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Comment by cm3 | Hacker News Reader

One thing I'd like to understand is if some of the improvements like less discrimination of minorities and getting rid of the death penalty were purely for EU relations and never supported by the AKP. Considering to reinstate the death penalty now is something I don't understand. Can someone who grew up and lives in Turkey explain? I recall that when they snatched the PKK leader they didn't terminate him, and he's jailed. So how come the death penalty is seriously considered an improvement in 2016?

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> So how come the death penalty is seriously considered an improvement in 2016?

This is primarily to make it difficult to oppose Erdogan. Earlier, an opposition would mean - jail time and potential release sometime in the future. Now, an opposition would mean - you have to sacrifice your life. Basically, the government has upped the stakes against dissent.

But Erdogan can be subject to the same penalty, especially now that they're getting rid of political immunity.

The difference being that Erdogan has all people who would announce such a penalty neatly tied up in his pockets.

I haven't been following very closely but don't think they got rid of political immunity in general. They only removed immunity from MPs, where Erdogan is the president.

I'm less sure of this but I don't believe they lifted immunity for all MPs, I think the bill listed the exact MPs they were going to target.

It doesn't seem Erdogan has plans for retirement any time soon.

My personal theory is that a death penalty applied selectively will be a sweet way to get rid of people who know too much (generals etc), while looking magnanimous for pardoning everyone else.

It's actions like this by Erogan that do tend to make him look like a dictator in action and indeed I ask myself if he was not an Islamic leader then would he have public support by the mass majority of Islamic people in that country and are the supporting him or their religion. As for me if you remove religion from the equation then you equally remove his support and that is very much the crux. More so when he has pushed thru more religious schools, curtailed and closed down free schools and very much done everything possible to drive things in the name of religion protectionism in many eye's. Which is and has been an issue with turkey in the past and indeed, seen the military rise up to curtail it as per the mandate they have. But this time, was very messy and over the years Erdogan has been making sure key people in the military are very much onboard with his religious party line and that in itself would explain the lacklustre mess of a coup. Previously they have had the military step in without any action and been civil, was this impossible in the current time I wonder and I'm tending to learn towards yes as I do not see any request from the military being listened too and indeed when the controlling political party is so embedded, near on impossible.

After all when they label political opposition as terrorists and dissent and then somehow use this as a tool to remove political opposition and control education, is that going to end well democracy wise one seriously wonders.

> So how come the death penalty is seriously considered an improvement in 2016?

The best argument for the death penalty is about legitimacy of the government. Given the choice between revenge killings and the death penalty sentence in fair courts, we should choose the death penalty. Of course, this presumes fair trials, etc., so if the trials themselves are non-existent or unfair, the calculus changes. And if the impulse for violent revenge does not exist among a people, then the calculus changes as well.

To be clear, the argument isn't that repaying murder with death is just. The argument is that to maintain a stable government, the government needs to respect popular opinion on the issue.

All that being said, I don't have any particular insight into Erdogan's changes. But changing rules just after a traumatic event can lead to regrets and overreach, as the U.S. found post 9/11.

Popular opinion in many Western countries also supports the death penalty even where it's outlawed. In general, it's not difficult to find unpopular policy that governments pursue nonetheless, and this does not necessarily result in instability.

Another pro-death penalty argument is its deterrent effect. While criminologists found that murder may not be deterred by the death penalty, we would expect other crimes requiring more deliberation and intelligence, to be deterred by the prospect of state killing. There is scope for innovative and beneficial use of the death penalty. For example, serious white collar crime, political corruption, and to enforce anti-discrimination laws.

I would love to see some reliable statistics that prove support even anywhere near 50% in major European countries for a reintroduction of the death penalty, especially since your remark about "popular opinion" seems to suggest widespread public support for the death penalty that is subsequently ignored by politicians.

> I would love to see some reliable statistics that prove support even anywhere near 50% in major European countries for a reintroduction of the death penalty

The UK public until very recently had decisive majority support for the reintroduction of the death penalty. Last year the NatCen British Social Attitudes Report found 48% of the 2,878 people it surveyed were in favour of capital punishment. This is the lowest figure since the survey began in 1983, when around 75% of people were in favour. Capital punishment for murder was abolished in Great Britain in 1965.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32061822

Thank you for the link. I guess I should never count out the Brits when it comes to these things! ;) The last reliable thing I found for Germany was an article that cited a rise to 25% after something or other in 2014, which is why I didn't quite expect those numbers. But in these days...

This isn't unique to the UK.

Germany: http://www.welt.de/politik/deutschland/article134799279/

USA: http://www.people-press.org/2015/04/16/less-support-for-deat...

It kind of is, though? The US don't count, they have the death penalty and are not a European country, but the UK, just like basically all other European countries (not just EU countries) excluding Belarus & Kazakhstan are members of the Council of Europe, where membership requires abolishing the death penalty. Also, the article for Germany showed, as I said, a rise to 25%, which is really rather far from anything approaching a majority, while the BBC article talked about a decline to 50%. So there is quite a difference.

