Turkey's block on Wikipedia violates rights, court rules | Hacker News Reader

Turkey's block on Wikipedia violates rights, court rules

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133 pointsthewarpaint42 comments

From the outside this seems strange in light of the current autocratic nature of the government in Turkey where we hear stories of wholesale purges from civil service jobs, universities and etc.

Idea of an independent civil service (or justice system) is being threaten more generally recently. Countries that come to mind: US, Hungry, Poland, Turkey and recently also UK (Mr. Cummings, chief advisor to PM stating that UK civil service should be entirely abolished).

>chief advisor to PM stating that UK civil service should be entirely abolished

Citation? The original article advocates reform, and possibly abolishing permanent secretaries, but nothing like entirely abolishing the civil service

https://dominiccummings.com/2014/10/30/the-hollow-men-ii-som...

I’m also very confused about what exactly is supposed to be independent about it. The job of the civil service is to execute government policy.

When people say that they mean that it is independent from party politics, and distinct from the government, i.e. yes it executes government policy but it is separate from the government and the personnel don't change after elections.

I think more specifically civil service is there to act on the laws passed and do so with regards to the law or policy....not necessarily the whims of a given politician...or say only service his supporters.

Policy and legislation are not the same thing. Policy is how cabinet decides to run its ministerial portfolios. If they want to implement a policy that requires large changes, this will often require new legislation, but the two things are quite seperate. The job of the civil service is to implement government policy, which may include the whims of a particular politician. Civil servants are supposed to be independent in the sense that they will faithfully implement the policy of any government, regardless of their own political opinions on said policy. They do not operate independent of government policy. That is how you ensure thousands of unelected government officials uphold the values of a democratic society.

Independent civil service exists to provide:

1) continuity of government function in presence of political instability, elections etc.

2) higher level of comptency across government employees ( career bureaucrats)

Essentially you don't want the government to be staffed with incompetent friends and affiliates who either leave or get kicked out after lost election leading to the vacancies, interrupted projects etc.

More: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_service#Civil_service_in...

More here: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/12/14/boris-johnso...

http://theconversation.com/dominic-cummings-wants-to-add-mor...

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/01/boris-...

The institution will obviously continue to exist under its current name.

None of those things are anything like "entirely abolish".

Turkey is a weird place. (Context: Turkish person living in the US). It is autocratic in a very specific way — it elects its autocrats. As in, Erdogan legitimately wins his elections, and he is as popular as the votes indicate, which is around 51% - an unfortunate fact for those of us at the remaining 49%.

For comparison, it’s not like Russia at all - Erdogan is very vulnerable to just getting elected out and while he does have more leeway in doing what he wants, he ultimately has to do what the population wants him to do or risk losing the next election.

For the things that Turkish population puts less immediate value on is the places where he gets the most leeway, and rule of law in the western sense was until recently one of them. As of now though, he is bleeding out votes because of various issues, like this one, which I would speculate as the everyday person in Turkey sort of discovering habeas corpus is actually kind of important.

I’ve always thought it’s a cultural remnant of the sultans.

I have no doubt Erdogan has won elections.

I do wonder how free and legitimate they are when he gets to expel those who oppose him.

And of course the big question is would he allow a result where an election would mean he is removed from power.

Erdogan lost elections in the recent past and he had to give up power in Istanbul. The mayor of Istanbul is basically the Vice President of Turkey in terms of broadcasting power and actual ability to do things on the ground due to the sheer size of Istanbul, and he’s been a major thorn on his side since. I don’t think (I hope) when the time comes, he refuses to leave, that would be a much, much different problem than the ones facing Turkey right now.

Re: legitimacy, I’ve been on the losing side of those elections for the last two decades by now. Unfortunately they’re pretty legitimate, he really does have a majority and his majority does not depend on expelling people. Had it been that way, Turkey would make a lot more sense.

