From a brief reading of the wikipedia article you linked, I'm under impression that the accusations are baseless (given that there are - supposedly - witnesses and his former classmates that confirm his version, and apparently no whistleblowers that present a proof otherwise). The sources are in Turkish so I didn't consult them[1]. Is the article biased or omits some important context? Since you believe the degree is not authentic I assume you know about some things suggesting misconduct.
[1] Yes, I could translate them, but I'm not prepared to go down this particular rabbit hole.
I think you are confusing Erdogan with Imamoglu. Imamoglu has photographs, classmates, there is no doubt that he attended college. His diploma was anulled because he transferred initially from a different college. He spent 4 years at the Istanbul uni, attended classes, passed the exams, there is no doubt in that.
On the other hand, Erdogan does not have a single photograph during his university years, no classmates to back his story. He started a two year degree, but there is no evidence he attended a four year program.
A public notary issued a same as original certification on a disputed document. The original diploma of erdogan cannot be found. Looking at the date of the diploma, the university faculty didn't even exist yet.
I am not confusing anyone with anyone, just discussing the linked Wikipedia article. A few quotes:
>Aydın Ayaydın, a Member of Parliament from the opposition party CHP said that Erdoğan participated in the four-year degree education of Aksaray Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences, as Ayaydın himself was a teacher of Erdoğan. Expressing that he remembers Erdoğan and his classmates very well, Ayaydın said "one of his classmates is Mehmet Emin Arat, who currently is a professor at Marmara University
>Mehmet Emin Arat himself called the claims on Erdoğan not having a degree "unfair" and "baseless", stating that "the claims do not have any legal, official or historical basis".[14]
>Israeli Journalist Rafael Sadi, who was another classmate of Erdoğan,[15] said that he was irritated by "people that are telling baseless lies just to slander the man for the sake of opposition" and shared the names of professors that he and Erdoğan followed courses from.
Of course they can all be bribed and/or lying, but the Wikipedia article as written supports the version that his diploma is legitimate. Or at least that's my reading.
Before the 2000s, depending on how overtly conservative you were and who was in govenenent (coups, counter-coups, and fits of "democracy" happened every couple years), you might not have been allowed to attend at all.
An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.
Unsurprisingly, once conservative Turkish politicians like Erdogan took power, they came with vengeance. Didn't help that rural, working class, and certain ethnicities (Anatolian Turks, Kurds) were more conservative than others - go to Istanbul Airport sometime and count how many un-hijabed vs hijabed women work as the bathroom cleaning staff.
Of course, those same conservative politicians then do the exact same shenanigans of corruption, power politics, and authoritarianism, and so the cycle continues.
The intersectionality between class, religion, ideology, and ethnicity makes Turkish politics wonky.
They can't the inability to form strong institutions is baked in. And if you have no law, beyond the state/family-head rules this or that, you cant reform and renorm.
Every single one I saw wore a hijab. The cleaning staff earned less than the customer facing shop and restaurant staff (who were almost all hijabless).
Istanbul Airport is right next to what used to be Istanbul's Dharavi (a megaslum). Most residents were migrants and ethnic minorities. This was also the neighborhood that Erdogan grew up in, and helped propel him to power.
A major reason he kept winning elections was because he enacted a massive urban housing program that helped convert those slums into normal neighborhoods with public services (and also helped siphon money to AKP aligned construction conglomerates).
And it's people from those backgrounds that were doing the menial work at IST (eg. cleaning staff)
> Of course, those same conservative politicians then do the exact same shenanigans of corruption, power politics, and authoritarianism, and so the cycle continues.
The curious things was that early in Erdogan's reign, that is during the 2000s, Turkey seemed to be genuinely making progress, especially in terms of economic policy and outcomes. That's when he was still making fairly orthodox reforms more or less along the lines required by the EU for aspiring new members. (Yes, neoliberal reforms work!)
In the last few years we saw more 'interesting' economic ideas from Erdogan, like that high interest rates cause inflation.
To be fair, he is still doing the infrastructure build up. I think the only difference is that he has moved from the liberal agenda; but he only followed that agenda to have a shot at the EU membership. Once that became not a viable option, he obviously regressed on that.
I don't think keeping the same policies as the 2000s would have avoided the hyper-inflation spirals though it might have marginally helped. Turkey issue is that it can't move from being a poor economy (as in simple rent industries like tourism and packaging stuff) to a middle economy where they can manufacture some stuff. Istanbul is a very misleading city because it paints a different picture to the reality of the average turk once you are outside of the city bubble.
Tourism is a pretty good sector for the economy, especially because by its very nature you have to compete internationally with the rest (and best) of the world. There's no shelter behind tariffs or similar.
Tourism in Turkey is essentially one dude owning the land/establishment and 10 dudes running around serving tourists. Nothing wrong with that if that's a small part of your economy but if you have most of your people doing that, then it's definitively a mismanagement of your country talent.
> In the last few years we saw more 'interesting' economic ideas from Erdogan, like that high interest rates cause inflation
Basically a bailout for AKP aligned construction oligarchs like MAPA Group. Turkiye did the same thing in the 2000s that China did in the 2010s with real estate construction.
> Turkey seemed to be genuinely making progress, especially in terms of economic policy and outcomes. That's when he was still making fairly orthodox reforms more or less along the lines required by the EU for aspiring new members. (Yes, neoliberal reforms work!)
Yep, but moreso IMF, because Erdogan 1.0 still had to follow IMF terms and reforms from the 2001 bailout.
Yes, IMF rules and EU neoliberal orthodoxy actually work.
Have a look at the development of Greek unemployment numbers over the last decade or so. It has been a steady downward march, with Covid merely a minor blip.
(Having said that, unemployment is still at something like 10%. That's bad, but far from 'basket case' territory.)
Not exactly. An Erdogan-esque example would probably be a JD Vance or DeSantis administration, because both are actually ideological. Trump might be a lot of things, but ideological is not one of them.
Founder Fund aligned vendors like Palantir, Andruil, SpaceX, and Scale (they're making the pivot into defense tech because their losing their moat) are absolutely taking advantage of FF's closeness to the Trump admin to get preferential contracts.
That said, the best comparison is probably Israel under Netanyahu after he was indicted for loving ice cream too much. While there was a boom in startups and business creation, most of those startups ended up leaving after the Judicial Crisis upended stability.
Wiz's leadership themselves moved Wiz's accounts and ownership outside of Israel during that crisis and Yinon (and most other members of the Israel cybersecurity scene) were very vocally opposed to Netanyahu and Likud during the crisis. At the same time, Likud aligned businesses did very well so long as they remained aligned (eg. NSO Security collapsed when they decided to align against Netanyahu, after which he retaliated with a Likud lead inquiry into NSO Group in the Knesset).
Ehn, at this point it doesn't even matter. The damage has been done, and either way I'm still extremely well off and have backup options to move to. May as well be completely jaded, cynical, and mercenary - when elephants fight it's the grass that dies and the mosquitos that feast.
Turkey is a military powerhouse and Erdogan is a strong leader. The west wishes to remove him like all long lasting strong leaders and install some puppets which they can control. They tried to coup Erdogan away couple of years ago with the guy who fled to the US, since then he is especially cautious.
> An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.
This should have been countered by "forcing" education for everyone. For university, you could do special high subsidies that enable the woman to break from their families. It'll be painful for a couple generations but it does work.
I may be misunderstanding what you’re saying, but it sounds like you’re assuming that women only continue wearing hijab because their families force them to. That’s certainly not the case.
It is extremely rare to meet a hijab girl in Turkey whose family never told her to wear one. For a woman, telling her to wear a hijab as she grows up is pretty much enforcement.
Sure, but it doesn’t follow that they only continue to wear it because their families force them to. Most traditions have to be taught, but that doesn’t mean that they’re only continued by force. My parents sent me to Saturday school where they told me to do Shabbat dinner and taught me the traditions — that doesn’t mean that I’m being forced to sit down for brisket as an adult.
The suggestion was prohibiting the hijab in higher education and subsidizing it, as if the only barrier to conservative women attending an institution where they’re prohibited from dressing traditionally is their parents’ approval. That’s not the case.
I do think the suggestion was pretty bad. Segregation is always bad. But traditions not continuing to adulthood sounds like a load of nonsense, especially considering the issue of head scarves or hijabs which are things women of certain upbringing are supposed to wear to adulthood. It is not comparable to santa claus and they won't disavow you for not eating brisket with family.
“Pretty much” is doing a lot of work here. So are you saying that parents should never teach their children about their own religious beliefs? Or is your problem with the hijab specifically?
They do whatever they want with their children and I don't care if the whole world including men wear hijabs. Or maybe even multiple hijabs on top of each other.
But people who think it isn't forced are simply wrong.
>This should have been countered by "forcing" education for everyone. For university, you could do special high subsidies that enable the woman to break from their families. It'll be painful for a couple generations but it does work.
Progressivism started as a movement to empower technocrats to “better” society via social engineering — and as a continuation of US/EU colonialism. They invented the concept of “scientific racism”, forcibly sterilized undesirables, etc.
Now their followers destroy native culture, eg Japanese culture, promote a return to systemic racism, etc.
And make posts like this, where they argue that forcibly indoctrinating the youth with their ideology will enlighten society.
"Colonialism" and "Islamophobia" are mostly arabic talking points that will never catch on. They don't strike a nerve, they don't bring forth some hidden truth. The underlying principle is: People from different cultures see their own cultures as superior. Most religious Turkish people see themselves as the true representatives of islam due to past Ottoman reign and culture. Most europeans will see their own country as being superior to other countries in europe, and the european civilization to be better than the rest of the world. Chinese will do the same. Almost all arabs do the same. It is basic tribalism, there is no global conspiracy against islam, people just don't like it. So get over it.
No surprise, these folks always accuse others of what they themselves. My pet peeve theory is because they're not great thinkers and they just use what they know best.
So true! It's a psychological phenomenon called Projection.
I think it's quite universal though. It's like our understanding of other people is an extrapolation of our understanding of ourselves. Perhaps people with high EQ can put themselves in the others' position, but many just default to the projection.
Since i learned about this a few years ago, it has explained a lot. For example the WFH vs RTO debate, people who work well from home assume that naturally others would too and vice versa. So to figure out what people are up to, just listen to what they accuse others of doing. Prominent US realiTV politician is a perfect example.
Just like russia using ukraine neonazis as one of pretexts of the war, while sporting much larger (and government+orthodox church-controlled) population of such themselves.
Using such arguments shows how critically thinking (and actually free) population given state has. They wouldnt use it if they would be scolded and mocked from majority.
that's how the opposition party started the discussions. however, they went quiet after a key member from the opposition said that he went to college with Erdogan and they attended the classes together:
here is the blooper a TV news channel that leans towards the opposition side had. you can see how their postures and gestures change immediately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20szE-7h4NA
I am from Turkey and this really concerns me. If we don't protest this in the streets and fight back I am afraid we don't have any kind of law anymore.
I'd add also a thousand bullets, a thousand tortures, a thousand rapes, and a thousand days in prison for having a different opinion and expressing it.
Turkey has a rich history of coups. But when secular parts of the armed forces tried to oust Erdogan's regime by force in 2016, he didn't just fight them off but used the event as a justification to clean house and prevent these things altogether. He's pretty much following Putin's approach at solidifying his position. So 2016 was essentially the death blow to their democracy.
Much like America is taking a hit these days, only judges seem to care or be able to do anything. I was just having a bar discussion during happy hour how America is becoming a fascist country more in line with the way Turkey and India are, rather than Russia or Venezuela (more sudden)
I doubt, but wonder if it's a generational thing, like would the twenty somethings be into strongmen when they're the majority of voters?
I used to think the younger generation were a bit different but I've seen them pretty much obsess over MAGA, Joe Rogan et al. So more of the same I guess?
Essentially, young people want change, old people want stability. The right in the US has been advertising in the direction of change so it's liked for it. Especially by young people doomscrolling about "property prices now vs before" and cartelgram/liveleakesque videos. Once you get older you get a stable job, family, etc so you're less nervous about life and have better things to do than to get your adrenaline up watching people get murdered.
Written from the perspective of someone who's started to get comfortable in life. Now I'm quite mild politically but I can go more right short term if I spend some time watching people get butchered by gangs/nutcases. Some of my friends still watch a lot of that and it definitely makes you very much like having a "capacity for violence". It's one of those things that's IMO good in moderation, since some paranoia is healthy but off the deep end it turns into "get them before they get me"esque genocidal ideas and scrolling the nazi army webm montages and gore threads on /gif/ / /b/ at 2AM.
> Essentially, young people want change, old people want stability
Old people have learned that change always means worse.
Corruption is so big that it isn't really matter who is in power, the system functions as intended. (All over the world)
In my book, if anything was disrespectful it's the flippant attitude of dismissing sabotage of the opposition candidate as just one more step towards the death of democracy in Turkey. (And I'm not claiming that was necessarily out of line. Seems basically well-intentioned to me.)
The comparison is pretty apt, and extremely current. More or less the whole world is watching with horror (or glee, depending on political values), as the US is on a fast track to repressive autocracy.
It's not that it's rude per se, it's that users of this site who aren't from the US find it irksome when a subject that isn't the US comes up and someone invariably pivots it to talk about the US and current events.
It's okay to talk about stuff that isn't contemporary American politics or even sit the conversation out and observe others talking about non American subjects.
Unfortunately, a lot of countries are doing a similar thing as these countries, there’s a lot of authoritarians taking over all over the world.
I think people should talk not only about the history or events in one country, but also talk about how other places are following in their footsteps and how we can prevent it from going forward where we can.
