Anti-Salafist Uprising in Turkey

[Leonardo17]

I’m going to start this post with a funny Pichachu Video that became viral in Social Media:




 
 
   What happened is that Mr. Ekrem Imamoglu, the main opposition leader was jailed 10 days ago on March the 18th in a totally Chavezian / Nicholas Maduro style with false accusation that were based on false statements that were given by “secret” witnesses with no evidence whatsoever. So now people are on the street and although we are approaching Ramadan fests (a Christmas like fest during which everyone is supposed to be with their families) everyone (including Pichachu) is on the street despite protest bans in big cities.
 
    The one thing I want to emphasize here is how these fascist or religious fascist movement are so similar to one another. First they cleverly misuse and take advantage of the principles of rule of law and democracy that is provided to them. Then they make use of every opportunity that is provided to them to strengthen their grip on power. Then they start working on democratic institutions and start eliminating any “power” they could challenge their ideology (which is the only possible way of seeing things in the whole G.D. Universe). Then you get to “Crystal Nacht” type of events in which people end up being in the street demanding justice and non-schizophrenic type of governance.
 
    I don’t know that much about Iran. But Turkey happens to be a real laboratory on how religiously oriented types of neo-fascist movements operate and try to social-engineer the society they are in (even if this is seemingly impossible). The other great example of course is Israel with all its conservative and Judeo-fascist political movements.

[Thumpalumpacus]

In your opinion, how unsettling is this unrest? Does it have any chance of deposing Erdogan, or will it only inspire further repression?

[BrianSoddingBoru4]

Fundamentalists of any stripe are generally troublemakers, but I don’t fancy the Salafis chances.

Boru

[Leonardo17]

In your opinion, how unsettling is this unrest? Does it have any chance of deposing Erdogan, or will it only inspire further repression?

   The answer depends on many different factors. Like all populist leaders around the world they have this ability to occupy some ecological (political) niches and survive in these niches for the decades to come. You can compare this to the Rassemblement National movement of Jordan Bardela and Marine Lepen in France. You can isolate them, you can exclude them, and you can even campaign against them, but they are very resilient and will not go away completely no matter what you do.

   If you come back to what is happening in Turkey, these guys are already governing the country since 23 years. Their political predecessors were already governing important city municipalities since the mid 90’s. But if you look to the images above you can see how people are simply fed-up with these guys.

   Erdogan is currently thinking that the European have already got a lot on their plates with Ukraine right now. He is also probably emboldened by the reelection of Donald Trump. His friends in the Emirates are probably backing him as well. But the people here are very aware of everything he is doing. He is actually trying to wrap-up all the liberties and rights that we have already been enjoying for more than century now. So he is in a much different position in comparision to the Mullah's of Iran who are simply denying the Iranian people the freedoms and rights that they never really enjoyed even before 1979. 

   So nobody has a crystal ball in front of them. But I am thinking more globally: I think liberal minded / pro-democracy people around the world need to work more closely together. I think that all of these AfD-like structure will keep assaulting our freedoms continually at least for the next one or two decades to come.