Viewing Turkey

ADDED 11/21/2020

From China, France and Thomas Jefferson: history lessons for Donald Trump and Republicans on aristocratic excess

FROM 11/12/2020 | South China Morning Post

BY Martin Powers

“Let the constitution of a government be what it will, if there is but one man in it exempt from the laws, all the other members must necessarily be at his discretion.” Perhaps we should thank US President Donald Trump for demonstrating the truth of 18th-century French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s insight. Buoyed by “presidential immunity” – […]

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ADDED 02/09/2019

Autocracies that look like democracies are a threat across the globe

FROM 02/05/2019 | The Conversation

BY Richard Carney

Russia’s successful interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election may inspire other countries to do the same. These other countries don’t look threatening. They look like democracies. But they’re not. They’re a special kind of autocratic regime that masquerades as a democracy. And what looks like benevolent conduct by these countries can quickly change into aggressive, […]

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ADDED 07/21/2018

Authoritarians used to be scared of social media, now they rule it

FROM 07/21/2018 | Boing Boing

BY CORY DOCTOROW

A new report from the Institute For the Future on “state-sponsored trolling” documents the rise and rise of government-backed troll armies who terrorize journalists and opposition figures with seemingly endless waves of individuals who bombard their targets with vile vitriol, from racial slurs to rape threats. The report traces the origin of the phenomenon to a series […]

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ADDED 05/18/2018

Erdoğan’s Sarajevo rally and his relations with the West

FROM 05/18/2018 | Ahval News

BY Doğa Ulaş Eralp

I have been a keen follower of Turkey’s policies in Western Balkans for more than 15 years. I have lived and worked in different countries across the region in a period in which Turkey managed to develop its foreign policy tools to bolster its peacemaking capacity between former enemies in the region. Turkey long emphasised […]

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ADDED 03/08/2018

Democracy stops Netanyahu using Erdoğan tactics to dodge graft probe

FROM  | Ahval News

BY Michael Koplow

As I previously wrote, there are many similarities between Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. But despite these shared attributes and the fact that they have both dealt with ongoing corruption charges and investigations, Israel’s future will not look like Turkey’s present irrespective of whether or not Netanyahu is able to […]

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ADDED 03/08/2018

Women of ‘new’ Turkey: dystopian sacralised mothers and everyday feminists

FROM 03/08/2018 | Open Democracy

BY Bilge Yabanci

Not a single International Women’s Day or Mother’s Day can pass by without reasserting women’s main duty as child-bearers and men’s responsibility to ‘protect’ and ‘rekindle’ fragile mothers. Last January, shortly after Turkey’s military operation started in Afrin, I was at a women’s event held by a pro-government civil society organisation in a working-class suburban […]

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