Also, interestingly, when folks talk about how the USA is sliding into authoritarianism on HN, it’s often downvoted, while for other countries it’s treated as serious and obvious, so it’s hard for Americans to see people agree that Turkey is doing bad stuff but they deny the same for America.
Lessons need to be shared so we can all do better together, I think.
Sure I see that trend of downvoting too, but I also see a trend where the American users on HN hijack topics that aren't about America to talk about America because they feel that there isn't enough content on social media about America or something?
It's a phenomenon that I think many users from outside of the US will agree is a pernicious problem on all social media platforms.
Americans should be more aware of this and aspire to not be so self-absorbed.
Eh, I just ignore those who don’t add to the conversation. If they add something useful, even being self absorbed, I consider it. Sometimes even an American has a nugget of wisdom we can learn from, believe it or not.
I don’t really want to derail this thread any further though, and I’m not Turkish so I can’t comment on the actual topic other than to say I wish them luck.
The US requires a fairly high minimum age and for someone to be born American. Those requirements seem also a bit silly and stand in the way of voters expressing their wishes.
For some fun times, have a look at the requirements to become president in Singapore. Basically, you either have to have been a senior civil servant before or the CEO of a large and profitable company.
> Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?
Whether it is silly or not, I'm not sure, but it certainly doesn't seem very democratic.
IMO Arnold Schwarzenegger, to pick a random foreign born politician, should be able to stand for President. People can choose not to vote for him if they've bothered by him being foreign born.
FWIW, in Australia, no member of Federal Parliament (so Congress equivalent) can be a dual citizen (and they must be Australian citizens), so an equivalent to Arnie in Australia would need to renounce their foreign citizenship before standing for election. This seems like a better middle ground than "must be born in the country" to me.
> would need to renounce their foreign citizenship before standing for election
I'm really glad we all live in a world where nobody lies to gain position, or no foreign enemy has ever tried to infiltrate their operatives into key positions by becoming double agents and renouncing anything
It's right up there with the question on the form that asks if you are a subversive or not (or whatever the actual wording is). If you were a subversive, wouldn't you be exactly the type to lie about the answer?
I think Arnie is a great example, especially because he was a governor for two terms for one of the richest and most populous states, California. If he was allowed to run for president, he would be an excellent candidate.
As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people who moved to the US before a certain again (maybe 10 or 12) or have lived in the US for 20+ years. If you want to go a little further, you could require them to renounce any other foreign citizenships upon successful election.
The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years because a bunch of MPs accidentally had US citizenship by birth to Oz parents living in US or one parent was a US citizen, but they never lived in US. (US citizenship is a bit viral in that sense!) I don't remember all of the details exactly, but it did make me think more deeply about a nationality policy for MPs. I think it is a reasonable requirement.
> The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years
It has, although the case you mention isn't really my main worry.
In theory some random rogue state (Hello North Korea!), can just grant all of the Australian parliament citizenship. Suddenly they're all ineligible under the constitution.
That said, I assume modern scholars would make the definition more robust than the 19th C definitions used in Australia (which was an attempt to take the best of the UK and USA models, particularly following the US with regards to being a Federation of States, while still maintaining a proper Westminster system without a "King"/Executive branch like in the USA).
> In theory some random rogue state (Hello North Korea!), can just grant all of the Australian parliament citizenship. Suddenly they're all ineligible under the constitution.
It's funny how Russia, of all the countries, had this problem - there are a lot of immigrants from ex-USSR countries, and some of these countries make it very hard to relinquish citizenship. For example in Ukraine this is done only by a presidential order, after a long bureaucratic procedure, and the last such order was signed in 2021. So Russia had to invent a mechanism which allows to write an affidavit certifying you would not exercise any rights given to you by foreign citizenship, and with such an affidavit your citizenship is considered "effectively relinquished" by Russian authorities.
> As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people [...]
Your compromise would probably work well as a compromise, but honestly, it feels a bit superfluous to have all those restrictions, when you have voters who can apply any criterion they like anyway.
Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour.
> Have you looked at trying to even just immigrate to Japan?
Here I am again to dispel this HN myth about immigration and Japan.
Ignoring that the Japanese economy is currently weaker than the US economy (which affects your chances of getting an offer in both places as a foreigner), in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy, Japan is much easier to get (and keep) a skilled work visa compared to the US. If you are not looking for a skilled work visa, there is a long term tourist visa (6mo+6mo) that is also easy to get, but you need to have about 200K EUR in liquid assets. Again, the US doesn't have anything as low friction.
>The reservoir of potential candidates is vast. The risk this mitigates seems important enough to give up on additional potential candidates.
I've recently grown to value this idea of "No single person is special or necessary for the government to function." According to the Census Bureau, there are over 150,000,000 native US citizens aged 35 and older. We could have a new president every month and still have a massive number of people to choose from. The only problem would be disruptions from rapid hand offs. The pool is not the issue. Taken to the extreme, this means political assassinations are only meaningful in dissuading replacements from taking the same views and causing temporary disruptions. The lives of politicians aren't inherently worth more than any other person.
Well the American born presidential policy is just strange because it seems so un-American. You’d think the country would have had at least one range to riches president who was a refugee from some war torn country by now, it’s just such a fundamental part of the nation’s mythos.
> Regardless of how you feel, a country should be able to set its own policies.
And in a democracy that means that voters should be able to set the policies.
Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour.
We don't need to further restrict who voters can and can not vote for.
Unless you don't trust voters. But then, why have a democracy in the first place?
If voters care so much, they can change the policy. Everything is mutable with enough will.
America was founded as a colony fleeing its imperial oppressor. The fact that the rules are so strong here is a testament to the bloody and deep scars we gained from overthrowing our foreign oppressors.
It's a direct consequence of our nation's founding. There was a lot of pain felt at the hands of foreign powers, so we encoded it into the DNA of our governing rules.
> America was founded as a colony fleeing its imperial oppressor.
Haha, no. That's nice propaganda, but the Brits weren't oppressing the colonists. In fact, they ran just about the most liberal regime in existence at the time (with perhaps the Dutch being the main competition for top spot).
North American colonists were also paying less taxes than people back in England.
See also Canada for what happened to the colonists who stayed 'oppressed'.
Btw, did you know that only a minority of people in the 13 colonies were even in favour of insubordination against the Rightful Authority of the Crown?
Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me.
I'm one that questions the whole pledge of allegiance forced to be recited by children that have no wherewithal to understand what allegiance even means or the ramifications of that pledge. Yet, I'm okay with born in country and of a minimum age.
The UK's recent prime minister Boris Johnson was born in the US two British parents who happened to be studying in Manhatten at the time. They all moved back here a few months later. The idea that he could be some sort of US sleeper agent is hilarious, though.
Well, formally the Prime Minister is just some random bloke appointed by king to help him run the country. The PM doesn't even need to be a member of parliament!
Now the king, that guy can't even be catholic! And until recently, couldn't even be female with living brothers.
Tradition does dictate that the PM is an MP, and tradition in UK parliament is pretty binding. However, an MP does not even need to be a British citizen: an Irish or a Commonwealth citizen can become an MP and go on to command the confidence of the house.
> Tradition does dictate that the PM is an MP, and tradition in UK parliament is pretty binding.
I hope it stays that way.
The US had pretty strong traditions in politics, too, but they are increasingly being eroded.
To give an example that's hopefully far enough in the past to be non-controversial: when they banned alcohol in the early 1920s, they felt that their constitution did not already explicitly give their federal government the power to do so. So they passed the 18th amendment to give the feds that power to specifically ban alcohol.
Decades later, in the context of the war on drugs, everybody seems to take it for granted that the federal government can obviously ban arbitrary substances.
And yet when you look at the great espionnage stories, the perpetrators were citizens of the country.
When you look at people who were "almost born" (came to the country as toddlers) or naturalized because of the love of their new country, purple claiming that they are second category citizens are hard to listen to.
Maybe because the policy exists that people have not so easily been able to get to the top position. Remove that policy and Putin himself could run for the office. It's an idiotic comment for an idiotic misunderstanding of why the policy exists
You seem to put people in the category of "born here, so good" and "birn elsewhere, less good". Fair enough.
If you are a supporter of, say, Trump you therefore say that Biden or Harris are much better than any other, naturalized citizen, as presidents?
It's hard to see the logic here, probably because I am an idiot, but if where you were birn defines the man for you then fine - everyone has their opinion.
it's so unamerican it is part of the constitution that defines america and deliberately placed there by the founding fathers. i'm sure they were concerned that the king would try to undermine the new country the first chance he got by placing someone loyal to the crown to undo all of the work that led to the constitution.
it's not a good better best situation like you seem to think. at this point, i really think the unwilling to see how attempting to limit the new nation from being led by a foreign operative would be so important to the survival of the new nation. only, new is now 200+ years old (yet still a babe in the woods to other national histories) so the "threat" seems lessened by people like you.
i also started the entire thread by stating we have a foreign operative in place now, so if you can't read between those lines in who i didn't vote for then you're really just being deliberately obtuse about the situation is the only logical explanation i can see.
> it's so unamerican it is part of the constitution that defines america and deliberately placed there by the founding fathers.
Apparently, as of last year, the constitution also says that the president is actually above the law. Given that they've written it after having just gotten rid of a king, I'm assuming they also put that part in deliberately. Truly, their wisdom and foresight was boundless.
It's an interesting document, but as time passes, its practical uses seem to become more and more limited. We're now at the 'people are getting disappeared into a gulag in El Salvador because the president decided they are criminals' stage, by the way. No judge, no jury, just an executive order that makes a person go away, and no mechanism to stop it from happening.
(I don't actually have strong opinions about that provision. It's certainly saving us from, heaven forbid, a Musk presidency, but only by an utterly uninteresting accident of his birth. People like him aren't foreign adversaries, trying to subvert the country, they are domestic adversaries, who bear no allegiance but to themselves.)
The dream is probably dynamic voting through some login system where it's not done every X years but whenever you decide to change your vote maybe using ATMs as physical voting terminals for accessibility. Then voters can change their mind at any time and cause a change in leadership should the vote not be corrected over Y time. Then on top of that you can add multiple parties, individual person voting, etc. It probably won't happen in my lifetime since governments aren't built to be flexible\agile but one can dream.
Good gawd that's a nightmare system. Election by mood based polling.
So if a person's poll numbers drop below some threshold, they are automatically recalled? Do you then set a minimum amount of time to keep the polling below that threshold. 0s? 24hrs? 1 week? You've now also limited the number of eligible voters to those with cards that work in ATMs, so people with some form of wealth which is probably in line with how the framers intended
The ATM bit is just because we already have a system of safe terminals all over every country that are used to deal with personal data on the daily. It doesn't have to use a bank card per se. The idea is just to provide options outside of PC/phone login though even grandma has an Android nowadays.
The solution to the mood based polling is the "should the vote not be corrected over Y time". Y can be determined depending on what gov can handle but is it really mood voting if you get voted in, a year later you've not been in the lead position for over Y time (say 3 months) and you get replaced by the new favorite?
> You've now also limited the number of eligible voters to those with cards that work in ATMs, so people with some form of wealth which is probably in line with how the framers intended
Calling them ATM cards was probably just a short cut in describing how the system would work. Not a suggestion to connect with the banking system.
In any case, it might actually be an interesting idea to perhaps give everyone a base vote for free and then let them have some bonus votes in proportion to actual net taxes paid. Gotta give those billionaires an incentive to not dodge their taxes so hard after all.
> So if a person's poll numbers drop below some threshold, they are automatically recalled?
That's a relatively simple flaw to fix, if you'd actually want to fix it. You already made some suggestions, and there are other ways.
In general, I would suggest trying these kinds of innovations out more locally before you go for the federal government.
That could either be in states or counties, or even for running local clubs and cooperatives and companies.
There's some standard ways for shareholders to vote on the board of directors etc. But it's relatively easy for willing companies (especially new startups) to experiment with alternative forms of governance.
That's a nice dream. Let me shatter it: what you suggest might make policy reflect public opinion better, yes. But alas, public opinion is crazy and we can be lucky that policy by and large isn't quite as crazy.
Have a look at Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter" for more background.
But now you have a system where the general public still decides who leads the caravan but a potential leader can straight up lie about what they're gonna do and it'll be a pain to replace them before their term is over.
To fix that you need either unequal votes or to remove the voting rights of those with incorrect opinions and understandings. Maybe education but then you'd have to make reeducation camps for those of incorrect opinions and understandings since educating the entire populace will mostly just move the average bar higher.
I'm not talking about doing referendums on every single issue direct democracy style and I am aware that to correctly implement something like this you'd need to do it gradually so that the populace has time to adjust to their increased political power which will hopefully increase their interest in politics in general.
> To fix that you need either unequal votes or to remove the voting rights of those with incorrect opinions and understandings.
Not necessarily. You could also punish liars several after the fact, ie after their term, and hope that incentives will do the trick.
Though my favourite idea is to make voting with your feet easier. If you have more issues decided at more local levels, then it's easier to up sticks and move to the next town over, if you disagree with a policy.
I call that the "McDonald's flavour of democracy": McDonald's doesn't let you vote on their menu, but if you don't like it, you can always just head over to Pizza Hut.
You can either (A) do that inside an existing system by aggressively pushing responsibility down. That's what subsidiarity is meant to capture. And also how the US was supposedly meant to be structured; but over time centralisation won out.
Or (B) you can ensure that by having smaller independent countries. Ideally city states.
That's one of the reasons why Singapore is my adopted home.
Moving with your feet is about the most direct democracy you can get, but you also don't have to worry about the usual downsides of direct democracy.
