Dozens held in Turkish 'coup plot'

[Duque de Bragança]

Errr. Bucharest is a shithole.

Thanks to Ceaucescu but before that it wasn't, with its extravagant architecture and cosmopolitan ambient. There was even a local version of the Champs-Elysées (Calea Victorei).

[Viking]

... the Paris of the Balkans? 

What does it take to become the "Paris of the Balkans" ?   

Behave like the French.

[Tamas]

Errr. Bucharest is a shithole.

Thanks to Ceaucescu but before that it wasn't, with its extragant architecture and cosmopolitan ambient. There was even a local version of the Champs-Elysées (Calea Victorei).

Well I dont know...

Don't get me wrong, the Romanians start to overtake us in terms of economical and societal (sp?) development, they seem to be willing to make reforms we are too afraid of, but:
what I do know is that Transylvania's Hungarian part was the major cultural center of the country pre-WW1. A staggering number of our brigthest artists, writers and poets came from there and some of the towns could only be rivalled by Budapest in terms of "liveliness"
Fast forward a few decades under Romanian rule and you see these cities a mere shallow shadows of their former self. That does not spell a pre-existent Romanian sopshistication to me.

[Duque de Bragança]

Errr. Bucharest is a shithole.

Thanks to Ceaucescu but before that it wasn't, with its extragant architecture and cosmopolitan ambient. There was even a local version of the Champs-Elysées (Calea Victorei).

Well I dont know...

Don't get me wrong, the Romanians start to overtake us in terms of economical and societal (sp?) development, they seem to be willing to make reforms we are too afraid of, but:
what I do know is that Transylvania's Hungarian part was the major cultural center of the country pre-WW1. A staggering number of our brigthest artists, writers and poets came from there and some of the towns could only be rivalled by Budapest in terms of "liveliness"
Fast forward a few decades under Romanian rule and you see these cities a mere shallow shadows of their former self. That does not spell a pre-existent Romanian sopshistication to me.

I'm not surprised to have a Hungarian being skeptical You haven't claimed Erdely so you're not an ultra-nationalist though.

Bucarest was the pinnacle of Romanian sophistication and liveliness before WWII and the commie era. Of course the Wallachian and Moldavian countryside might be different


As for the decline of Transylvania, WWII, the forcible removal of Germans and enforcement of communism did not help and that is an understatement.

Back to topic, Istanbul has lost much of its European character since a long time ago with the last great pogrom of the '60s as one of the last episodes. The remnants of the Greek Orthodox hierarchy do no count and are caught between the current islamist government and the Turanian-flavoured nazism as a poster said before.

Its "mediterranean" ambient is no different that what can be found in Tangiers yet I don't see people advocating Morocco's entry in the EU.

[Queequeg]

The AKP has been acting more and more suspiciously ever since their poll ratings and local election results have dipped.  First there were the separate waves of mass arrests over the so-called Ergenekon conspiracy and the alleged coup plot in 09.  The ratio of wild accusations to actual hard evidence of guilt was far too high for my taste.

Mass arrests aimed entirely at the Armed Forces; I don't think any senior CHP members have been arrested.  When that happens, I'll be as/more concerned than you are. 

Now we have a wave of yet even more mass arrests, with even more extreme allegations (including plots of terror bombings), and lots of rhetoric about kemalism and the deep state -- and again a lack of anything that looks like hard evidence.

The Press is general AKP friendly, but Taraf is reasonably independent, and I don't think a ton of people here are disputing the authenticity of the Sledgehammer plot; engineer terrorist attacks at mosques (!), and then shoot down Greek airplanes (!!). 

Again, I think you are very seriously underestimating the brutality and stupidity of the Turkish military.  Quite a few senior CHP members are not big fans of the military; Deniz Baykal himself was arrested during one back in the day. 

And if it looks like a duck, and it smells like a duck, then you are going to have to do a little more to convince me it's just a harmless lamb kebab.