The core problem with Turkey lie not with legitimacy of elections, or with the consent of the governed, but within the much more subtle distinction between ‘ruling’ and ‘governing’ what is ultimately a very pluralistic society with a vast range of ethnic and sociocultural backgrounds. Doing legitimate elections is one thing, not assuming they mean ultimate power to squash out your opposition like bugs on a windshield is quite another. In terms of social malaise, Turkey is more similar to Hungary or Poland, rather than Russia.

Again, it’s a weird country, it doesn’t make sense even to its inhabitants so I try to avoid commenting on it from afar.

As someone on the opposite end of the political spectrum - made/joined a lot of campaigns against Erdogan's party since 15 years I could say He barely wins recent elections and lost 3 major towns and will lose power in few years.

In Turkey our biggest problems have unfortunately "made in USA" labels :( . One of them is the the Imam of Universe (Fethullah Islamist cult) harbored in Pennsylvania by cold war remnants in Washington around intelligence circles. Those fellows are embedding a network followers in crucial posts in public and in large private enterprises by stealing exam questions, cheating in all sorts of admission processes, eliminating anyone who is just not one of them. At the end they have attempted a military coups for tactical political reasons. Needless to say when they were in power, those pro-western Gulen sect banned Youtube, blogger, Google Sites due to them talking about biological evolution in 2000s.

> Erdogan legitimately wins his elections

It's very easy to win elections when you kill, imprison and lay off _hundreds of thousands_ of your "enemies" and have total control on the press and the judicial system. Westerners nowadays forget that fear is a very, very effective political tool. In fact it's the most effective political tool by far. In Turkey, thousands of people were imprisoned based on just DNS queries that are being logged by intelligence services. Fucking DNS queries! even if your application/website connected to a "terrorist affiliated" server once via some ad or anything you get arrested. Turkey has, and now shamelessly supporting the most dangerous Islamic groups on Earth. How coincidental that after the alleged pathetic coup attempt, within days, around 100,000 people were arrested, how can you arrest a fucking hundred thousand people if these people aren't on lists a priori?. If hundreds of thousands plotted a fucking coup, how on earth could it fail? How can it even be a coup when hundreds of thousands plot it?. This is like Kirov assassination v2.0. It's not even a secret that Erdogan moving extremely dangerous ISIS members in civilian planes from Syria to Libya to destabilize Egypt. The US used an Iraq base and even asked the Russians to clear the way on the Syrian field for the planes that were going to kill Al Baghdadi in northern Syria despite having a big base in southern Turkey that can do the mission in minutes. It isn't hard to get that even the US army and CIA don't trust Erdogan having his men spying on the base and warning AL Baghdadi within seconds

Every day, every fucking day, you open the news and see Erdogan "threatening" somebody, some country, some group, not just in Turkey but everywhere. Since he has been doing this for more than a decade now and nobody stood up to him. He's been seen now as the Caliph by islamists and extremists all over the world. It's the romantic reflection in the islamic legacy of the strong muslim ruler humiliating the infidels. The holy grail for every extremist!

See, these people are on a list because they were fast-tracked into the positions they got due to their affiliation with the people who organised the coup, back when the coup organisers and Erdogan were BFFs.

It probably sounds like tin foil hat conspiracy theorists to people unfamiliar with the life in Turkey but in Turkey, there are religious cults that are good for networking and social support. Essentially, they will pay for your education and get you to the top places but expect you to report to them and take orders from them when it comes to. Like the Chinese Govt using its citizens employed in tech companies to steal secrets etc.

This particular one was active since 30-40 years now and was able to scale its operations to enormous size, having people everywhere. The founder was the original podcaster and Youtuber, spreading its message through VHS tapes etc. later creating a business model based on subscription(literally, subscribing to their newspaper multiple times) and expanding into a business network where you get business but you also pay in some of your profits. So these guys were on the radar of the secularist for a long time and are routinely purged from a critical position up until Erdogan teamed up with them. At some point, they got into a fight and Erdogan won and Erdogan had a list of their names of those he directly enabled, the rest were deducted from there. Imperfect but very well educated guess of the cult members, let's say. Probably not too much off since he had at least 3 years before the coup to polish his list of Gulenits.