Punishing the liars after the fact, to me, sounds like a very slippery slope. What percentage of promises have to be upkept? Do they have to be kept if the situation changes and they're no longer the correct decision? Do they have to be upkept in special circumstances such as Covid/WW3/etc? Though I would love a system where applicants list their main plans and their progress (not as done or not but as references to legsilation changes, etc) gets officially documented after their term. It won't be wildly useful but it doesn't sound like too much work either.
I like local governance but you have the same issue on a different scale. Whether the president or the governor runs the show I'd want them to be replaceable in a timely manner and to have a little fire under their ass.
Moving your feet is something I also do but I'm not sure is sustainable. What you get is people going to more social places in the beginning of their adult life to get as much support as possible and then move to the most capitalistic places possible once they start earning big money to pay less taxes/have more buying power. How many people do that, I don't know. In my circles it's a lot and I'm one of them.
It's one of those perfect is the opposite of good things though since centralised politics isn't really better either..
Though I would just directly fill up parliament with a few hundred MPs picked at random from among volunteers.
Parliament can then make laws and pick leaders for the executive (like in Germany or the UK).
As a slight complication, I would allow people to pre-declare proxies that would sit in parliament for them. Proxy declaration season would be akin to traditional election season.
---
In the UK or Germany, this way you could keep most of the existing political architecture intact. You'd just change how MPs get selected. Compared to your proposal, you also get the benefit of the law of large numbers, and you don't have to have a judge etc.
I would argue against picking a singular leader at random, just because the variation is too high. But in the US, you could re-use much of the existing system: fill up the electoral college at random.
Though probably not: by German law Hitler could already not have been in power, because he wasn't properly a German citizen at the time. (It's all very murky.)
Hitler was already in power illegally. The law we are discussing here would have just made it 'even more illegal'.
(I'm using the weasel wording 'in power' here, because I forgot whether he needed to be a citizen to be a member of the Reichstag at all, or only to become chancellor.)
Hitler was a "foreign puppet"? This is news to me, can you tell us who the puppet master was? Because it seems to me that person should be as widely reviled as the man himself.
Wait so the real issue you have is with foreigners, or what's the point here? If he was born in Germany it would've been ok? Don't dance around your point, just be explicit.
If you go back up the thread, you will notice that I originally (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43407532) brought up the point that restricting who Americans can vote for is a bit silly, and that includes banning them from voting for foreigners. If the voters want a foreigner, they should get a foreigner. (As long as the foreigner is willing.)
I have no issues with foreigners. I think voters should be free to vote for any willing candidate, and people should also be free to move and work wherever they feel like, as long as they find a willing landlord (or house seller) and as long as they find a willing employer. I myself am a foreigner in my adopted home.
Now to your question:
In this subthread we were looking at the question of any actual examples of foreign born leaders causing trouble for their host country.
In the interest of intellectual honest, I have to admit that a US-style banning foreign born leaders might have conceivable stymied Hitler's rise to power in Germany.
Especially because by the time Hitler entered government in the Weimar Republic, the economy had already started to recover, unemployment was going down. So any roadblocks and delays might have conceivably gotten us over the limited time window where inviting the extremist to share power was even seen as a good idea to try.
Now obviously I could argue against this point; or argue that Hitler would have just put a local-born puppet to be his front man in government, etc.
But that's a more nuanced and fragile argument than the one I would have liked to make: that the US-style ban on foreign leaders is silly and never ever hindered any would-be bad guy.
Having a minimum age to get some life experience is fine, and 35 I would consider a good age, however the minimum age in the USA these days seems like 70.
As for being born in the country, I'm sure with the challenge to birthright citizenship that will get changed in short order to both being born in the country and having your parents and ancestors also be citizens.
Maybe it will change to more of a hereditary system where people had records to prove their ancestry was noble.
> Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?
Yes and it looks especially silly for a country which used to pride itself on being composed primarily of immigrants. In fact the current president is one of the people who was pushing conspiracy theories about a previous president not being eligible - the "birther" movement around Barack Obama. At the time that movement was small enough and the far right was distant enough from the levers of power that people could laugh it off. But it would not surprise me whatsoever if in the future the US right pulled something similar to what Turkey did here, stripping a rival candidate or a portion of the electorate of their status to strengthen their own bid.
And we should celebrate it for the civilisational advance that it is, promoting it all over the world, instead of continuously attacking its legitimacy.
We have long rejected the idea that blood should dictate your social position in the tribe; but somehow we cling to the idea that it should dictate whether you belong to the tribe at all. Why? It's not with this mindset that we will reach the stars.
> And we should celebrate it for the civilisational advance that it is, [...]
Well, as far as I can tell, it's only in your constitution sort-of by accident.
They didn't put this 'advance' in original, it was just the simplest and most face saving way to free the slaves without directly mentioning slaves in the text. (Compare the 3/5 compromise for 'other persons', which also avoids mentioning slaves by that term.)
If it wasn't silly apartheid kid psychos like Elon or Peter Thiel could run for president. But fortunately they can't because of those silly requirements. Unfortunately that's not enough to stop psychos that can actually run, as we have all witnessed.
Although I agree on the silliness of the citizenship-at-birth rule, a maximalist approach to democracy can be very dangerous. The most unstable democracies of the past century were, often, the most democratic ones - Weimar, various French republics, etc.
The democratic paradox is real, and finding ways to minimize its worst outcomes can be legitimate.
I agree that this is a valid concern. However, we should then carefully review which restrictions actually help with stability and which restrictions are a nuisance.
It's instructive to compare the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany with the Weimar Republic. For example, while modern Germany still uses proportional representation, you need 5% of the votes to get any seats at all. (I'm simplifying a bit.) And you can no longer have a pure 'vote of no confidence' in parliament to bring down the government, you need to simultaneously put a new one in power, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_vote_of_no_confid...
As for the US president: I think the requirement for a minimum age and for citizenship are fair enough, because these are fairly easy to verify once and for all. But I think that the requirement for citizenship at birth is, if anything, bad for stability: remember the birthers?
Now imagine that in Obama's 6th year in office, some random birther had actually found some reasonably compelling evidence (but not compelling enough to make even Obama supporters agree). Can you imagine the chaos?
If you believe in democracy and the will of the people, it seems more appropriate for voters to decide whether they want Arnold Schwarzenegger as president, instead of banning him over a technicality.
The US does have some very weird rules for its Presidents though, both written rules - the "natural born citizen" clause for example, or the minimum age (thirty five years old) and the unwritten rules - no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it, most Americans have also indicated they wouldn't elect anybody who admitted to atheism...
> no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it
The same is true of the role of Leader of the UK Labour Party–but I wonder how many people would suggest that the UK Labour Party has an "unwritten rule" that its leader must be male?
So they think the UK's main centre-left party has an "unwritten rule" against female leaders, when its main centre-right party very obviously doesn't (having a female leader right now, its fourth, and having just last month marked the fiftieth anniversary of its first election of a female leader). How do they explain that? I mean, what about the UK Labour Party's ideology leads it to having an "unwritten rule" against female leadership at its highest level, while the ideology of the UK Conservative Party leads them to embrace such leadership repeatedly?
It's a party about working men not actually a "centre-left party". Hence its decision to humiliate and probably in some cases kill people in order to "encourage work". It looks centre-left on a simplistic axis where the Protestant Work Ethic is assumed as some sort of necessary background rather than an increasingly weird religious belief.
The US does have this problem to a greater extent - don't get me wrong - but the UK doesn't really have a party which is open to the idea that maybe the objectionable thing isn't the use of the words Arbeit Macht Frei over those German camps, the problem is that they're not true.
Given that people are being arrested for the most stupid reasons in Turkey, I can understand people not wanting to put their life on the line. 10 years ago I could have seen people protesting (see Gezi park protests) but now ? Not really.
What's worse is that somehow plenty of Turk are fine with it. Inflation above 100% for long time, crappy salaries, people can't even afford rents but the leader's party still get about 30% of the votes.
This is also a lesson for fellow Americans: don't think that just because Trump won't be able to lower the price of the eggs, will make rural voters miserable and make America a worse place means that at the next election you get rid of him. Once the environment is set up properly, anything can be justified, and with the right mindset the voter will accept any bullshit. Remember, "we always have been at war with Eastasia"
Well, damn, that was my strategy to deal with Trump, waiting on the economy. I guess it’s all joever for American democracy. 250 years was a pretty good run all things considered.
I would argue that every prior president at least respected the Constitution, democratic norms, and the peaceful transfer of power. If the ruling party cares more about their goals than democracy, what hope do we have?
These things were despicable but not an attack on the system itself. This time is different. I haven’t written American democracy off yet, but I wouldn’t bet the farm.
Those were the system. The core Americanness of American democracy is white supremacy, and there's a huge number of voters who will demand repression for other Americans. Usually defining them as "not Americans" along the way, as with the attack on birthright citizenship and green card holders.
Even if democracy survives this time round, the people who enabled its demise thus far won’t go anywhere. There are so many angry, misinformed and potentially violent fringe groups with easy access to weapons, it’s truly disgusting. And they’ll feel emboldened by how easy the fabric of society seems to come apart.
I have seen the culture on HN change in the ten years I have been a member. The people who defend Trump and his policies now would never have done so 10 years ago. It goes to show that the USA we remember doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
He can't run within the Constitution if it isn't changed. OTOH, his concern about whether his actions are Constitutional and the ability and willingness of any other institution to impose meaningful consequences on his unconstitutional acts don't support the conclusion that his future actions will be limited to what the Constitution allows.
A constitutional amendment requires ratification by 3/4 of the states. Even getting one proposed requires 2/3 of both houses of congress. This is not going to happen.
Simply ignoring the constitution and cancelling the vote? There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.
> How about ignoring the Constitution and just running anyway?
What does that even mean? He can certainly mount a campaign, and the RNC delegates could even all pick him at the convention, but elections are run by the states, and they are under no obligation to violate the constitution by allowing his name on the ballot or counting write-in votes for him.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the shittiest red states in the US would put him on anyway, but I sincerely hope it wouldn't be enough for him to win.
Even if somehow he did win a 2028 election, Congress has to certify the results, and, depending on the partisan makeup at the time of certification, that could be a non-starter.
And even if that doesn't stop him, even with the current composition of SCOTUS, I find it hard to believe they'd allow him to remain in office for a third term. Of course, courts can be ignored; then it's up to the military, and then we've truly lost.
There are so many ways pushing Trump as the 2028 candidate could blow up in their faces, I don't think even the GOP is stupid enough to allow that to happen, regardless of what Trump's base wants.
> I absolutely expect that there will formally be an election in 2028.
There isn't "an" election. There are 51 elections, run by each state and by DC. I think this is one of the few strengths of our electoral system when it comes to federal elections: making elections into a totalitarian sham means subversion on a difficult level. Blue states will never bow to that, red states don't have to (as they'll already vote red), and there's so much scrutiny on the swing states that it would be incredibly difficult to pull off.
> What does that even mean? He can certainly mount a campaign, and the RNC delegates could even all pick him at the convention, but elections are run by the states, and they are under no obligation to violate the constitution by allowing his name on the ballot or counting write-in votes for him.
The majority of states are GOP governed, and are unlikely to disqualify their parties nominee even if they are Constitutionally ineligible. As for other states, the federal courts already stopped them from removing Trump from the primary ballot in 2024 over state determination of constitutional ineligibility, why wouldn't an even-more-Trump-appointee-dominated federal judiciary do the same in 2028, leaving ineligibility determinations to the Congress when it judges the electoral vote?
> There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.
Given how far it's shifted in two months, how far it shifts every day, and given that there are 46 more months to go, I wouldn't hold my breath on that.
3/4 of all states not currently in rebellion have to approve amendments. Already states like California and New York are displaying suspicious DEI tendencies, unlike the patriotic states around the Gulf of America. What if they start rebelling against our elected leader?
> Constitutional Amendment: The U.S. Constitution can be amended by an act of Congress. Republicans must publicly get behind the third-term project.
> Running as Vice President: President Trump can run as Vice President with a space filler as President in 2028. Perhaps Donald Trump Jr. could run on a Trump/Trump ticket before gracefully resigning on Jan. 21, 2028 after securing victory. This plan while unorthodox would show that MAGA cannot be stopped by any procedural rule.
> Supreme Court Ruling: The 22nd Amendment bans anyone from serving two terms in office, but it is not completely clear if that refers to two presidential terms under any circumstances or two consecutive presidential terms. There are legal challenges in the works to clear up the ambiguity regarding the 22nd Amendment. The conservative rule-of-law justices on the Supreme Court would be able to settle this once and for all, making it clear that the 22nd Amendment would allow Trump a third term as it would only be his second consecutive term.
He wouldn't need a law. He'd just do what he wants, some judge will rule it illegal, and he'll ignore the ruling. That playbook has worked up until this point, why stop?
Elections would be held, but there's no reason to assume their outcome will be respected.
Or just declare that one already exists because of a foreign invasion or attack. Which he has already done once in the past week (as a pretext for invoking the Alien Enemies Act), and has given pretty clear signals (via his "fentanyl is a WMD" order) that he intends to do again, more broadly.
A constitutional amendment to change presidential term limits is essentially impossible to get ratified.
The states run the elections, not the federal government, so any state that actually is faithful to the constitution will not put him on the ballot in 2028 (and will not count votes where he's written in), regardless of what he tries to do. Hopefully that's more than 270 electoral votes worth of states.
I assume they’ll say he was robbed in 2020 and it’s two consecutive terms he gets. And congress won’t stop him. At least 40% of the electorate will support him. Most states will put him on the ballot, threatening to remove the democratic candidate if the others don’t. He will be in charge of the FEC and the various enforcement mechanisms, as he is now. So then what?