> For example, serious white collar crime, political corruption

If you look at the actual legal outcome of the financial crisis, Goldman Sachs cooking of Greece books, Euribor Fraud, revolving doors between government a sweet consulting jobs, Panama papers, recurrent "tax" amnesty, ... it seems there is very little in common between what people think is illegal and what actually is. So what kind of deterrent would introducing death penalty actually achieve ? The fall guys would fall harder ?

Even just Bernie Madoff and the Libor crooks being executed would probably have a socially beneficial effect. But of course, you could equally say there is no point in having any laws if they are not enforced.

> So what kind of deterrent would introducing death penalty actually achieve?

The point is that the severity of the punishment must match the severity of the crime. Crooked people getting off easy is a different example of the same issue. In both cases, the legitimacy of the government is eroded. Sometimes this looks like people ignoring even more laws or voting for candidates that ignore the existing checks and balances. In more volatile cases, you could see the rise of tribal forces (including mafia and gangs), more revenge and honor killings, a full-on coup, or any number of other things.

The legal cost of committing a crime is something like (severity of punishment * likelihood of punishment). I suspect that the latter term is far, far more important to the legitimacy of a government, since it indicates competence whereas the former indicates stringency or leniency, and people respect a competent but lenient government far more than a harsh but incompetent one.

Besides, life in prison is a harsher punishment than death.

>> Besides, life in prison is a harsher punishment than death.

I'm sorry, WHAT?! You seem to have a gross misunderstanding about the permanency of death.

I would absolutely choose death over lifetime sentence in US prison system, absolutely and without hesitation,.

Well you are in the significant minority. The point is that most people disagree with you.

> Well you are in the significant minority.

Do you have evidence to back that up?

Well at the very least by the fact that most people in prison don't try to kill themselves. Some do, sure, but most don't.

Or how about this. The vast majority of people who are being charged with the death penalty in the court of law, try to prevent that sentence from happening.

If everyone prefers the death penalty, then why would they use their lawyers to sue and prevent it from happening?

I am sure you agree that most people sentenced to death try to overturn it entirely and go free, not convert it into life inprisonment.

What? There are lots of cases where they try and plea bargain it down to life.

Why plea bargain down to life if you prefer death penalty.

> plea bargain it down to life

Life with the possibility of parole, i.e. you still have a chance to live a free life, no matter how small and short. There are few if any cases of someone trying to bargain down to life without parole.

You're wrong. I just Googled the phrase plea deals life without parole and found literally pages and pages and pages of articles about people plea bargaining down to life without parole. [1][2][3][4][5] And that's just from the first page.

You do realize that you aren't executed right after the guilty plea, right? In capital cases many levels of appeals are mandatory and a death row inmate waits an average of 15 years before they're executed. In California, which has the largest death row population, no one has even been executed in a decade and there are no plans to so in many places it's a de facto life without parole sentence anyway.

[1] http://www.kesq.com/D-A-Approves-Duncan-Plea-Deal-Life-In-Pr...

[2] http://www.aol.com/article/2016/04/23/cody-rackemann-receive...

[3] http://articles.philly.com/2016-01-14/news/69738739_1_mackie...

[4] http://www.tulsaworld.com/news/courts/plea-deal-in-hicks-par...

[5] http://www.cleveland.com/metro/index.ssf/2013/07/ariel_castr...

I would not, personally. Yeah prison in the US sucks, but at least I would finally be able to find the time to read everything I wanted to.

It is you who seem to have a gross misunderstanding about time and suffering. The dead don't suffer.

They also don't get any appeals, pardons, or get to discover new evidence to help their case. They don't get to see sentencing reform or more lenient judges that wipe out that life sentence. They don't get to see how forensic science and police procedure change and given how messed up the current state of the art is, there will be many more living people that will be released.

But they don't care about any of that stuff, they're dead.

At least with respect to the 2008 financial crisis, there was actual fraud going on there. People were lying about lots of things. Doing it a little may be subject to breach of contract lawsuits. Doing it a lot is fraud, and can be prosecuted.

Sadly, hardly anyone was indicted, so there's no point (yet) to debating the usefulness of the death penalty for white collar crimes.

Lots of fraud in China where the death sentence is used.

Your position is unsupported by facts and unsustainable.

In the US, death penalty is popular but tolerated extrajudicial killing is not. In Middle East, extrajudicial killing is more common and tolerated.

Extrajudicial killing is very popular in the US, by drone (against Muslims), by gun owner (Stand Your Ground laws) and by cop (against minorities).

Death penalty would make it impossible to send illegal immigrants back to Turkey. Right now there is a deal with EU and Turkey has to accept them.

Technically, no, not unless asylum seekers themselves are threatened by the death penalty in Turkey which is not the case for migrants in transit.

But of course politically it would make any deals with Erdogan more difficult.

I'm waiting for reactions on how long you can sell cars made in Turkey in the EU market (e.g. Toyota, Renault).

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