[NGTM-1R]

The problem is that anything that would "reflect the desires of (the majority of) Turkish people" would not be a secular government.

Again, only one of the points.

[Mika]

What I'm seeing is a staged coup attempt to remove those opposing Erdogan. 6000 people arrested and the attempt happened two days ago? That's not possible by any means of policing work, these people were pre-determined to be arrested! We're looking live at the last opposing elements being removed from the weak democracy of Turkey, paving the way to the actual islamization of the nation. Death penalty is likely the result for many; I can't think of any nation on Earth who doesn't have death penalty under military law. 3000 people from judiciary alone(!), there ain't gonna be fair trials here!

I'm going to contact the Finnish External Affairs and ask them to provide assistance for the Turkish soldiers in need of asylum. That's pretty much all I can think to do.

[Luis Dias]

The problem is that anything that would "reflect the desires of (the majority of) Turkish people" would not be a secular government.

Again, only one of the points.

Sustainability is overrated. I guess we can say that an islamic theocracy is more "sustainable". Is it any good though?

I am really unconvinced by this criteria of "sustainability" here. People should decide to do what is good, not what is "sustainable". There's nothing more sustainable than the state of death, for example.

[Bobboau]

well, it all depends on what you define as "good" for certain definitions of "good" an islamic theocracy is optimal, for instance the Islamist definition of "good". Me personally I would include sustainable as a necessary feature of a "good" end state.

[Luis Dias]

I won't debate the merits of total relativism with anyone seriously endorsing it, so I advise you to get off that stuff. It's poison, drop it.

Sustainability is good, I admit that, it's just not the "be all end all". The choices here aren't between paradise and hell, they are between a rock and a hard place. To say that a rock isn't as comfy as a pillow isn't really an argument for a "hard place", now is it?

[Col.Hornet]

What I'm seeing is a staged coup attempt to remove those opposing Erdogan. 6000 people arrested and the attempt happened two days ago? That's not possible by any means of policing work, these people were pre-determined to be arrested! We're looking live at the last opposing elements being removed from the weak democracy of Turkey, paving the way to the actual islamization of the nation. Death penalty is likely the result for many; I can't think of any nation on Earth who doesn't have death penalty under military law. 3000 people from judiciary alone(!), there ain't gonna be fair trials here!

I'm going to contact the Finnish External Affairs and ask them to provide assistance for the Turkish soldiers in need of asylum. That's pretty much all I can think to do.

Turkey doesn't use capital punishment. But lifetime-sentence is definitely not a spa-hotel. One must spend 10  years in isolation to be granted any kind of contact with outside world and other prisoners. Death punishment was also abolished in the army, but now the politicians are discussing on restoring it.

But I agree. That thing looks staged as hell. It reminds me of Stalin's methods, the great purge he made in army in 30's. Removed all kind of opposition (and those being only suspected) in army and also in public administration, etc. Many ordinary citizens got caught by the blast as well.

[NGTM-1R]

I am really unconvinced by this criteria of "sustainability" here. People should decide to do what is good, not what is "sustainable". There's nothing more sustainable than the state of death, for example.

This argument would carry more weight if we were talking about corporations, perhaps. But a government is a different matter. An unstable government is a government that engages in unpredictable behavior with its neighbors, that is explicitly concerned with survival rather than anything else, that cannot afford to care for its citizens because it has to care for itself. Regular coups or collapsing governments are disastrous to a country and its citizens at a scope that mere natural disasters can only dream of; look only to post-colonial Africa or Latin America in the 20th century for examples.

Stability of government is very much a prerequisite for a nation to advance the standard of living and allow prosperity among its citizens. I'm not terribly fond of the Iranian government's behaviors and nature, but it has done a great deal to bring healthcare and even some measure of prosperity to its citizens in the last twenty years because it has achieved a measure of stability through its legislature's actions. The Saudi government is contemptible but it's done much for the standard of living among Saudi citizens because it has achieved stability through rigorous vetting of its successor candidates and ironclad succession laws eliminating power struggles among the House of Saud. North Korea's government has wobbled on the edge of a knife for the last twenty-five years, and the results have been ruinous for the average North Korean.

Do I particularly want an Islamic Republic of Turkey? No. Do I think that it would be a preferable alternative to the chaos of Turkish politics for the last several decades? I'm not sure. Do I think that a sustainable, stable government rather than repeated coups is better for the people of Turkey? Certainly. If Ataturk created something that his people did not want a part of, if he pushed too hard and too far and too fast, and it's been held in place by military force since then, then it's only going to be harder to make any progress towards what you or I would regard as "right" when the whole thing collapses finally. You can't fake it until you make it government either.

