[ReptileMan]

7000000 country could probably produce more engineering talent than it can utilize. And building everyday cars is somewhat easy compared to the aerospace, weapons, nuclear reactors or big dams/bridges/tunnels - you don't push neither material science nor laws of physics to the limit.

[jaakl]

The country can also kill most of their talent psychologically, if not physically and force best to exile, with mix of repressive politics, military, no freedom s etc. There seems to be correlation of freedom in a country and innovation success.

[new2628]

Historically, the correlation you mention seems quite weak. Two of the most oppressive regimes of the 20th century achieved some of the most spectacular technological results.

[xenospn]

Unless you count the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany, which out-engineered the west for decades.

[jaakl]

Well I lived in SU for 15 years. There was joke that the Party declared that “in next 5 years we will catch US”. Smarter ones told “lets catch, but no bypass”. “Why not bypass also?” “Then they will see our naked ass”. Totally true. Most of economy was invested to military and this was only area with some world-class tech, and even that was often fake and/or with human sacrifices never published

[new2628]

The SU had a program of requiring world-class mathematicians (Kolmogorov, Arnold, Gelfand), physicists, etc. to teach one year in high school, and to think about the curriculum, and possibly write textbooks. Some of these were available in English via MIR publishers. Some of these books are unique moments in the history of mankind. The science education in SU trickled down throughout eastern europe. Indirectly this school of thought has been responsible for some of the best science and engineering in the world, sadly, mostly outside of the place that originated it.

[xenospn]

I lived in Israel when all of the soviet Jews emigrated in the late 80's/early 90's. One of them got a job alongside my dad, who was an engineer, and they went on a business trip to the US together. When he came back, he said that if they "turned off the US and locked the door", it should still take Russia over 100 years to catch up.

However, during the early days of the space race, there was literally nothing the US could do to catch up with the Soviet Union space program. Their best hope was a former Nazi engineer.

[jaakl]

With Germany compare west vs east Germany times. Nazy regine was sure more complicated story.

[unlinked_dll]

Regressive fascists don’t tend to reach their potential engineering quality.

Take that number. Subtract all women and Kurds, people who speak critically of the government. Adjust for the academics held as political prisoners and brain drained talent.

That’s your engineering base. You can’t square the engineering circle when your government is actively engaged in repressing the population.

[new2628]

Why subtract women? I'm quite sure that women participation in engineering studies is higher than in most (all) western nations.

[mda]

Woman and Kurdish engineers are plenty in Turkey. It could be better sure. The way you say it makes me think you haven't lived in Turkey lately.

[squilliam]

German engineers during WWII seems to refute this claim. History shows that talented engineers drafted machines of mass murder with smile, as long as it would fund their departments and I'm sure there were other considerations in their decision to comply as well.

[petra]

Many world leading scientists fled Germany after 1933: https://physicstoday.scitation.org/do/10.1063/PT.6.4.2018092...

And 15% of the scientists that we're fired from universities were responsible for 64% of academic citations.

Also, many ways Germany had the inferior war technology and progress: encryption. nuclear. Soviet tanks we're better. Germany didn't have long range bombers. British anti-aircraft systems were better.

And all that from a country that led the world in science and engineering before WWII.

[hutzlibu]

"Also, many ways Germany had the inferior war technology and progress: encryption. nuclear. "

But superior in conventional warfare at the beginning of WW2. Stukas, tanks and infanterie well (radio) coordinated.

MG42, the basemodel is still in use as MG3 today

Also later: ME262 (first jet engine), STG44 (first assault rifle), V1 and V2 (rockets)

So given the size, german wartechnology was very advanced.

But it was because this was the sole focus of the ruling nazi party: war tech.

Basic university research is about anything and mostly civilian and the nazis were no academics: they cared about war technology and "scientific" proof, that the aryans are superior. So they did not feel the loss of the fleeing jewish based intellectuals so hard.

"And all that from a country that led the world in science and engineering before WWII."

And this statement is probably more likely true before WWI.

[unlinked_dll]

To the contrary, I'd argue that the expulsion of Jewish academics and their ultimate exodus or execution directly led to the Nazi's failure to develop atomic weapons.

As well there are notable examples of Germans who didn't build weapons "with a smile" for the Nazis, and the usage of slave labor in the war machine harmed their industrial capacity through sabotage.

[rth]

Bullshit!

I know Turkey had a Kurdish president as well as many kurdish senators in parliament. Some member of opposition party some members of Erdogan's party.

I know some cities have Arabic people more than Kurdish in east of Turkey.

The problem historical, needs to be closed for the sake of the citizens.

[ReptileMan]

File that under "Not even wrong"

Women in Turkey are allowed to study and participate active in the economy. Ditto with Kurds. The purges of academics were mostly in humanities.

There are a shitload of tensions between the white and black turks, between turks and kurds, erdogan is hardly the most pleasant person in the world and has lots of enemies, with the slowing economy country imploding at some point is not unthinkable, but so far the day to day life in Turkey is chugging along just fine.

[unlinked_dll]

For now.

[Aperocky]

That's actually untrue, building a consumer vehicle _profitably_ is much harder than building a nuke or other weapons.

Weapons just need to work, a consumer vehicle need to be cost effective, your 80s style Soviet radas are not going to sell at all despite relative ease of production.

[ailideex]

> 7000000 country could probably produce more engineering talent than it can utilize.

South Africa has more than 50,000,000 - still can't build coal power plants without mucking it up. So ... not sure why you think what you think.

[smabie]

7m? I guess most African countries are just choke full of engineers, way more than they can utilize. Of course, having moved to one of these countries, all real construction is done by the Chinese.

[cosmodisk]

With all its engineering mighty it can't even produce quality appliances (BEKO) and we are talking about cars here.As someone commented here, it all looks great on paper but as soon as you start making it, you realise it ain't that easy.

[yalph]

I dont know what you are talking about. Arcelik for example produces much better quality appliances than most its US competitors. But this fact does not fit your narrative I guess.

[cosmodisk]

I'm not an American so couldn't care less about the quality of their manufacturers. On the other hand, I do know that Beko,owned by Arcelik, manufacture pretty poor quality products.

[coverband]

I seriously doubt that... The most expensive set of high quality appliances sold in the U.S. like Thermador and Bosch are manufactured in Turkey.

[smabie]

How do you know?

[yalph]

I use them everyday.

[teleforce]

Turkey has its own home grown aerospace industry that is an order of magnitude complexity than building a CAR [1]. IMHO they will do fine me think.

[1]https://www.tusas.com/en