> I assume they’ll say he was robbed in 2020 and it’s two consecutive terms he gets.
That's not how it works. 22A says:
"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."
Terms do not need to be consecutive to count toward the two-election limit.
There is, I believe a loophole: he can be elected vice president in 2028, and the president (whoever it may be) can resign, elevating Trump to the presidency again. Not sure if the courts would allow that, but who knows if the courts will be particularly relevant by 2028. Even if they wouldn't, they could elect a puppet president that just signs off on anything Trump wants to do.
Ultimately, though, I think all of this is kinda irrelevant. Trump is a huge problem, certainly, but the playbook for his administration this time was written by other people. JD Vance, for example, could be the one executing that playbook, and do more or less just as much damage to the country. The GOP doesn't need Trump in the future to continue to dismantle our democracy and funnel wealth more and more into the new American oligarchs. They just need to continue to dupe gullible, disaffected voters into supporting destructive politics.
That's just a dumb rule and only losers would follow it. /s
Trump's made no secret about the fact that he doesn't intend to leave office, his enablers have disdain for democracy and want a king. They very well may pull it off, as they've done whatever they liked regardless so far.
I want to be wrong about this but my hopes are tempered.
Despite everything that's happened, I'm still fairly optimistic. While it's true that Trump has been purging people loyal to the constitution, and installing toadies in their places, I still have faith that the military would refuse to support Trump if he were lawfully required to leave office, even if a good chunk of military leadership are Trump loyalists. Officers and enlisted soldiers can still refuse to follow illegal orders, and I do believe that, by and large, our military has plenty of honorable people in it who would do the right thing, and remember that they swear their loyalty to the constitution, not to the president.
And even with purges at the FBI, US Marshals Service, and Secret Service, I have to believe there are still enough people in those organizations that would not stand for Trump illegally remaining in office.
Just because someone is a Republican, it doesn't mean they'd support a lifetime dictator in office.
Of course, if it comes down to the military to ensure the proper and legal transfer of power, we're well and truly screwed.
>Confirmed: Live metrics show #Turkey has restricted access to multiple social media platforms including X, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok; the incident comes as Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and dozens of others are detained in events described by the opposition as a "coup"
it's a quite common occurrence here. twitter and instagram get blocked regularly for a few days, even during smaller incidents.
discord is also blocked since last year. not sure the reason. some lgbtq stuff i think.
and when there's an event that could cause uproar, certain areas just get blocked with fences and hundreds of police officers.
it can be quite annoying for me, since i live in the center of istanbul.
during women's day two weeks ago for example, i almost couldn't get home since i forgot to take my passport and had to argue with 5 different police to let me through without proof of address. took an hour or so extra.
this happens about 3-4 times a year.
it's a shame, because turkey is actually a really nice place to live, and the people in general are very modern and nice. but every now and then, you get reminded of how good we have it in terms of freedom in most western countries.
> Authorities also closed several roads around Istanbul and banned demonstrations in the city for four days in an apparent effort to prevent protests following Imamoglu’s arrest.
interesting how we even see this happening constantly in the US, on both sides. just accuse your opposition of being a criminal as much as you can, and throw as much at them as possible, and when the absolute smallest thing sticks, you blow it out of proportion
Well, of course. Loudly and repeatedly accusing other people of things you are guilty off is a pretty good strategy to make low-information people stop giving a shit about what you did.
It also works on people who don't believe in an objective reality, people who can't tell two shades of gray apart, and on people who are just looking for some thread of motivated reasoning to excuse your behavior.
Note that two of the other popular opposition parties’ leaders are in the prison right now. Imamoglu is the candidate for the main opposition party (CHP, Social Democrats) and is leading in the polls. There are multiple investigations for Imamoglu as well. So imprisonment or a political ban is still on the table. This was just a low-key attempt to disqualify him without further ado.
I'm sure it sounded like a good idea at the time but this proves once again these kind of limitations placed on leadership positions can and will be exploited.
In 2028, The State of Indiana is going to issue a corrected birth certificate for Pete Buttigieg showing him to be 32 years and therefore not eligible to be president.
I'm LGBT and I feel fairly confident in saying that there's no way in hell America will elect a gay man in my lifetime.
If Pete is the Democratic candidate, it's a freebie to the Republicans.
I think that Democrats that believe a Pete win is possible live in a bubble. Their views are invalid until they travel the States more to increase their exposure to the rest of the electorate.
I hope he runs, at the very least to keep LGBT people visible in all types of politics, but doesn't get past the primary. As much as I hate hate hate hate this, the Democratic party needs to find a charismatic straight white man, preferably one who has served in the military, probably in his late 40s or 50s. Not someone boring (hence the "charismatic" bit), but someone who "fits the mold", has clear policy proposals on things that average voters actually care about, and doesn't present as radical or "different" in any way.
This unfortunately means someone who won't push social/racial justice issues too hard (alienates white/religious/older people), won't be too science-focused (alienates voters without college degrees) and who will mainly focus on the economy and health care (what people actually claim to care about when making voting decisions), and at least make the right kinds of noises about crime and immigration (even though their impact on those things is somewhat limited as president).
Maybe someone like Mark Kelly would fit the bill, I dunno.
The Democrats don't need a white man, nor someone who served in the military or anything of that sort. People who think this are also living in a bubble. Obama wasn't elected via magic spell.
Democrats just need someone, anyone, who actually has the support of their own party. The last two times they ran someone like that, they won. The last two times they ran someone who either didn't win a primary, or who won a rigged one, they lost.
This feels like Politics 101 yet the party would rather make it about race and gender (not hard to see why - because it helps distract from the party leadership's mistakes and need for replacement...)
i think you're wrong and i certainly don't live in a bubble. but the reason i think you're wrong is not that america is progressive enough accept a gay man but because he's basically not gay; he's absolutely the least gay presenting man in the history of gay presenting men (exaggerating a little). he has no lisp, not an ounce of flamboyancy, nothing, zilch, nada. I'm aware he's fully out and there are photos of him with his husband and child and etc.
he's also young, handsome, ivy-league educated, was an officer in the military and deployed, intelligent, extremely well-spoken, and charismatic (not to mention experienced but who cares about such trivial things). he has all of the qualities that made obama successful in 2008 just swap black->gay. most importantly, and i'm not flaunting this: he's a man.
so i do hope he runs because he i think he has a better chance than bernie or kamala or walz or newsom or hakeem or aoc. but hey we all know there won't be an election in 2028 anyway so what are we even talking about here lol.
I really don't think any of that matters. "He can pass for straight" is not going to sway much of anyone who is uncomfortable with the idea of a gay president. Sure, some voters would be more comfortable with Buttigieg than with, say, a flamboyantly gay man, but overall I don't see the electorate going for him.
You're missing the key point of my claim: in 2008 you could literally take your comment, replace gay with black, and it would've been just as "credible". And yet Obama was enormously popular and successful. Lots of people even made colorist remarks about him being "white passing"!
I wonder if he'd "dedicate another apse in his cathedral mind" [0] to trying to find out.
The amount and shamelessness of sycophancy that modern American politicians cultivate is staggering (Trump being the chief example, of course - but seeing this with someone as relatively obscure as Pete is also spectacular).
> I'm LGBT and I feel fairly confident in saying that there's no way in hell America will elect a gay man in my lifetime.
I think its much more likely that America would elect a gay man than any member of the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party.
Which, I mean, still means Pete is out, but for a different reason.
> I think that Democrats that believe a Pete win is possible live in a bubble. Their views are invalid until they travel the States more to increase their exposure to the rest of the electorate.
No one is going to win that doesn't understand that campaigns are about moving the electorate, not finding whether they are already are (from which a competent opponent will move them while you are chasing them.)
The Constitution requires Presidents “have attained to the Age of thirty five Years” [1]. It cites the fact, not the certificate.
The Turkish law doesn’t seem to require an education, it requires a degree. Minor difference. (And the text of the law wouldn’t matter in the end.) But an interesting difference nevertheless.
> Can't this be fixed easily by another university bestowing an honorary degree to this guy then?
No. That’s a technical solution to a political problem.
But, we’re on HN! Does anyone have a good English translation of the relevant statute? The loopholes to a certificate problem are with the certification authority—how is a compliant degree defined?
Very commonly seen in corporate politics. A promotion has certain requirements which seem objective, but all someone has to do to block your promotion is simply make sure you never get assigned any work which would fulfill the requirements.
United States from the 1890s to the 1960s required voters to pass a literacy before they could vote. We should bring back this rule. Voters should have a minimum level of knowledge about the world, science and democracy in order to vote. This would have prevented the current disaster which threatens not just our democracy, but by denying climate change, the entire planet.
I'm not even American and yet where I'm from it's common knowledge that literacy tests were used to systematically disenfranchise black people from voting.
You think at the time they openly said they were trying to take the vote from black people? Or did they say exactly what you're saying now, that they were simply trying to ensure that only smart and educated people could vote.
Your argument is valid, but isn't it clear that the status quo can't continue? Close to half of US voters decided it is OK to ignore climate change. Is it possible to educate them?
As you see in the article you linked, it was ruled unconstitutional only because it violated the 15th amendment. That amendment makes it illegal to deny the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It is still legal to deny the right to vote if someone is deemed not smart enough.
The literacy tests in question were designed from the start to be ambiguous, so that the same answers could be marked wrong for a black person and correct for a white person. Frankly, there is nothing that could convince me that the Republicans wouldn't try to repeat the same thing if given the opportunity.
It's incredibly naive to think that a tool like poll tests will only be used in the narrow way you personally would like them to be used.
No matter what kind of voter you particularly would like to target, the people administering the poll tests will (ab)use them to disenfranchise whomever they please.
Even if you believe the people in power who administer your elections would do this the "right" way, if you give them power, then the next people who come along -- who you may not agree with -- will also have that power.
Keep in mind that the word "dumb" gets thrown around in all sorts of situations and has no objective, easily-verifiable test for "dumbness". It's entirely plausible that merely "making a decision I disagree with" could be construed as "dumb". Imagine if, say, Biden and Fauci had decided to disenfranchise anyone who refused the COVID vaccine as "dumb", or, worse, Trump and RFK decided that taking those vaccines made you "dumb". See how easily this can be abused?
Even with that aside, the natural consequence of disenfranchising "dumb" people is that you want to fuck them over somehow. No thanks.
I suspect that any configurable or discretionary barrier to voting will be used to disenfranchise voters unfairly, at least some times in some places. As it is, I'm aware of an age requirement (18 years) and a criminal status requirement (not a felon, sometimes just not incarcerated).
A literacy/civics/logic/knowledge/etc. requirement would at best discriminate against people who are uninformed, unintelligent, uneducated, unable or unwilling to take a written test, etc. But they are people whom the laws affect and who should be able to vote. I don't think that they are a comparable category to the exceptions mentioned above, but that's debatable.
Most importantly, the test would be optimized to exclude whoever the test designers and proctors consider, knowingly or not, unworthy.
I understand the desire to exclude the dummies. I know thoughtful and educated people who espouse the same wish, but it's just too dangerous.
If you've seen some of the kinds of poll tests that were administered, especially during the Jim Crow era, you'd change your tune. These tests can very easily be structured to be ambiguous, and can be graded in such a way to disqualify whatever groups of people you want.
creating unbiased tests is a really difficult thing to do even when trying really hard, and whatever tests we have for voting would absolutely get used to disenfranchise certain groups of people. just look at how bad gerrymandering is despite being explicitly illegal
Mysteriously, the requirements are tightened up and/or new ones are invented every time a credible-looking opposition candidate pops up. Most famously, before the 2017 election the requirement was imposed that the president has to be selected from a rotating selection of races, in this case Malay, which by complete coincidence disqualified the otherwise-qualified Chinese opposition candidate:
In other, recent, non-related news, Columbia University revoked the diplomas of some pro-Palestine protestors[1]. The CBS headline buries the lede, but revoking diplomas is not too low for American universities.
From the article it sounds like they were revoked due to causing property damage to the university. Even if you disagree with that move, it seems like a rather different situation.
I think in such situations it can be withheld but not withdrawn, it's pretty common for universities to hold back credentials until debts are paid. But once it's been given I think the only scenario which it can be withdrawn is if it was given under fraudulent circumstances. Like a newspaper retraction, it can only be retracted if the original statement was found to be false.
The perpetrator should be sued for damages which is the normal thing to happen. Withdrawing properly received credentials opens the door to yet another extra-judicial punishment and we already have too many of those.
(EDIT)
I've since googled around a bit and am surprised that there does seem to be a degree of discretion available to the university to revoke degrees that I was unaware of. I had always considered degrees to be like an affidavit, a statement of a fact as the institution understands it. There are plenty of horrible people who have done heinous things and I've never heard of their degrees being taken away. Perhaps one difference here is that the behavior under question was during their undergrad.
> Withdrawing properly received credentials opens the door to yet another extra-judicial punishment and we already have too many of those.
I don’t understand why this is even an option? So the degree is never truly owned by the recipient then if it can be withdrawn/ revoked? Just another reason not to invest time and money into it.
> Just another reason not to invest time and money into it.
No it’s not. Not unless you plan on taking over campus buildings and vandalizing them, I guess.
The degree isn’t some unrevocable item that you own. It’s an endorsement from the university. There are contractual agreements involved and it doesn’t take much imagination to think of how taking over a campus building and vandalizing it (while encouraging current students to join you) is grounds for them to cancel the degree.
> The degree isn’t some unrevocable item that you own.
This is what I find so surprising. Having contractual stipulations I would need to abide by AFTER getting my degree for fear of revocation is nonsense to me, gross even. I don’t care if you’re the Unabomber. It’s silly for a university to be policing that. I guess I’m naive.