[Luis Dias]

You're assuming some things in your reasoning. One, that theocracy will "collapse finally". There's historical precedent to say that it may well not collapse at all. It may well be that a theocratic authoritarian quasi-totalitarian government is quite stable and "sustainable". After all, all it can promise is a life of material misery but spiritual wonders (and if you yourself are not experiencing spiritual wonders, you're probably an atheist and should be executed anyway). Such a "state" is perfectly sustainable, especially if the people having the most children are the least secularly schooled. I'm not saying this is the case, I'm saying you are assuming the opposite is true, without much justification.

Two, you're assuming that Ataturk's scheme was to push "too hard and too far and too fast".
Three, you're assuming that the problem was this authoritarian secularist push, and not any other factors coming in. Like, say, demographics. Or external factors, like, say, the Iraq war, the Syrian war, ISIS, the refugee crisis, etc. Or like, say, the coming to prominence of a singular character that is behaving quite like a Sultan and able to destroy any democratic institutions and culture that Turkey still had.

That kind of authoritarian asshole is probably even more "unsustainable" than a coup (and I think you agree with me here), but given how Putin has survived and thrived for so many years now (and given the alternative that is Syria), it's probably not out of his reach to be able to destroy the entire democratic edifice and build his own dictatorship before he gets ousted or killed.

So I don't see anywhere here a prospect for "sustainability", unless we are talking about the Afghanistization of the country (Turkey doesn't have, contrary to Iran, oil or gas - at least on relevant levels). Thus the choice isn't really between "sustainability" and "chaos". It's between religious totalitarianism and authoritarian secularism. I'm not really enamored to any of those, but without hesitation, I'll pick the latter.

[Bobboau]

whether it was staged or not, it is being used quite effectively.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/turkey-coup-could-threaten-countrys-nato-membership-john-kerry-warns-a7142491.html

[The E]

I am honestly not convinced it was staged. But what does seem likely to me, especially in light of the current purges, is that this was an attempt by the military to preempt a purge that was being prepared.

[Grizzly]

I am honestly not convinced it was staged. But what does seem likely to me, especially in light of the current purges, is that this was an attempt by the military to preempt a purge that was being prepared.

That does not seem likely to me, actually. I'd really expect it to be a lot bigger then. This thing was over in less then a night.

[The E]

There was an essay on medium about that here. Bottom line: The coup failed because the military did not manage to get communications under control and was unable or unwilling to capture or kill Erdogan in the first hour or two of the coup. Military coups, it turns out, are fragile things; pulling them off successfully requires taking control of the media and keeping the government to be deposed away from communications channels at all costs until the populace has quieted down a bit.

[Unknown Target]

It struck me as someone inexperienced leading a charge that they thought others would follow. Yes it seemed weird to me that they captured the radio and TV stations almost immediately but did not follow up with any sort of broadcasted message. This allowed the dialogue to shift pretty quickly to, well, anything else.

I think what may have happened was that this was brewing, and maybe one or two commanders were goaded into launching the attack pre-emptively. Maybe they were led to believe they were holding a larger hand than they did.

[NGTM-1R]

You're assuming some things in your reasoning. One, that theocracy will "collapse finally".

Two, you're assuming that Ataturk's scheme was to push "too hard and too far and too fast".

Three, you're assuming that the problem was this authoritarian secularist push, and not any other factors coming in.

All dead wrong.

The eventual collapse referred to here was the collapse of the Kemalist democratic state, not a notional theocracy. The longer it limped along and the forces against it were able to refine their game plan, the further and harder it would fail and the harder it would be to claw back, while the forces for it apparently sat on their hands failing to address the structural problems that caused the lack of equilibrium requiring the military to step in repeatedly.

It was manifestly just that as evidenced by the fact the military has had to stage coups every twenty to ten years to keep it in place and this process has finally been ineffective. Ataturk's plan never reached a self-sustaining condition but required outside force to be applied at semi-regular intervals to keep its political system going.

On the contrary, I am assuming nothing else but other factors, though ones nowhere near as proximate in time as you are. The current push and the failed coup are the result of activity that has been going on in Turkey for generations, where no one arrested the basic process that brought us successful coups beforehand and made it so they were not required to hold things together. Eventually, by the law of averages, one of these coups would fail and the Kemalist state would fail with it. That is where we are now.

[FlamingCobra]

Ataturk is spinning in his grave so fast they could power the entire country by hooking him to a generator.

[The E]

It struck me as someone inexperienced leading a charge that they thought others would follow. Yes it seemed weird to me that they captured the radio and TV stations almost immediately but did not follow up with any sort of broadcasted message. This allowed the dialogue to shift pretty quickly to, well, anything else.

I think what may have happened was that this was brewing, and maybe one or two commanders were goaded into launching the attack pre-emptively. Maybe they were led to believe they were holding a larger hand than they did.

They did broadcast a message though. The problem was that there were a lot of communications channels that they didn't take over; not only were modern messaging apps like SnapChat still online (allowing Erdogan to spread his messages), those messages were rebroadcast using the public announce system every Mosque has.