After the coup, Erdogan gained unchecked power and this is scary stuff. He is trying to be influential leader over the whole region but I am not sure that he is smart enough to do that.

BTW, Erdogan dropped the Islamist rhetoric after the coup. He is now on the nationalistic side of the things, having the support of the nationalist secularist. All those imprisonments of the Gulenists were a wet dream of any secular nationalist. The rhetoric about foreign powers trying to destroy Turkey, evil west etc. is also not stranger to the secular nationalist.

You forgot the most important part: Gulen was Tayipp's closest friend, ally, and advisor .. until he wasn't. Gulen was a huge part of Gulen gaining power, and he used that network to his advantage. Go back to whatever it was called, Operation Sledgehammer.

I was here during the fake coup, watching the f16s, watching Tayipp descend from his private jet like he was jesus, his arms stretched out, telling his people to come defend him, hoardes of nationalists swarming the tarmac to his defense.

The whole time it seemed like bullshit. My friend's father, who is 80 and has experienced 5 or 6 coups, went fishing 5am saturday morning. When his children told him not to, he said, "I've been through this 5 times now, and I call bullshit. This isn't a coup, this is a theatrical rendition of 1984, and Gulen is Emmanuel Goldstein.

Interesting anecdote: I met a Gulenist in Ukraine last month. I'm a US citizen living in Türkiye, working for an American firm, and was in Kiev meeting some contract programmers. One programmer, a Tatar from Russia, One found out I was living in Istanbul and approached me really excitedly. He wanted to tell me about the great Turkish organization which funded his education.

I stopped him right there and told him that an in-law of mine was hurt in the fake coup and he would do well to end this line of conversation, but he persisted. When I suggested Gulen was a terrorist, he rather .. aggressively told me "No Erdogan is the Terrorist" and got in my face. I politely told him "Both can be true, have a nice night".

The next day I had him removed from our account due to his actions, but in reality, due to his association with a terrorist group, and let my account manager know what was going on. He's no longer with that consulting company either.

I literally started with that. I did not forget anything and my perspective is as a non-affiliate to Gulenists or Erdogan.

unfortunately you wrote too much anecdotal gossip. gulenist islamist circles based in usa - were hinting that night and few months earlier and preparing and praising a military fascist islamist coup. it was a coup attempt by fethullah (imam of the universe) followers fearing a final purge from the military posts they occupied by faking the admission process and cheating in all the exams. Noone in turkey disputes that. The coup was supported by cold war remnants in washington and fake liberal circles in turkey. Period. Gulenists were purged, and politicians will lose power by elections and life will go on as usual. turkish people were so much disgusted by the gulenists that it's a gift that they got purged. now the rest is politics as usual.

Westerners nowadays... choose to hear a small fraction of the reality that fits into a short consumable news piece. /fixed-that-for-you

Those thousands, you want to so call "enemies" are actual enemies of democracy, not to mention a shadow-secret cult. It is not like they're coming from an open ideology with open political goals. So we could understand and excuse the coup in some form as a revolution. Even that is questionable considerable ruthless shelling of unarmed civilians during the coup.

This cult have been working on infiltrating military for many years. Only westerners like to omit this fact. Turkish public %100, both left, right all political factions are aware of this.

I don't blame you for believing what you will. Because the narrative you speak of, have been pushed by giant main-stream news organizations in the west. No wonder Turks have a distrust towards "The West"

Same west was not as vocal, when same cult were arresting/killing journalists in co-operation with Erdogan... This whole narrative is so ridiculous. Not only Turks but anyone who has been involved with Turkey for 5-6+ years are probably laughing at it.

I backpacked with a Turkish fellow in Europe for few days, some months ago. He said the opposition is trying to hit Erdogan where it hurts the most. Taking back cities after cities from his party's rule and hence hindering the fund flow to him and his party. He also added that he was really hated in the country right now. Is that how it is?