To be clear, so there’s no temptation to move the goal posts, I’m talking about a degree “already earned and received”.
Sure I hear you. I agree that this distinction matters.
What annoys me is that revocation is even an option at all. I think this scenario is such an edge case that it really doesn't need an exception, and if supporting it means having the power to revoke a degree, then in my mind it's a lever for abuse and not something we'd want to normalize. It seems, to me at least, like a petty abuse of power that they shouldn't even have.
Eh, I attended a conservative Christian college and there was a pretty strict religious code of conduct students were required to abide by. I would find it pretty disturbing for the school to retroactively rescind my engineering degree due to my having drunk underage or being an atheist.
You can come up with whatever justification you want, but this action is unprecedented and clearly a politically motivated punishment.
My high school wouldn't let you graduate if you had unpaid library fines, i can't imagine what they would do if you caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage. I agree rescinding post-granting degree is weird but we are still talking about behaviour that happened while they were students and that happened relatively recently (such that disciplinary procedures could have realistically started while they were still students).
It is unusual, but the situation is unusual. I think calling it unprecedented is a bit much. Its plausible it could be politically motivated, but it seems equally plausible that the school is pissed that they now have to find thousands in the budget to repair the damage done. Causing tens of thousands of dollars in damages is a plausible reason for the school to be mad.
I think you're claiming the Ekrem İmamoğlu case is completely different, I don't think that's what anyone else is saying.
In any case Columbia had ample time to address it's students before granting them diplomas - no facts have changed between them and now, nor have any new facts been made public. It's only turning heel because of political pressure by the President of the United States.
I actually tend to agree with this (once its given i think morally its too late to take it away, except maybe if they cheated). I still think its a totally different situation than the turkey one though.
They are both situations in which a University was politically pressured by the government to revoke degrees for political purposes. The difference is just the specific goals of the government doing the pressuring. You don’t think Columbia just coincidentally decided to take this action months after the fact, after having its funding pulled by the US administration, do you?
I don't agree with politically pressuring organizations but it could just as easily be politically motivated to not enforce established rules on criminal behaviour.
This is honestly something very strange to me, because a bunch of academics are the furthest thing on Earth from the police. Why can't vandals have a normal day in court and go to regular jail?
I don’t think you understand how long it takes for universities to decide how to handle punishment situations.
This one has a significant complication of parallel legal action. They seized and vandalized a building. They’ve been reviewing evidence and building cases for a long time.
If you’re operating an honest judicial board and you’re receiving high profile threats from the US government backed by huge funding cuts to the University, you have a choice. (1) Comply or simply appear to comply, by rendering a favorable ruling immediately, (2) Establish that your ruling is not the result of government pressure. You’d do the latter by (for example) showing your work and proving that the results were already determined before the pressure campaign began; or you’d change the timing so that it doesn’t look like cause and effect; you could even suspend your ruling on the grounds that maintaining the appearance of the University and Board’s independence is a higher priority than punishing a few protestors.
Columbia did none of the things in category (2). I know it’s 2025 and we have to pretend that this apparently corrupt thing is innocent, even while the folks involved make no effort to defend it. But it isn’t innocent, and everyone involved knows what’s going on.
There is no point in giving into threats if the other party is still going to follow through regardless. I think the best argument against this being due to political pressure from trump is it doesn't seem effective in getting rid of that pressure. If trump is the thing they care about here, why would they bother if trump is going to do trump things regardless.
I don't know what "reverse course" means here. This is extortion, not a simple transaction like purchasing a sandwich in a deli.
The Trump administration is withholding funding and simultaneously making a series of explicit (and completely inappropriate) demands that it wishes Columbia to comply with. I assume what we're watching is a kind of "negotiation" period in which Columbia either does or does not do various things, and then over time the Trump administration decides whether to relent or punish them further. There is no real pressure on the administration to just stop.
One of the explicit demands the administration made was for Columbia to disband the University Judicial Board (the exact group that handed down these decisions) presumably because they felt that it would not sufficiently punish the protesters. Coincidentally, around the same time this happened, the board "independently" decided to punish the protesters quite severely.
The article says they took over a building on campus, barricaded themselves inside, and damaged it. It also says they rejected a deal that would have resulted in dismissal of the charges but it’s not clear why.
That’s certainly a very different situation than simply being a protestor. I understand that everyone has different definitions of what protest means, but regardless it’s not a free pass to escape the consequences of your actions.
If any current or former students had taken over a campus building, locked others out of using it, and damaged it they’d probably end up in jail with a long list of charges. Having their degrees “temporarily revoked” seems like a massive slap on the wrist for the situation, not some dystopian unfair outcome.
Damaging property is a crime. Plenty of universities withdraw degrees for vandals, kick them out, and sometimes prosecute them. Claiming “free speech” has never allowed “break laws without repercussions.”
How would they revoke someone's degree in either country? Do they break into someone's house and steal the piece of paper? A degree is awarded by the institution but I don't see how they could then claim that they did not meet the requirements for the degree retroactively absent some proof of academic misconduct. What possible difference would such a renovation make to anyone outside the university?
> What possible difference would such a renovation make to anyone outside the university?
In some places, potential employers call the university to verify that you have the degree you claimed to prevent fraud. If so, the university can simply tell them the degree had been revoked thus blocking you from a job offer if it requires it.
Sure but wouldn't the institution have to justify the revocation? If it was, say, due to supporting the wrong faction in the Middle East the employer might not support the revocation. Without justification, couldn't the degree holder sue the institution for some sort of defamation?
> Sure but wouldn't the institution have to justify the revocation?
The people answering that phone or email are low-level admin staff far removed from those who decided to revoke the degree – I don’t know whether they have access to the reasoning or justification behind the revocation.
> Without justification, couldn't the degree holder sue the institution for some sort of defamation?
I honestly hope so – I’m quite against being able to revoke a degree due to other reasons than plain fraud (like plagiarism or fabrication). But I don’t know the laws well enough to answer.
They will deny that you have a degree from them if asked. The difference it can make:
When a future employer has degree requirements, the university will say "no, he has no degree from here" when someone calls to check, closing off all sorts of jobs.
If someone is doing a background check, the "claims a fancy degree but the school denies it" line is not going to look good.
Etc.
Sure the person still has the education, but they haven't got the right credentials in a verifiable way.
That’s an unnecessarily reductionist take. The value is obviously having demonstrated that you’ve completed the studies required.
The degree is simply the formal proof. If a degree is revoked, that’s a secondary signal that the studies were marked as completed at one time but something later happened that was so egregious that the university felt the need to rescind any endorsements.
Discovery of rampant cheating to achieve graduation would do it. Taking over a campus building and vandalizing it seems like a reasonable thing to cause the university to want to rescind their endorsement of you.
Their diplomas were not revoked for being pro-Palestine, they were revoked for seizing a building, trespassing and vandalism. That's a false equivalence to what is happening in Turkey.
Still crazy that diplomas can be revoked for non-academic problems. Diplomas should only be able to be revoked if it turns out they were gained using academic misconduct (in my opinion).
If I murder someone during my diploma, get the diploma, and then get caught, will the diploma be taken away? How does that make sense?
In this case, no one was murdered. The crime is more like trespassing. Should we take degrees of people who get caught dealing drugs? Insider trading? Pirating movies?
Do you think this punishment represents a consistent policy of the university, or was it applied under government pressure?
The theory put up is that your behavior in university, before you get the diploma does matter. If you get expelled due to an action you took before the diploma was granted, the diploma may be revoked, even if that decision is made after the diploma is already in your hands. This is true. If you're caught cheating or commit a crime your diploma may get revoked, including in the situation that you already have the paper in hand.
In that sense this is not revoking a diploma, it's just applying the punishment for what they did before they graduated.
And while obviously Columbia's actions are politically motivated, I still don't think it's remotely comparable with what's happening in Turkey. The New York protestors really are being punished for what they did, and not to prevent them from running for election (which most of them couldn't do anyway, as you cannot do that on a visa, I don't think even a green card lets you hold public office)
> The theory put up is that your behavior in university, before you get the diploma does matter.
Ok, but why should it?
The diploma doesn't certify that you're a pleasant person, have good morals or follow the law. It means that you passed some exams and are expected to have some competency in your subject. The only reason to doubt that this is the case after already giving someone a diploma is cheating, which means they didn't actually pass the exams. Other misconduct during working on the diploma has nothing to do with the qualifications for the diploma.
University used to prove that you are an upstanding citizen capable of holding public office and doing that well, honestly and fairly. Not destroying stuff and following the law is part of that. That's the reason it's required in Turkey. It was very much part of the fabric of the Roman Empire, and when muslims conquered the eastern roman empire, they didn't conquer it to destroy it, they just wanted its money and power. So they kept everything intact, except the head of government, and they kept the rules about public office requiring a diploma. They went so far as to repress islam, even keeping most of the social progress that "the prophet" swore to destroy (such as the abolishment of slavery, which they mostly kept abolished, at least in Turkey itself) to try to maintain the economic power of the empire, which of course didn't work, but ...
For that purpose it makes 100% sense that good behavior is a requirement of getting a diploma.
That's the reason the Turkey situation is what it is (of course Erdogan has already destroyed public institutions in Turkey, during the Erdogan-orchestrated "coup" against Erdogan). There, it's being used as an electoral weapon, and that's not what's happening in the US.
The American situation is different, but some parts remain. A diploma is not meant to just prove knowledge, it is meant to prove that you can be trusted to (help) organize a particular part of society, and that includes things like behavior standards. A lot of this, such as loyalty oaths (as in multiple, most famously the hippocratic oath, but certainly not just that one), the requirement to be accepted by currently important public servants (e.g. there was a time in Europe that to pass lawyers needed to present themselves to a judge from the supreme court and survive whatever test he wanted). There were globally mandated subjects, as in for every university degree (philosophy, state structure, religion, law, rhetoric). Those were not just mandated courses you had to take, you had to pass. 100% on everything, but fail religion? Tough, no diploma (one famous example of that was Einstein, who made it a sport to fail religion class, and was as an exception granted a diploma anyway)
The Columbia incident was only a few months ago and they’ve been going through the process of building a case, pursuing legal options, and reviewing evidence.
The article says there were over 40 people involved and they’ve been building cases against each of them.
I don’t think there’s a conspiracy here. These things are a lot of work, involve a lot of lawyers, and take a lot of time. It’s only been a few months.
You don't think the fact that the current White House has withdrawn funding as leverage, and is pressuring universities to suppress pro-Palestinian sentiment is relevant?
Not so long ago it wasn't enough for justice to be done, but it has to be seen to be done.
In addition to the other commenters points occupying and renaming Hamilton Hall is something of a tradition at Columbia. These students were already facing criminal/civil charges where appropriate.
> they were revoked for seizing a building, trespassing and vandalism
To be precise, it sounds like they’ve been revoked until damages are paid back. This is no different from a diploma being revoked because your last tuition cheque bounced.
But they earned that degree and received it upon graduating right? Isn't this like trying to erase the past? Did they graduate from the university or didn't they? It feels like just another sign of the fabric of our society coming apart.
So you don't support freedom of speech? Or you support it only for people who agree with you? Do you believe the government should pressure institutions to punish people who express messages the government doesn't like?
It's interesting that Columbia protesters get their degrees revoked but J6 protesters get pardons. How do you explain the difference?
J6 protestors are lawbreakers. IMO, they should not get pardons, but Trump is a despot with the power to issue pardons. I can't do anything about that.
The people at Columbia were not mere "protestors". They were physically abusive bigots who trampled the freedoms of people around them. If they were Jews chanting islamophobic slurs, destroying property, and preventing anyone with a keffiyeh from attending class, they should suffer the same consequences.
I get that "peaceful protest" can be seen as an oxymoron. But what happened at Columbia should have been stopped the moment it started. It is bigotry. It is hypocrisy. But even if you ignore the moral and ethical failings, it was against the rules.
> They were physically abusive bigots who trampled the freedoms of people around them.
If true, ok, charge them with a crime. That's why we have courts. Implementing a punishment, under pressure from the president, without due process or a chance to defend themselves, is contrary to American law and values.
We already have laws on the books to deal with physical violence. As for verbal abuse, welcome to America - aka sticks and stones country (as guaranteed by our constitution). Anyways, why should a particular faith get special privileges?
When people physically block your access to classes you paid for, on a campus you have an equal right to be at, and they're blocking you on the basis of your faith or ethnicity, that's not "sticks and stones".
There's laws on the books to deal with blocking access and movement. You mentioned verbal abuse, that's different. If campus safety nor law is not getting enforced, there's avenues for addressing it.
It's clear that you hold these positions pretty strongly, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, I am wondering why you felt compelled to post your closely held personal positions from a throwaway account? It minimizes the statement quite a bit and makes it looks like a drive by posting.
Because I have a life and I have no desire to become a target for the mob, "woke" or otherwise. This is a sensitive subject. People hate. Anonymity here allows me to speak my mind in safety. It's the opposite of drive-by posting.
Also, I don't need people digging into my identity and using that to deconstruct what I say.
Doesn't the sheer amount of dissonance make you think twice though? Maybe just a little bit? Consider the commitments you need to make and secondary beliefs you need to have, just to keep this narrative alive right now. You have pretty much implied this point yourself. I can't truly imagine what it must be like to live in the world you do, and I am sorry.
I mean, the world is not much better for the other side I guess, but at least there there is sense of international solidarity, fighting for a common struggle; that the bad guys are specific and nuance in everything is structurally required. It just seems like you need to literally sign on to having gang stalker mentality about the whole world, all because there is one big thing you can't possibly question.
