I think we are not that close to having theatre elections. I hate admitting it but democracy works pretty well in Turkey.
There are just too many uneducated people here that are influenced by power and religious-themed party platforms. I'm not sure if I'm being elitist but a good democracy requires good, educated people.
The ruling party is systematically fucking the education system here, creating more religious schools, adding more voluntary religious classes. ProTip, in Turkey voluntary classes means it's probably mandatory since school headmasters tend to pick whatever they please for the students, citing scheduling problems and being understaffed.
I've made peace with the fact Erdogan is not going anywhere soon but I still hope for the country. I have an opinion about him and his party which is not popular among my peers. Erdogan is not a stupid bigot. He is not Trump, for example.
From the first day, AKP always hired the best minds in the country. The party had a culture of being reasonable, the founders were good, educated people with the right mindset. They were conservative, which I hate as an atheist, but also social democrats. They supported most things Bernie Sanders supports in the U.S. with a good balance for free market and capitalism. But they attracted stupid bigots as a result of being a religious party. They've done a good job bringing conservatives in Turkey together (also a result of hiring the best, their PR was always good[0]). AKP has a rule where their members can only serve 2 terms in the parliament. As time went by, good ones were replaced by the new generation of party leaders who are just puppets for the President. All the good people were pushed out of the party because they started to disobey orders from the top. They are bigots and too religious. Time to to time, I catch glimpses of Erdogan, supporting our secularism, saying "it's unacceptable to create an Islamic constitution".
As they push religion more on Turkey, more they'll lose support. Because educated people are looking to get away. Investors included. This is hurting the economy. President Erdogan or his advisors soon will see they need to be merging the country not separating it. They'll act more secular and sane. Because as it stands now, AKP will be lost in history after the President dies. They don't want that. They are also scared of religious powers here since the coup attempt. Only people they trust right now is the people they alienated and sentenced to life in prison. Kemalists.
All this combined, we'll see worst days after we see the light but I have hope we'll see it.
[0] The owner of agency which handled most things for the AKP lost his life, along with his son on the Bosphorus Bridge on the night of the coup attempt. Which is why I don't believe AKP was behind the attempt. He was always loyal and a good friend to the President. He cried at the funeral which is something I've never saw him do and not the best political action if it was a role.
(Quick note, I'm sorry if this is too political. I started writing a sentence but I wanted to say something like this for a while, I just had to get it out I guess.)
> I'm not sure if I'm being elitist but a good democracy requires good, educated people
You're not being elitist - good government requires good decisions, which require being educated about the topic. When the people are involved in government (democracy), they also need to understand the ramifications of what they do. The better politically-educated the demographic, the more effective the democracy will be, all other things being equal (which they're usually not...).
"On 5 August 2014, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, in a televised interview on NTV news network, remarked that being Armenian is "uglier" even than being Georgian, saying "You wouldn't believe the things they have said about me. They have said I am Georgian...they have said even uglier things - they have called me Armenian, but I am Turkish"
For what it is worth, that quote was totally misunderstood and turned into a smear campaign.
Context is this, some people in Turkey loves to attack people/politicians for their ethnicity. And I guess some people called him Georgian or Armenian descendant. However, some said it as "Ermeni dölü" - a little hard to translate - "from Armenian seed (or semen)". During his speech he says exactly this: "They called me Georgian. They called me, excuse me, in a very ugly way, Armenian". This is a typical conservative way of talking. He refrained himself using the term "döl-semen" and terms "excuse me" and "very ugly way" was for that word, not for "Armenian".
Of course, to me correct way of talking about this issue could be "they call me this and that.. who cares!"
This was the rebuttal against the claim. And, it was so obvious to conservative speakers or old timers like me. I was actually baffled that people misunderstood this.
He says "Benim için mesela neler söylediler, çıktı bir tanesi aynı zihniyet Gürcüdür diyen oldu. Çıktı bir tanesi afedersin çok daha çirkin şeylerle Ermeni diyen oldu.." "then one another came out and told, excuse me, with much more uglier things, Armenian."
Grammatically you would not use the term "şeylerle - with..things" there to got the other meaning. Prosody and stops also would be weird to get that meaning. Use of "excuse me" before telling an inappropriate word is also very well known (not for a word like Armenian). It is common that in Turkey many politicians were smeared with slurs like "Armenian dölü-seed" or "Yunan dölü" and he was called with that. He is defining the adjective used frequently. Besides, he is known as the person who tries to break the ice with Armenians state level, do you think he would insult Armenians so calmly like that?
Your second link is based on a racist speech claim. However I cannot find the original Turkish speech to make more comments. But it is a well known fact that there is no black-white racism in Turkey. But please provide a better source to dig further.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves, racism and bigotry is well documented in Football (Soccer).
To compare any established football team's supporting crowd to a countries Democratic process is foolish.
We're not about to start comparing the social status of Britain to West Ham's Claret and Blue Army, are we? I'd suggest we do not follow the same in Turkey.
>"To compare any established football team's supporting crowd to a countries Democratic process is foolish"
Nowhere did I attempt to conflate racism with democratic process. I even included the one particular statement I was responding to in my post which was:
"But it is a well known fact that there is no black-white racism in Turkey."
What makes you think it's BS?
If I had leaks showing that my country's government has nepotism on high position, a big influence over the media and actively silencing opposition and dissent I would be pretty worried. Just part of culture?