[Luis Dias]

You're assuming some things in your reasoning. One, that theocracy will "collapse finally".

Two, you're assuming that Ataturk's scheme was to push "too hard and too far and too fast".

Three, you're assuming that the problem was this authoritarian secularist push, and not any other factors coming in.

All dead wrong.

The eventual collapse referred to here was the collapse of the Kemalist democratic state, not a notional theocracy. The longer it limped along and the forces against it were able to refine their game plan, the further and harder it would fail and the harder it would be to claw back, while the forces for it apparently sat on their hands failing to address the structural problems that caused the lack of equilibrium requiring the military to step in repeatedly.

It was manifestly just that as evidenced by the fact the military has had to stage coups every twenty to ten years to keep it in place and this process has finally been ineffective. Ataturk's plan never reached a self-sustaining condition but required outside force to be applied at semi-regular intervals to keep its political system going.

On the contrary, I am assuming nothing else but other factors, though ones nowhere near as proximate in time as you are. The current push and the failed coup are the result of activity that has been going on in Turkey for generations, where no one arrested the basic process that brought us successful coups beforehand and made it so they were not required to hold things together. Eventually, by the law of averages, one of these coups would fail and the Kemalist state would fail with it. That is where we are now.

Gotcha, makes sense.

[666maslo666]

Thus the choice isn't really between "sustainability" and "chaos". It's between religious totalitarianism and authoritarian secularism. I'm not really enamored to any of those, but without hesitation, I'll pick the latter.

Id pick the latter, too. But the people want the former. Thats why any secular* government in muslim world is inherently unstable and may be unsustainable in the long term. The natural state of muslim world is to live under something like Taliban or even ISIS. Regimes such as those would be brutal, regressive, but very stable and sustainable.

*secular relatively speaking, compared to western democracies it may not be secular at all.

Now Turkey is located in the midlle between western and muslim world so it is not quite as backwards, but their natural state is still quite a bit more regressive than what Ataturks Turkey was, which was an anomaly. This coup (staged or not) and the reaction towards it could be the process of them returning to this more natural, stable state, just like a a ball rolling down a hill. It will just go on on its own, unless an outside intervention happens (which most likely will not).

[Dragon]

Secular government can work in Middle East if it takes the populace by the throat. See all the dictators who, for all their flaws, were remarkably secular (Saddam Hussein comes to mind). Or legitimate kings, for that matter (well, except the Saudis). Hussein was only deposed when US got involved, other secular dictators managed to last quite long as well and kingdoms in the region are the most stable countries in there (that's despite being mostly old-timey absolute monarchies, which can be prone to an occasional succession crisis). It's just that the unwashed masses want religious totalitarianism (unsurprising, seeing as they don't have much to turn to besides religion) and letting them decide will always lead to it.

The "natural state" of every human is savagery and superstitiousness. Only when satisfying basic needs is reasonably easy and certain can a higher culture develop and attempts at scientific understanding of the world may be undertaken. The Middle East has been a war-torn, unstable mess for a better part of the previous century and the Ottomans weren't kind to it, either. Thus it devolved into the basic state and never really got a chance to evolve back into civilized one. The only difference is that Islam took place of primordial, naturally created superstitions. This is simply what constant warring and scarce resources do to a society. The worst thing is, it takes a while (multiple generations) for a society to "grow out" of this state, which I think most people don't realize. They will only act like us after a few generations of living in a well-supplied, stable and lawful society. There are ways to speed up the process (extensive secular and scientific education, dispersion and forced integration with a more advanced society, among others), but even then, it should be expected to take a while.

The worst thing is, despite their primitive mindset, those people still have access to modern weapons, which are so devastating that they're stifling them more than pushing them forward. Were they throwing sticks and stones, they'd sooner or later develop on their own (just like every other civilization did, we all started from this level). With AKs and RPGs, they have no way of gaining advantage by improving their weapons, not to mention combat is too lethal, not dependent enough on skill and too much on luck. It's a vicious cycle and the "civilized world" is doing exactly nothing to get them out of it, instead alternating between neglect and oppression. It's no coincidence that the most progressive places in the Middle East are monarchies (which is the only form of government that was available to most civilizations at this stage).

[Luis Dias]

Yeah whatever Dragon.

Meanwhile, Erdogan seems to be doing things exactly right, if the purpose is to send Turkey into the depths of medieval hell:

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-07-20/erdogan-says-turkey-will-impose-3-month-state-of-emergency-iqvcohtq

A state of emergency took effect in Turkey as the government pursues those responsible for a failed weekend coup, and top officials sought to reassure investors after stocks fell and the lira hit a record low.
(...)

Thousands of army officers, judges and prosecutors have been detained since the attempted putsch by a faction of the armed forces collapsed on Saturday, leaving almost 250 people dead after a night of aerial bombardment and street battles. A wider purge is under way that encompasses universities, schools and the civil service.