I am truly sorry for how this has affected you, nothing bad deserves to happen to you either way, truly.
Thankfully I enjoy anonymity behind my throwaway handle.
There is no justification for mobs chanting for the death of me and mine. Their coded slogans are not very coded. "Anti-genocide" protests who call for genocide are not honest nor legitimate.
There is not justification why several decades after Brown v Board of Education, there needs to be any gray area around equal access. A durable mob preventing people from feeling safe going to classes they paid for is no different from the KKK. No matter whose politics they espouse.
You're not _truly_ sorry if you're concern trolling. The Israel/Palestine conflict is my lived experience of nearly half a century. My opinions are opinions, but they are very far from uninformed. I have no way to prove this to you.
I am not trolling! I guess I am just pointing out that what you are saying is quite literally shocking, and would be to anyone who believes this is what is going on. And you don't have to listen to me and you can keep wishing whatever pain you want on strangers or whatever; but I think it would at least behoove you to step back sometimes and appreciate just how dissonant things are from this perspective. Like how do you even explain this level of generalized evil in the world? What do you think happened to this culture all of the sudden, to step it up to this level? Even being more grounded, what could be going on, in your view, at the admissions office at Columbia et al to allow in so many literal Nazis in, so to speak?? Like, truly, I can't imagine how you are grounded at all, I definitely would be going crazy.
Like is there anyway you could even appreciate the Occam's razor here that at the very least, the protestors in this case may actually minimally think they are doing the right thing? You can believe people to be trying to be virtuous even if they are misguided or deluded or somehow led astray. Is that too worthy of such punishment and ire?
Is it really the case you can see only prejudice and hate from the other side here? That this many just ordinary people (read annoying liberal arts kids) are just pure evil? There is no room or evidence at all to see that we are all just fumbling around, reacting to the terror and pain we are all disproportionally exposed to? What sickness, what trauma could be so universally applied to all of us to create such a universal and bewildering hate? This is not rhetorical, I am truly curious.
Do you not see how preventing your opponent from running for election is different from temporary measures to protect people in a pandemic that has killed millions?
Your arbitrary borders include whole eastern europe, most of the balkans, sweden, finland, estonia, latvia, around half of africa, greece, middle east, basically whole asia, indonesia, india, china, russia, and half of australia. There may be countries equally as bad in that list, but saying everyone does it with "some tiny exceptions" is egregious.
That sounds like pretty arbitrary borders you are setting: I don't really see much difference between stuff happening West of Vienna and East of South Korea too (one of those countries has a president who basically tried to stage a coup, and now are back in power ignoring any rule of law).
> one of those countries has a president who basically tried to stage a coup, and now are back in power ignoring any rule of law
President Yoon of South Korea has been suspended since December, as a result of the martial law incident and the following impeachment. (Actually, Yoon's prime minister, who first became acting President, was also impeached and suspended. It's someone else now.)
India is quite big. Any Indians around here want to comment on whether these shenanigans are common there? I have the impression they're not but maybe I'm wrong.
Talking about India, Lex Fridman interviewed Modi [1] recently, worth a listen or read.
India has its own set of political issues, but as far as I can tell nothing this egregious.
Lets consider the fact that after 10 years of Modi and the BJP having overwhelming majorities in Parliament, with Modi’s personally popularity close to all time highs, over a period where many external watchdogs essentially claimed democracy was dead in India, in an election where the BJP was expected to completely whitewash the opposition, not only did the BJP do worse than the previous election, they lost their standalone majority in parliament and had to form a government in coalition with other parties, and were a handful of seat losses away from losing to the opposition coalition.
In general the parliamentary system with a figurehead president as well as India’s extremely culturally diverse nature and weak federal government system, and strong judicial system, seems to have kept Indian democracy almost unreasonably effective relative to India’s poverty, education, and development levels.
Not sure what your point is. Nijjar was a terrorist linked to assassinations in Punjab and committed to destruction of India. A nation , democracy included, has a right to protect itself.
It does not have a right to use extrajudicial assassins in a foreign country to kill someone who does not actively pose a threat. In a democracy you have a right to a trial, to see the evidence against you, etc. you don’t just kill people.
By the same logic, India would be fine if Canada sent covert assassins to India to go after the assassins and the people that ordered it? Should Canada send assassins into India to go after the people that have been illegally influencing Canadian elections? After all, they pose a threat to the country, and a country has a right to defend itself…
There is a process for extradition, and international prosecution. India chose to not pursue that process, and assassinate a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.
That's a interesting point considering that Nijjar had been denied asylum more than once and caught lying on his application. Giving him asylum was a result of weird ghetto vote bank politics of Brampton and Surrey.
It's not that Canada has never sent assassins to foreign nations. Canada participated in Afghanistan war and people including children, in Pakistan were killed by NATO airstrikes. Where was the due process for those kids playing soccer who were killed?
I do not condone any killing by anyone. But people in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.
> Canada participated in Afghanistan war and people including children, in Pakistan were killed by NATO airstrikes.
That's horrible. It should not happen. I was very clear that extrajudicial killings of civilians are wrong.
> I do not condone any killing by anyone. But people in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.
Agreed. If NATO did something that you find comparable and you condemn it, then by your own standards, what India did is also a violation and never should have been done.
What India did is arguably even worse, since the killing of kids in a war zone at least had no intent or malice, just incompetence. Whereas the killing in Canada was a purposeful and intentional violent and public assassination, performed by hired civilians outside of internationally agreed military command and justice structures, it should be seen as an even more egregious violation of international standards.
I have a homestead exemption, because I have a homestead. So I don't pay property taxes. Furthermore, my family had their property imminent domained in southern California, where property taxes are quite high, so I'm not sure this comment makes sense, from either direction. "Its your land unless the government really needs it" means it isn't your land.
A lot of the value of land comes from its neighbors: roads, schools, trains all cost money but make land more valuable. It's only fair the cost of those things comes from taxing the increased value of the land.
Erdogan has turned the country into an electoral autocracy. The Swedish Varieties of Democracy centre released its annual report analyzing the state of democracies around the world as of the end of 2024. America is still listed as a liberal democracy. It's an open question whether it still will be by the end of next year.
I googled a bit around because I found the requirement weird, and it's slightly misleading. Candidates need to have a separate bank account for the election, so that it can be monitored (there are various limits to how much funding they can get and so on as far as I understand).
More and more banks have put their money on smartphone apps to implement the 2FA requirement that PSD2 mandates. Turns out that European banks really like that walled-garden thing. Some banks still allow you to use SMS but pressure is mounting to do away with SMS-based 2FA. Other 2FA solutions (e.g. national CAP schemes [0]) are on their way out, too. So are call centers, which used to let you do banking on the phone.
In Europe, you are living in increasingly difficult times if you want to do banking unless you happen to own a smartphone running an OS made by Google or Apple, and to be a customer on their respective app store.
Well at least in my opinion, it seems extremely undemocratic.
University education is a privilege that some people won’t be able to experience (financial constraints, having to care for relatives, …), and I don’t think it’s a unique qualifier for being a good president.
I think if people want to elect someone who didn’t go to university, they should be able to.
Democracy doesn't work when ordinary people are not educated. Education in Turkey has been very poor. Many people have finished only 5th or 8th grades. Many didn't go to a high school. Thus people are not critical thinkers. They are voting as if they are supporting a football team. Someone popular with a low education can fool people, just like in Turkey or Venezuella. And now here we see the result. Erdoğan has no diploma and he is trying to keep his seat by doing everything.
Would you mind your money in the bank managed by illeterate person? Or would you mind going to a doctor without any degree? Why you are going to trust somone who does not have legal degree?
In my opinion university degree is not enough. He should have at least masters degree.
If the democracy doesn’t work because voters aren’t educated, you can’t just bolt on constraints onto the election process until you like the result. That’s undemocratic by definition. The solution would be to educate voters.
> Democracy doesn't work when ordinary people are not educated
When USA was formed and for the first couple hundred years of its existence, most people in it didn't have a high school or college degree. In fact many of the founders of the United States had no degree, including Benjamin Franklin, who was a newspaper editor, scientist, statesman and inventor.
Literacy can be learned by the 5th grade by most people. It can continue to be improved by self-study. Other skills can be learned by life experience.
Modern schooling can mostly be faked. It's pretty easy to breeze your way through a four year degree these days. Professors are even incentivized to make the courses easy. Hell, you can even have LLMs do your homework for you these days.
I don't think many people look up to USA and think "oh yeah, that's a great system, we should have it". Many systems cannot be replicated for cultural, historical and other reasons.
Frankly, requiring basic qualifications for a very complex job is actually a solid thing. Especially when any trade school/university degree would work. I don't agree with revoking of the degrees part, but that's just government trying to shut down the opposition. If it wasn't for the degree, they would've done something else, just like it happens during every election.
I think many people actually do look up to the USA given the hundreds of millions who want to migrate here. I will give you that culture matters when it comes to political systems.
However, there are no arbitrary qualifications or certifications worth imposing on a country's leadership. They are blatantly gameable and trivially corruptible, as seen in the example.
Leadership qualities are apparent in their own right and can be earned from a diverse path of life achievements. Those might include founding a successful business, acting as a general, major, or captain in the military, inventing new products or technologies, running a charity, heading a police or fire department, running a church, working up the corporate ladder from entry level, etc etc. There are thousands of career paths that don't require degrees and there are phenomenal leaders within those domains. It's incredibly ignorant to deny those unique and valuable people from being eligible for arbitrary reasons.
Critical thinking ain't something that you get somehow magically taught on university. Life, its hardships and some sort of keen interest in understanding people and society around you may lead one to such wisdom. Undemocratic countries in fact go directly against that, having education system producing obedient uncritical drones. The more time you spend in it, the greater effect it has on you. IQ doesn't matter that much neither here.
This sort of primitive elitism ain't the healthiest approach.
Democracy works just fine either way. You just might not like the results.
Also, because a person doesn't have an education doesn't mean they are stupid or can't think critically. Further, there are plenty of educated people who vote for their favorite team.
You know how people are always saying not to write laws like "Only people with college degrees can run for office", because bad people might weaponize it down the line even if you write it today with the best of intentions?
Real reason: Opposition (CHP) is the first party since the local elections and it is almost certain that Imamoglu will replace Erdogan in the next elections. CHP primaries will be held this weekend and Imamoglu was the sole candidate.
Made-up reason: Imamoglu transfered to Istanbul University from a foreign university (Cyprus) in 1990. They claimed that university was not accredited by Turkish Higher Education Council. That was not really a requirement for the transfer at the time and the universities used to have more autonomy. Today they also annuled the degrees of 28 more people who did the same thing in 1990, just for the optics. I think one of them is a college professor.
I saw an argument about this latter decision which (rightfully) claimed that, if what happened is lawful, then they should also revoke the diplomas of all students of that college professor.
> In a statement, the university said 38 people had transferred to its management faculty's English-language programme in 1990 in an irregular way.
> The graduations and degrees of 28 of them, including Imamoglu, were annulled as being "void" and due to "clear errors" regarding the regulations of the Higher Education Board (YOK), the school said.
It's interesting that people seem to think the problem is "politically motivated" revoking of degrees, rather than the degree requirement itself.
It's like no one thought even a single step ahead about the consequences of a degree requirement. It just moves power to the people that give out degrees. Some people are clearly only pretending not to understand this, but a significant amount seem to really not understand it.
This extends to other areas of economics and politics too, where most proposed systems only move or concentrate power and don't have the desired effect at all. I'm not sure where the educational failure here is. It seems like the only people that engage with these problems honestly and seriously are cryptocurrency developers and cryptographers. I would imagine mainstream economists are only pretending not to understand. Meanwhile some large fraction of the population really does think you can just declare by fiat that presidents have to be more educated and it will just work.
In Turkish educational system, honorary degrees are only applicable to the institute granting the degree itself. You instead need to have an earned degree to be able to use the privileges outside the institute granting the degree.
I think, at the end of the day, the root cause comes down to whether the judiciary is truly independent. In theory, Turkey is governed by the rule of law, with a separation of powers and secularism. In practice, however, there’s a deep divide between various subcultures and a significant lack of trust.
The NATO was never an ideological partnership. It's a strategic partnership, that's all. There have been other dictatorships in the past that were NATO member as well: Greece, Portugal.
The US and Turkish governments are operating under the same authoritarian rules of engagement, it's just that the Turks are further along the trajectory.
I love how these things always turn into a game of telephone. That link, which links to something else, does not say what you claim it does.
The most egregious is the General Service Administration requiring that Columbia place one department under academic receivership (which is nothing like dissolve) for 5 years, in order to continue receiving federal funding. Columbia notably is also a private Ivy League university with an endowment in the tens of billions of dollars whereas at stake is apparently up to ~$0.4 billion of Federal funding. If Columbia feels the demands are unjust and wanted to legally challenge them or even take a stand on values, they could do so extremely comfortably.
A direct quote from the letter the Feds sent Columbia reads:
MESAAS Department – Academic Receivership. Begin the process of placing the
Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership for a minimum of five years. The University must provide a full plan, with date certain deliverables, by the March 20, 2025, deadline.
The NY Times article provides a directed link to the PDF of the letter.
Columbia university can do whatever it wants. However, if they want to take free money from the federal government then they have to jump through more hoops.
That article you reference says nothing about dissolving academic departments. Perhaps you are referring to academic receivership.
Less than a year ago multiple States attempted to remove Trump from the Presidential ballot. That’s the closer analogue to the shenanigans in Turkey, not the attempted equivalence you’re trying to make.
Refusing to accept that you lost an election and then attempting an insurrection to overthrow the candidate that you lost to isn't quite the same thing.
