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> I'm just saying they were part of the system, and when they stopped working the system failed. No, when the last one finally succeeded in what it intended to, the system failed. The last coup in Turkey hanged 10,000 left wing politicians, intellectuals, activists, trade union leaders, and basically anyone who opposed neoliberal wave that was sweeping the west. The ones not hanged were either jailed for decades, or banned from politics. The result was a totally far-right slanted landscape in everything - from economics to nationalism to religion. In this environment the Islamist factions prospered because the coup government and its successors used Islam as a 'counterbalance' to those pesky left wing ideas that hampered corporate profits. It didnt take ~20 years before all of these resulted in a hellscape in which poor people had only Islamist organizations to get any support from because practically the entire country was privatized, labor protections loosened, wages bottomed and social services were gutted for tax breaks. The result is the Turkey you see now. In all respects, the current government of Turkey can be considered much more representative of the poor majority than all the post-1980 governments of Turkey since with all its problems, this government at least does something for the poor majority - either through the scarce social programs that are left, through its municipal governments, or through the Islamist organizations that are associated with it. Financial aid, food aid, education scholarships etd - all of which are described as 'bribes' by the secular minority - things that they took away from those people in the post-coup period neoliberal craze, leaving the these segments were left to rot. Which is the reason why those segments will never let go of Erdogan and his party and vote for any competitor. ... Think of the last coup in Turkey like the Chilean coup against Allende. |