkish population puts less immediate value on is the places where he gets the most leeway, and rule of law in the western sense was until recently one of them. As of now though, he is bleeding out votes because of various issues, like this one, which I would speculate as the everyday person in Turkey sort of discovering habeas corpus is actually kind of important.
I’ve always thought it’s a cultural remnant of the sultans.
Idea of an independent civil service (or justice system) is being threaten more generally recently. Countries that come to mind: US, Hungry, Poland, Turkey and recently also UK (Mr. Cummings, chief advisor to PM stating that UK civil service should be entirely abolished).
I got my MS degree from Turkey. These days they decided to close my university because of some political conflict between Erdogan and a guy who got separated from his party (Ahmet Davutoglu), turns out this guy owned the university.
I’m not Turkish and at least not in Turkey right now, but I’m sure such a thing ruined lots of people’s lives and certainly will make my life harder in certain situations someone needs to validate my degree
> “One of the sad issues is this: We expressed on every platform since the first day that the process of blocking access to the whole of Wikipedia was unlawful,” Gonenc Gurkaynak, a lawyer representing Wikimedia, wrote on Twitter.
Huh? So does this imply that blocking access to specific Wikipedia articles would be lawful?
That would not be such a reassuring concession by someone representing Wikimedia.
Turkey used to block Twitter and YouTube, just because of a tweet or a video. But because it causes such a problem for the government, they passed a bill allowing just to block some URLs. Not the whole website. So now, many of the news websites have specific pages that are blocked.
Yes, there are many countries in which specific articles are blocked, for example when the truthfulness of their contents is challenged in court. Though in that case it's a judge that decides that, not the government.
Good! It is hard to watch all the damage being dealt to institutions in Turkey with these "terrorist" laws. So I'm always happy to note remnants of a functioning civil society. It means that when the antidemocratic AKP is voted out, the country doesn't start from zero.
My understanding is the Russian courts have for a LONG time been weak and simply deferred to Putin and Co. The Russian courts don't even come up as a question when most Russian news is discussed.
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rolleiflex|6 years ago|reply
For comparison, it’s not like Russia at all - Erdogan is very vulnerable to just getting elected out and while he does have more leeway in doing what he wants, he ultimately has to do what the population wants him to do or risk losing the next election.
For the things that Turkish population puts less immediate value on is the places where he gets the most leeway, and rule of law in the western sense was until recently one of them. As of now though, he is bleeding out votes because of various issues, like this one, which I would speculate as the everyday person in Turkey sort of discovering habeas corpus is actually kind of important.
I’ve always thought it’s a cultural remnant of the sultans.
[+] [-] duhast|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sharno|6 years ago|reply
I’m not Turkish and at least not in Turkey right now, but I’m sure such a thing ruined lots of people’s lives and certainly will make my life harder in certain situations someone needs to validate my degree
[+] [-] mirimir|6 years ago|reply
Huh? So does this imply that blocking access to specific Wikipedia articles would be lawful?
That would not be such a reassuring concession by someone representing Wikimedia.
[+] [-] raicem|6 years ago|reply
Turkey used to block Twitter and YouTube, just because of a tweet or a video. But because it causes such a problem for the government, they passed a bill allowing just to block some URLs. Not the whole website. So now, many of the news websites have specific pages that are blocked.
I believe he refers to this.
[+] [-] bonzini|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tehlike|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nurettin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] nurettin|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lolc|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] modeless|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] caymanjim|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] shmerl|6 years ago|reply
[+] [-] duxup|6 years ago|reply
My understanding is the Russian courts have for a LONG time been weak and simply deferred to Putin and Co. The Russian courts don't even come up as a question when most Russian news is discussed.