This is a blatant lie: Trump resisted sending the national guard and the Mayor of DC had to ask Virginia and Maryland for police assistance. Ultimately Pence pushed the Pentagon to respond, and he’s never been forgiven for it.
i did a racing-bicycle-with-saddlebags roundabout Marmara sea half an year ago for ~17days. And i am from next country, with somewhat partially related culture/history.
What i observed was that the more and bigger the red flags and Attaturk monuments there are, the better maintained (=funded) the town looked like. The most flashier sported a flag hanging from (near) every balcony, few 10 meter ones hanging from various towers, and several 3-5 meter high statues here or there. Those without any, looked like forgotten shacks.
One night, in Bandirma, there was a ruling-party-preelection event. (Busses bringing) jolly manifesting supporters, jolly horseriders, jolly motorbikers, jolly 4wds and monstertrucks, whatever. Usual rock-concerto after the speeches.
And, there are lots of construction works. Roads (doubling some). Factories. Buildings. Everything. And somewhat visible military presence. On unrelated places.
Some of these things smell familiar. It wasn't that different in my country 40y ago when it was named "People's Republic of"
When the oldest university in Turkey can be forced to revoke a diploma, no other university would dare to do that. Also it would be a honorary degree, which probably doesn't count.
Maybe a foreign university can, but I believe he would still need to get a state institution (YÖK - Higher Education Council) to approve the foreign diploma.
There’s a noticeable inconsistency in how Hacker News community reacts to electoral controversies in Romania and Turkey. In Romania, the Constitutional Court disqualified candidate Călin Georgescu based on unproven allegations that he was influenced by Russia. In Turkey, opposition leader and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was barred from running after his university degree was annulled under dubious circumstances.
Both cases involve actions that directly impact democratic processes—effectively ensuring that those in power remain in power. Yet, the reactions to these events seem to differ significantly.
Does this reveal an inherent tribalism in our thinking? If HN represents a community of intellectuals, are we truly guided by reason and intellectual honesty, or are our responses shaped more by instinct and bias?
Here's the link to the relevant discussion so people can decide for themselves if there actually is a significant difference and come to their own conclusions about why that difference might exist:
Also, in general I find that people who weigh in with this kind of comment trying to draw parallels and implying that there was some kind of consensus in favor of X which is inconsistent with the opposition to Y both misremember the earlier conversation and forget that these conversations feature totally different people. Judging an extremely heterogenous community for the consistency of its political views is an exercise in futility.
Thank you for highlighting the discussion about Romanian Constitutional Court’s annulment of the presidential election due to alleged Russian interference.
However, there’s a noticeable lack of discourse regarding Turkish President Erdoğan’s actions to maintain power. Nobody is arguing he is right.
Anyway both scenarios involve incumbent authorities taking measures that consolidate their hold on power, yet the disparity in our community’s reactions is striking. This raises questions about potential biases within our intellectual circles. Are we, as a community that prides itself on rational discourse, sometimes swayed by tribal instincts rather than objective analysis? It’s crucial to reflect on this to ensure our discussions remain balanced and rooted in intellectual honesty.
>Thank you for highlighting the discussion about Romanian Constitutional Court’s annulment of the presidential election due to alleged Russian interference.
There is difference, Romanian constitution and laws do not allow unfair elections and the Constitutional Court has the final say. Since the election cancelling a lot more evidence was released to the public , and the Kremlinescu guy with his fascist mercenary friends attempted a violent protest, searches were done , illegal weapons were found, illegal money and finally Kremlinescu after confronted with video evidence admitted he lied all the time when he said he does not know the fascist and mercenary who gave him cache money, cars, protection and threaten the journalist and opponents like a good fascist tradition christian does.
> Does this reveal an inherent tribalism in our thinking?
Yes, it does. We are humans too, not some upper cast of society that is permanently immune to prejudice, emotions and media influence reinforcing the former two. Unfortunately, it is not only Romania that is straying away from democracy. Bulgaria, another EU member state, and by coincidence (or not) a neighbor to Romania, has also been degrading significantly in this regard. To quote a couple of examples:
- A referendum on the topic of delaying Bulgaria's entry into the Euro zone (replacing national currency with EUR) was not allowed to take place by the parliament and subsequently the constitutional court (with really hard to understand and controversial argumentation).
- There were lots of violations during the last elections that were investigated selectively and following a questionable and non-transparent process
- Protesters being detained for a month for throwing eggs on a building - a highly disproportional measure, given the severity of the violation.
There’s a few things wrong here. Being a community of intellectuals doesn’t equal a community of rationalists. And even rationalists may use different criteria than you in matters of international security, arriving at conclusions you may see as inconsistent and biased.
Many academics, including professors and students, endorsed Nazi ideology. For instance, in 1933, approximately 900 professors signed the “Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State,” publicly expressing their support for the Nazi government.
In Romania you had the constitution and constitutional court involved.
The sentiment in Romania is that we do not want a Russian puppet as president, this seems to differ in USA.
But let me inform you that MAGAs and president Elon did not like what the constitutional court decided (if only they knew the guy they supported is a conspirationist that thinks Trump is a joke and faked his shooting in the ear and 911 was an inside job)
> The sentiment in Romania is that we do not want a Russian puppet as president, this seems to differ in USA.
The “constitutional court” is a joke. They made a decision under pressure form the EU. They made a completely unprincipled decision to deny the people of Romania their right to vote. They realized at the last minute that a redo of the election would result in the same outcome according to polls, which is why they kept making up new excuses and ended up banning the candidate. This is obviously a situation where the outcome is artificially manipulated and there’s no real democracy left there. It’s too bad because for about 10-15 years, it really looked like Romania was headed in the right direction, towards democracy and freedom and away from its past.
The constitution demands fair elections
declaring ZERO campaign money while in secret getting cacs from a mercenary, getting cars and protection from the same mercenary invalidates the marketing claim he used ZERO money.
Other undeclared funds were spend to pay TikTok influencers to produce content for Kremlinescu , content that was not labeled as sponsored but the inflencers pretended to do it for free
Then TikTok bot farms were used to share the paid TikTok content ,
there is enough evidence and TikTok also admitted that there were bots and that political content as still pushed in the days where it is illegal to do this.
He was also disqualified because he and his fascist mercenary friend attempted a violent coup.
If you are a MAGA I need to remind you that he shit a lot on Trump, and USA so either Elon is stupid to push so hard for Kremlinescu or is because Ptin is demanding it.
There are more facts to show this guys character of a traitor slut, like admiring Putin, sucking on Trump after he shit on him, dening video proof for months until he had to admit it
These tactics are often criticized selectively. Why is it a problem when Turkey manipulates elections by banning certain candidates or parties, but not a problem when Romania or Germany or the EU does it? When any country resorts to such authoritarian tactics, it needs to be condemned. Otherwise criticism of people like Erdogan falls flat.
I am very informed. It’s clear that the Romanian courts succumbed to pressure from the EU, as confirmed by an EU commissioner. The courts fabricated a justification that is weak in order to get the result they wanted. It’s why they slowly stepped from a recount to cancelling the election to banning candidates.
East and West, No matter what you call this platform or forum, the vast majority of users are from America and Europe. The East is often viewed from an Orientalist perspective in the eyes of the West. However, when it comes to Turkey, it resembles neither the East nor the West. Our electoral system is not like that of the East. There is no fraud or any other kind of manipulation. However, on the road to elections, anything goes. Laws are enacted, changed, or amended as needed. This is the electoral process. But while the elected officials are chosen by the people, the candidates who make it to the election stage undergo intense training and a series of specific events behind the scenes.
Now, if you look at this matter with straightforward logic, you see that Erdoğan unfairly invalidated İmamoğlu’s diploma and that this is against the law. However, I can only explain the reality of the situation as follows: For nearly 20 years, newspapers, the media, news channels, and even certain famous figures have speculated about Erdoğan’s missing diploma. Whether Erdoğan has a university diploma or not remains uncertain. This is something the left in Turkey has always known but often mocked.
I want to emphasize this: The left in Turkey is ineffective because you cannot change the paradigms inherited from the past. Now, the discussion revolves around İmamoğlu’s diploma. But why? Because, quite simply, those who once criticized Erdoğan for allegedly not having a diploma have now been given a president without a diploma in return.
Was this action illegal? Absolutely not. But is justice in the country applied equally to everyone? Of course not. Do not perceive me as right-wing, left-wing, or an Erdoğan supporter. I am analyzing the situation from a historical perspective.
As for the invalidation of the diploma, if there is an absolutely void and legally null action, how can “acquired rights” (müktesep hak) be established? In the case of an “obvious mistake” the decision can always be reversed. Therefore, the diploma is invalid. Even if most Turks here do not accept this, states operate collectively, and only those chosen by the game masters(USA) remain in play. İmamoğlu is neither one of those people nor even on the bench. That is why, even if he won admission to the university, unfortunately, he has no real chance of being elected.
Banning oposition over irregularities, is perfectly normal in mature democracy! It is a sign that democratic process works, and can heal itself! Ancient Athens have ostracism.
To add insult to injury, it could be the case that Erdogan's degree is fake [1]
(I don't know of a single Turkish person NOT voting for him that thinks that his degree is authentic)
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recep_Tayyip_Erdo%C4%9Fan_univ...
From a brief reading of the wikipedia article you linked, I'm under impression that the accusations are baseless (given that there are - supposedly - witnesses and his former classmates that confirm his version, and apparently no whistleblowers that present a proof otherwise). The sources are in Turkish so I didn't consult them[1]. Is the article biased or omits some important context? Since you believe the degree is not authentic I assume you know about some things suggesting misconduct.
[1] Yes, I could translate them, but I'm not prepared to go down this particular rabbit hole.
I think you are confusing Erdogan with Imamoglu. Imamoglu has photographs, classmates, there is no doubt that he attended college. His diploma was anulled because he transferred initially from a different college. He spent 4 years at the Istanbul uni, attended classes, passed the exams, there is no doubt in that.
On the other hand, Erdogan does not have a single photograph during his university years, no classmates to back his story. He started a two year degree, but there is no evidence he attended a four year program. A public notary issued a same as original certification on a disputed document. The original diploma of erdogan cannot be found. Looking at the date of the diploma, the university faculty didn't even exist yet.
I am not confusing anyone with anyone, just discussing the linked Wikipedia article. A few quotes:
>Aydın Ayaydın, a Member of Parliament from the opposition party CHP said that Erdoğan participated in the four-year degree education of Aksaray Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences, as Ayaydın himself was a teacher of Erdoğan. Expressing that he remembers Erdoğan and his classmates very well, Ayaydın said "one of his classmates is Mehmet Emin Arat, who currently is a professor at Marmara University
>Mehmet Emin Arat himself called the claims on Erdoğan not having a degree "unfair" and "baseless", stating that "the claims do not have any legal, official or historical basis".[14]
>Israeli Journalist Rafael Sadi, who was another classmate of Erdoğan,[15] said that he was irritated by "people that are telling baseless lies just to slander the man for the sake of opposition" and shared the names of professors that he and Erdoğan followed courses from.
Of course they can all be bribed and/or lying, but the Wikipedia article as written supports the version that his diploma is legitimate. Or at least that's my reading.
Before the 2000s, depending on how overtly conservative you were and who was in govenenent (coups, counter-coups, and fits of "democracy" happened every couple years), you might not have been allowed to attend at all.
An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.
Unsurprisingly, once conservative Turkish politicians like Erdogan took power, they came with vengeance. Didn't help that rural, working class, and certain ethnicities (Anatolian Turks, Kurds) were more conservative than others - go to Istanbul Airport sometime and count how many un-hijabed vs hijabed women work as the bathroom cleaning staff.
Of course, those same conservative politicians then do the exact same shenanigans of corruption, power politics, and authoritarianism, and so the cycle continues.
The intersectionality between class, religion, ideology, and ethnicity makes Turkish politics wonky.
Or they could get out of the middle ages and stop caring if women cover their hair?
If the USA is any indication, getting out and staying out of religious extremism and hyper-conservatism is actually quite hard to do long term.
They can't the inability to form strong institutions is baked in. And if you have no law, beyond the state/family-head rules this or that, you cant reform and renorm.
> An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.
They could have just removed their hijab. Nobody was forcing them to keep it on.
"go to Istanbul Airport sometime and count how many un-hijabed vs hijabed women work as the bathroom cleaning staff."
Out of curiosity, what is the ratio?
Every single one I saw wore a hijab. The cleaning staff earned less than the customer facing shop and restaurant staff (who were almost all hijabless).
Istanbul Airport is right next to what used to be Istanbul's Dharavi (a megaslum). Most residents were migrants and ethnic minorities. This was also the neighborhood that Erdogan grew up in, and helped propel him to power.
A major reason he kept winning elections was because he enacted a massive urban housing program that helped convert those slums into normal neighborhoods with public services (and also helped siphon money to AKP aligned construction conglomerates).
And it's people from those backgrounds that were doing the menial work at IST (eg. cleaning staff)
> Of course, those same conservative politicians then do the exact same shenanigans of corruption, power politics, and authoritarianism, and so the cycle continues.
The curious things was that early in Erdogan's reign, that is during the 2000s, Turkey seemed to be genuinely making progress, especially in terms of economic policy and outcomes. That's when he was still making fairly orthodox reforms more or less along the lines required by the EU for aspiring new members. (Yes, neoliberal reforms work!)
In the last few years we saw more 'interesting' economic ideas from Erdogan, like that high interest rates cause inflation.
To be fair, he is still doing the infrastructure build up. I think the only difference is that he has moved from the liberal agenda; but he only followed that agenda to have a shot at the EU membership. Once that became not a viable option, he obviously regressed on that.