It's sort of true. There's a lot of construction going on in and around Istanbul, and most of the time it's either illegal or approved ex post facto for the benefit of the people close to government. Canal istanbul had a similar issue with proposed-land (before it was known) being acquired in advance by people close to Erdogan abroad, before it's acquired back under emminent domain at a premium.

All this gets prevented by the new municipal government in Istanbul and Ankara.

Erdogan also is on a tight leash these days, and publicly threatened to cut federal funding for both Istanbul and Ankara - it is kind of unheard of because when local government was under AKP ruling they had practically unlimited funding. So now that his party lost the local elections in two major cities, he's trying to make them look incompetent by cutting their funding, in hopes for winning the next election.

Either Mansur Yavas or Ekrem Imamoglu will eventually be a candidate for President in following years, it'll be interesting to see how it plays out.

After the failed coup didn't Erdogan order the arrest of many who opposed him?

I've never heard of an autocrat that doesn't directly or indirectly manipulate elections.

Oh, Ergodan does what he can to stack the deck in his favor, but Turkey is not North Korea. He doesn't have untrammeled power to do so, and on occasion (most recently in Istanbul) he and his party do lose elections.

I got my MS degree from Turkey. These days they decided to close my university because of some political conflict between Erdogan and a guy who got separated from his party (Ahmet Davutoglu), turns out this guy owned the university.

I’m not Turkish and at least not in Turkey right now, but I’m sure such a thing ruined lots of people’s lives and certainly will make my life harder in certain situations someone needs to validate my degree

I think the bigger result is a sort of brain drain.

Early on there were stories of folks purged or threatened and doctors and other professionals simply decided it was time to leave before things got ugly.... I don't know if they're coming back.

> “One of the sad issues is this: We expressed on every platform since the first day that the process of blocking access to the whole of Wikipedia was unlawful,” Gonenc Gurkaynak, a lawyer representing Wikimedia, wrote on Twitter.

Huh? So does this imply that blocking access to specific Wikipedia articles would be lawful?

That would not be such a reassuring concession by someone representing Wikimedia.

Yeah, it sounds kinda funny.

Turkey used to block Twitter and YouTube, just because of a tweet or a video. But because it causes such a problem for the government, they passed a bill allowing just to block some URLs. Not the whole website. So now, many of the news websites have specific pages that are blocked.

I believe he refers to this.

Thanks. So it is OK if it's specific.

I guess that's not so unusual, really.

Not that it doesn't suck.

Yes, there are many countries in which specific articles are blocked, for example when the truthfulness of their contents is challenged in court. Though in that case it's a judge that decides that, not the government.

I get that they're not executive or legislative.

But they are for sure government.

Funny you should say that, because a lot of US companies eventually implement filters that follow local censorship.

Yeah, they do.

I hate it. It's one reason for using VPNs.

But the global takedowns, that really sucks.

First and foremost they implement US censorship policies.

I truly resent and despise the infantile attempts at self-preservation through censorship. I hope this years-long embarrassment resolves itself.

Aaaand the article is gone from frontpage (and second page, and third page, and fourth page.)

Good! It is hard to watch all the damage being dealt to institutions in Turkey with these "terrorist" laws. So I'm always happy to note remnants of a functioning civil society. It means that when the antidemocratic AKP is voted out, the country doesn't start from zero.

Edit: Sorry, I misread a quote from the article.

Nothing in the article implies that the page will be blocked at all.

Erdogan will probably try to fix it by setting up more agreeable judges or by changing the constitution itself, like Putin is planning to do.

>like Putin is planning to do

My understanding is the Russian courts have for a LONG time been weak and simply deferred to Putin and Co. The Russian courts don't even come up as a question when most Russian news is discussed.

Russian courts are simply rubberstamping whatever they are told to do indeed. They are just an empty facade. In this since Turkey is in a better situation, so far.

But Erdogan is gradually trying to take all that way. He already changed the system from parliamentary to a presidential one. Why would you expect him to stop there? He'll try to get to the courts too.

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