Erdoğan is not Putin or Chavez.  He is reforming the economy (I've run in to several anti-privatization protests, far more than anti--anti-Army protests), attempting to normalize relations with Greece and Armenia, attempting to continue with EU talks, opening markets in the Arab world, and attempting to rewrite Turkey's largely insane constitution.  If it reforms the economy like a duck, attempts to mend fences with their neighbors like a duck, and hopes to join the EU like a duck, you are going to have to show me more than skiddishness about the possibility of an army coup to prove that it is a quacking Adolf Hitler.

Now AK party has some definite interest in curtailing the military's role in Turkish politics.  But that is because even if Ergenekon isn't real, the truth is that there are very, very scary elements of the Turkish military and police that have, on several occasions, proven that they are willing to do just about anything to maintain their influence in Turkey.  They are violent (there's a very famous picture of the police officers who arrested Hrant Dink's killer posing with him with a Turkish flag), they have taken power before (many, many times), and, perhaps most importantly, they are economically and diplomatically retarded, and will drag this country back in to the isolated, semi-Fascist shithole it was.

But, I am assured, rural places in Eastern Turkey can be some of the most unpleasant places on the planet

Comparable to Sicily, Naples, Albania, probably more developed than Kosovo, and far safer than Chihuahua or Sonora. 

Turkey will, for the foreseeable future, be divided between Western Anatolia and Thrace, Cilicia, and Trabzon and East-Central and Eastern Anatolia (somewhat ironically, the border between "Western" and "Eastern" Turkey is just about what the border between the Seljuks and the Byzantines was during most of the Comnenus dynasty).  But so what?  America was the economic dynamo of the late 19th Century and early 20th, yet we still had to deal with a retrograde and poor South.  Italy is half Switzerland and half Morocco.  Turkey is far less divided than China or India.

Not to mention that Turkey west of Ankara and including most of the coast is the most important part of the country, where much of the people and all of the political and cultural centers are.     

[Queequeg]

It's all just a symptom of the root problem:  His disdain for Western culture and civilization.  Familiarity breeds contempt, and so Spellus flits from culture to culture, whatever he feels is exotic.  One week, he's learning Russian, the next Persian, and now he's in love with Turkey.  Next month, I'll be hearing a lecture about the glories of Tadjiki culture.

There is some truth to this.  I went to the UK at a young age, and was gravely disappointed by the country; sunless days, utterly bland food, a seemingly dull culture that was far more a part of a shared American cultural sphere than I had anticipated.  My deep interest in German history was similarly shattered by how much I hated Berlin.  By the time I'd spent a year in Birmingham, my interest in Russia and the Eastern Med were firmly cemented, and my previous interests in Vikings and Celts a thing of the past. 

That said, I think you are underestimating how broad my sphere of interest has become.  I spend as much time reading about the sciences (primarily zoology) as I do about Armenian or Russian history, and I also have become far more interested in America.  And while I often have a particular passion at some time, I think it is a mistake to assume that I latch on to something, and then loose all interest in everything else. 

[Ed Anger]

[fatherly advice]
Get your nose out of the books, fancy boy. The real world sucks, and get used to it.

Dead cultures are dead, get over it.

[/fatherly advice]

[ulmont]

I am assured, rural places in Eastern Turkey can be some of the most unpleasant places on the planet 

FYP to remove superfluous language.

[jimmy olsen]

To get back to the original derail, my people "discovered" half the world. so what. Who you are now is way more important then what you were.

Is that a great achievement? I think the "discovered" people were probably happier as they were.

If they hadn't been discovered their descendants would be living in the Brass age (IIRC they'd have alot more access to zinc then tin).

Also more would be alive.

I think I'd rather live on a modern reservation than have to live in a society where slavery and human sacrifice is common. That's just me.

[PDH]

I think I'd rather live on a modern reservation than have to live in a society where slavery and human sacrifice is common. That's just me.

Dunno, I think having you on the sun altar being made ready to be done in for Quetzaacoatl (and you body then feasted on by the protein starved masses), would be not be too bad.  The Aztecs were ok in some of their problem solving.

[The Minsky Moment]

Mass arrests aimed entirely at the Armed Forces; I don't think any senior CHP members have been arrested.  When that happens, I'll be as/more concerned than you are. 

I wasn't aware that joining the armed forces resulted in the permanent loss of one's civil rights; that would seem to be a big disincentive to a military career.  Most of the people arrested are retired or former members of the military, i.e. civilians.  And last years arrest targeted journalists as well.  That is a little concerning.

Imagine if Obama arrested hundreds of former military officers claiming complicity with a Rumsfeld-led plot to direct agent provocateur terror attacks on the US homeland, and rounded up some radio talk show hosts for good measure; that is what this looks like.

The Press is general AKP friendly, but Taraf is reasonably independent, and I don't think a ton of people here are disputing the authenticity of the Sledgehammer plot; engineer terrorist attacks at mosques (!), and then shoot down Greek airplanes (!!). 

I don't know what you mean by "here".  But this looks to me like a very strange sort of conspiracy.  The plot was allegedly drawn up in 2003; here we are seven years later and nothing of the sort ever happened, and all the alleged principals are quietly retired.  Usually criminal conspiracy requires some sort of overt act.

Meanwhile the military claims the alleged documents are not in their files and the arrestees are denying authenticity.  Perhaps they are not being entirely truthful, but there is good reason to believe these documents are not exactly what they are being made out to be.

Erdoğan is not Putin or Chavez.  He is reforming the economy (I've run in to several anti-privatization protests, far more than anti--anti-Army protests), attempting to normalize relations with Greece and Armenia, attempting to continue with EU talks, opening markets in the Arab world, and attempting to rewrite Turkey's largely insane constitution.  .

It's lovely that Erdogan has converted to the Chicago School; so as i recall did Pinochet.  Promoting sensible policies does not make it impossible to simultaneously engage in abuses of legal process.  I happen to agree that AKP's economic and foreign policy has been an improvement over the past.  But that is totally irrelevant to the present question - the argument that the policy end justified improper means is very one employed by the military in the bad old days to explain away the coups.

Now AK party has some definite interest in curtailing the military's role in Turkish politics.  But that is because even if Ergenekon isn't real, the truth is that there are very, very scary elements of the Turkish military and police that have, on several occasions, proven that they are willing to do just about anything to maintain their influence in Turkey.  They are violent (there's a very famous picture of the police officers who arrested Hrant Dink's killer posing with him with a Turkish flag), they have taken power before (many, many times), and, perhaps most importantly, they are economically and diplomatically retarded, and will drag this country back in to the isolated, semi-Fascist shithole it was.

The last coup was decades ago; Turkey has been a functioning democracy for over 25 years now.  It was not the AKP that created a stable, democratic Turkey; the AKP is a free rider on that development.   The hysteria over the deep state and the risk of a coup is an absurd anachronism - the military stayed in their barracks in 2002 when AKP first won elections; in 2003 when Erdogan returned; in 07 when AKP won a crushing victory and when he met face-to-face with the Greek PM; last year during the headscarf affair.   The bad old days are long, long gone and not coming back.  Were it otherwise, Erdogan would have been dead in ditch years ago, instead of sending out police to make mass arrests.

[Ed Anger]

I think I'd rather live on a modern reservation than have to live in a society where slavery and human sacrifice is common. That's just me.

Dunno, I think having you on the sun altar being made ready to be done in for Quetzaacoatl (and you body then feasted on by the protein starved masses), would be not be too bad.  The Aztecs were ok in some of their problem solving.

Tim would make an excellent Helot, don't ya think?

[The Brain]

To get back to the original derail, my people "discovered" half the world. so what. Who you are now is way more important then what you were.

Is that a great achievement? I think the "discovered" people were probably happier as they were.

If they hadn't been discovered their descendants would be living in the Brass age (IIRC they'd have alot more access to zinc then tin).

Also more would be alive.

I think I'd rather live on a modern reservation than have to live in a society where slavery and human sacrifice is common. That's just me.

Yes yes, and you also would hate to be a Viking lord. We know all about your weirdness.

[Savonarola]

What does it take to become the "Paris of the Balkans" ?   

You just need attitude; Detroit is the Paris of the Midwest.   

[Syt]

What does it take to become the "Paris of the Balkans" ?   

You just need attitude; Detroit is the Paris of the Midwest.   

As opposed to Paris, Texas?