I don't think keeping the same policies as the 2000s would have avoided the hyper-inflation spirals though it might have marginally helped. Turkey issue is that it can't move from being a poor economy (as in simple rent industries like tourism and packaging stuff) to a middle economy where they can manufacture some stuff. Istanbul is a very misleading city because it paints a different picture to the reality of the average turk once you are outside of the city bubble.
Capital city bubble is present in some form in every single country, not sure whats the argument with that. Thats basic open economy
Agreed in principle.
> Capital city bubble is present in some form in every single country, [...]
Some countries are remarkably multi-centric. See eg Germany or the US, where the political capital isn't really the centre of the economy.
I don't think that's good or bad, just interesting.
Same can be said for many countries, even highly developed ones such as the US or UK
What do you mean by 'rent economy'?
Tourism is a pretty good sector for the economy, especially because by its very nature you have to compete internationally with the rest (and best) of the world. There's no shelter behind tariffs or similar.
Tourism in Turkey is essentially one dude owning the land/establishment and 10 dudes running around serving tourists. Nothing wrong with that if that's a small part of your economy but if you have most of your people doing that, then it's definitively a mismanagement of your country talent.
> In the last few years we saw more 'interesting' economic ideas from Erdogan, like that high interest rates cause inflation
Basically a bailout for AKP aligned construction oligarchs like MAPA Group. Turkiye did the same thing in the 2000s that China did in the 2010s with real estate construction.
> Turkey seemed to be genuinely making progress, especially in terms of economic policy and outcomes. That's when he was still making fairly orthodox reforms more or less along the lines required by the EU for aspiring new members. (Yes, neoliberal reforms work!)
Yep, but moreso IMF, because Erdogan 1.0 still had to follow IMF terms and reforms from the 2001 bailout.
Yes, IMF rules and EU neoliberal orthodoxy actually work.
Have a look at the development of Greek unemployment numbers over the last decade or so. It has been a steady downward march, with Covid merely a minor blip.
(Having said that, unemployment is still at something like 10%. That's bad, but far from 'basket case' territory.)
because thr youth left in droves? Empty house == good statistics
As long as they have jobs elsewhere?
Brain drain means you have great politics, gotcher.
Beats high unemployment.
Sounds like Trump getting revenge on the PMCs in America now.
Not exactly. An Erdogan-esque example would probably be a JD Vance or DeSantis administration, because both are actually ideological. Trump might be a lot of things, but ideological is not one of them.
Founder Fund aligned vendors like Palantir, Andruil, SpaceX, and Scale (they're making the pivot into defense tech because their losing their moat) are absolutely taking advantage of FF's closeness to the Trump admin to get preferential contracts.
That said, the best comparison is probably Israel under Netanyahu after he was indicted for loving ice cream too much. While there was a boom in startups and business creation, most of those startups ended up leaving after the Judicial Crisis upended stability.
Wiz's leadership themselves moved Wiz's accounts and ownership outside of Israel during that crisis and Yinon (and most other members of the Israel cybersecurity scene) were very vocally opposed to Netanyahu and Likud during the crisis. At the same time, Likud aligned businesses did very well so long as they remained aligned (eg. NSO Security collapsed when they decided to align against Netanyahu, after which he retaliated with a Likud lead inquiry into NSO Group in the Knesset).
Ehn, at this point it doesn't even matter. The damage has been done, and either way I'm still extremely well off and have backup options to move to. May as well be completely jaded, cynical, and mercenary - when elephants fight it's the grass that dies and the mosquitos that feast.
Turkey is a military powerhouse and Erdogan is a strong leader. The west wishes to remove him like all long lasting strong leaders and install some puppets which they can control. They tried to coup Erdogan away couple of years ago with the guy who fled to the US, since then he is especially cautious.
> An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.
This should have been countered by "forcing" education for everyone. For university, you could do special high subsidies that enable the woman to break from their families. It'll be painful for a couple generations but it does work.
I may be misunderstanding what you’re saying, but it sounds like you’re assuming that women only continue wearing hijab because their families force them to. That’s certainly not the case.
It is extremely rare to meet a hijab girl in Turkey whose family never told her to wear one. For a woman, telling her to wear a hijab as she grows up is pretty much enforcement.
Sure, but it doesn’t follow that they only continue to wear it because their families force them to. Most traditions have to be taught, but that doesn’t mean that they’re only continued by force. My parents sent me to Saturday school where they told me to do Shabbat dinner and taught me the traditions — that doesn’t mean that I’m being forced to sit down for brisket as an adult.
The suggestion was prohibiting the hijab in higher education and subsidizing it, as if the only barrier to conservative women attending an institution where they’re prohibited from dressing traditionally is their parents’ approval. That’s not the case.
I do think the suggestion was pretty bad. Segregation is always bad. But traditions not continuing to adulthood sounds like a load of nonsense, especially considering the issue of head scarves or hijabs which are things women of certain upbringing are supposed to wear to adulthood. It is not comparable to santa claus and they won't disavow you for not eating brisket with family.
This argument is weird, in all cultures and religions children usually follow their families traditions and beliefs.
Yes, there isn't much sense in talking about choices, then.
“Pretty much” is doing a lot of work here. So are you saying that parents should never teach their children about their own religious beliefs? Or is your problem with the hijab specifically?
They do whatever they want with their children and I don't care if the whole world including men wear hijabs. Or maybe even multiple hijabs on top of each other.
But people who think it isn't forced are simply wrong.
Many are forced.
Many women - and men - are forced to do things. This is not a problem unique to hijab.
You mean by “forcing” women to remove their hijab? That’s called religious persecution.
>This should have been countered by "forcing" education for everyone. For university, you could do special high subsidies that enable the woman to break from their families. It'll be painful for a couple generations but it does work.
Yikes
I wonder why these comments are always written from the imagined perspective of a space invader that has reformed countless planets already...
Colonialism never died, just rebranded.
Progressivism started as a movement to empower technocrats to “better” society via social engineering — and as a continuation of US/EU colonialism. They invented the concept of “scientific racism”, forcibly sterilized undesirables, etc.
Now their followers destroy native culture, eg Japanese culture, promote a return to systemic racism, etc.
And make posts like this, where they argue that forcibly indoctrinating the youth with their ideology will enlighten society.
"Colonialism" and "Islamophobia" are mostly arabic talking points that will never catch on. They don't strike a nerve, they don't bring forth some hidden truth. The underlying principle is: People from different cultures see their own cultures as superior. Most religious Turkish people see themselves as the true representatives of islam due to past Ottoman reign and culture. Most europeans will see their own country as being superior to other countries in europe, and the european civilization to be better than the rest of the world. Chinese will do the same. Almost all arabs do the same. It is basic tribalism, there is no global conspiracy against islam, people just don't like it. So get over it.
Like Catholic schools in the US solved the “backwards” culture of the indigenous? — just force people to attend schools of your preferred ideology?
No surprise, these folks always accuse others of what they themselves. My pet peeve theory is because they're not great thinkers and they just use what they know best.
So true! It's a psychological phenomenon called Projection.
I think it's quite universal though. It's like our understanding of other people is an extrapolation of our understanding of ourselves. Perhaps people with high EQ can put themselves in the others' position, but many just default to the projection.
Since i learned about this a few years ago, it has explained a lot. For example the WFH vs RTO debate, people who work well from home assume that naturally others would too and vice versa. So to figure out what people are up to, just listen to what they accuse others of doing. Prominent US realiTV politician is a perfect example.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accusation_in_a_mirror
Just like russia using ukraine neonazis as one of pretexts of the war, while sporting much larger (and government+orthodox church-controlled) population of such themselves.
Using such arguments shows how critically thinking (and actually free) population given state has. They wouldnt use it if they would be scolded and mocked from majority.
that's how the opposition party started the discussions. however, they went quiet after a key member from the opposition said that he went to college with Erdogan and they attended the classes together:
here is the blooper a TV news channel that leans towards the opposition side had. you can see how their postures and gestures change immediately: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20szE-7h4NA
extended interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhCfXFZgd0I
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I am from Turkey and this really concerns me. If we don't protest this in the streets and fight back I am afraid we don't have any kind of law anymore.
Isn't this just the latest cut in your democracy's death by a thousand cuts?
I'd add also a thousand bullets, a thousand tortures, a thousand rapes, and a thousand days in prison for having a different opinion and expressing it.
Isn't it always?
Turkey has a rich history of coups. But when secular parts of the armed forces tried to oust Erdogan's regime by force in 2016, he didn't just fight them off but used the event as a justification to clean house and prevent these things altogether. He's pretty much following Putin's approach at solidifying his position. So 2016 was essentially the death blow to their democracy.
2016 wasn't secular coup. the last of few secular ones were in 2000s, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-memorandum https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Justice_and_Development_P...
2016 was specifically because of Erdogan's anti-secular movements:
https://www.haber3.com/guncel/asker-trt-binasinda-iste-039da...
Much like America is taking a hit these days, only judges seem to care or be able to do anything. I was just having a bar discussion during happy hour how America is becoming a fascist country more in line with the way Turkey and India are, rather than Russia or Venezuela (more sudden)
Seems like for much of the world?
Sadly, yes. I'm not sure what it will take to make people realize that a "strong man" is not the answer.
I doubt, but wonder if it's a generational thing, like would the twenty somethings be into strongmen when they're the majority of voters?
I used to think the younger generation were a bit different but I've seen them pretty much obsess over MAGA, Joe Rogan et al. So more of the same I guess?
Essentially, young people want change, old people want stability. The right in the US has been advertising in the direction of change so it's liked for it. Especially by young people doomscrolling about "property prices now vs before" and cartelgram/liveleakesque videos. Once you get older you get a stable job, family, etc so you're less nervous about life and have better things to do than to get your adrenaline up watching people get murdered.
Written from the perspective of someone who's started to get comfortable in life. Now I'm quite mild politically but I can go more right short term if I spend some time watching people get butchered by gangs/nutcases. Some of my friends still watch a lot of that and it definitely makes you very much like having a "capacity for violence". It's one of those things that's IMO good in moderation, since some paranoia is healthy but off the deep end it turns into "get them before they get me"esque genocidal ideas and scrolling the nazi army webm montages and gore threads on /gif/ / /b/ at 2AM.
> Essentially, young people want change, old people want stability
Old people have learned that change always means worse. Corruption is so big that it isn't really matter who is in power, the system functions as intended. (All over the world)
Not necessarily worse IMO but that it's a painful process for mediocre improvements.
Human nature goes deep and doesnt change much across generations
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It's a disrepectful comparison for Turkish nationals working hard to build democratic institutions.
The US hasn't had the same history of coups, insurgencies, pogroms, massacres, censorship, corruption, etc.
Making everything about the US is just rude.
In my book, if anything was disrespectful it's the flippant attitude of dismissing sabotage of the opposition candidate as just one more step towards the death of democracy in Turkey. (And I'm not claiming that was necessarily out of line. Seems basically well-intentioned to me.)
The comparison is pretty apt, and extremely current. More or less the whole world is watching with horror (or glee, depending on political values), as the US is on a fast track to repressive autocracy.
Why is it rude?
Do you think Americans haven't worked hard to build democratic institutions?
It's not that it's rude per se, it's that users of this site who aren't from the US find it irksome when a subject that isn't the US comes up and someone invariably pivots it to talk about the US and current events.
It's okay to talk about stuff that isn't contemporary American politics or even sit the conversation out and observe others talking about non American subjects.
Not everything has to be about America.
Unfortunately, a lot of countries are doing a similar thing as these countries, there’s a lot of authoritarians taking over all over the world.
I think people should talk not only about the history or events in one country, but also talk about how other places are following in their footsteps and how we can prevent it from going forward where we can.
Also, interestingly, when folks talk about how the USA is sliding into authoritarianism on HN, it’s often downvoted, while for other countries it’s treated as serious and obvious, so it’s hard for Americans to see people agree that Turkey is doing bad stuff but they deny the same for America.
Lessons need to be shared so we can all do better together, I think.
Sure I see that trend of downvoting too, but I also see a trend where the American users on HN hijack topics that aren't about America to talk about America because they feel that there isn't enough content on social media about America or something?
It's a phenomenon that I think many users from outside of the US will agree is a pernicious problem on all social media platforms.
Americans should be more aware of this and aspire to not be so self-absorbed.
Eh, I just ignore those who don’t add to the conversation. If they add something useful, even being self absorbed, I consider it. Sometimes even an American has a nugget of wisdom we can learn from, believe it or not.
I don’t really want to derail this thread any further though, and I’m not Turkish so I can’t comment on the actual topic other than to say I wish them luck.
The more fundamental question is why a degree should be necessary to run for President. US does not require one for example.
The US requires a fairly high minimum age and for someone to be born American. Those requirements seem also a bit silly and stand in the way of voters expressing their wishes.
For some fun times, have a look at the requirements to become president in Singapore. Basically, you either have to have been a senior civil servant before or the CEO of a large and profitable company.
https://www.eld.gov.sg/candidate_presidential_qualify.html
Singapore's president is a figurehead, so it doesn't matter too much.
Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?
With that restriction, it has taken quite some time for a foreign adversary to have a puppet elected vs just shipping in some carpet bagger.
Having a minimum age also allows for some decent life experience. After all, 35 years old is not that old.
> Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?
Whether it is silly or not, I'm not sure, but it certainly doesn't seem very democratic.
IMO Arnold Schwarzenegger, to pick a random foreign born politician, should be able to stand for President. People can choose not to vote for him if they've bothered by him being foreign born.
FWIW, in Australia, no member of Federal Parliament (so Congress equivalent) can be a dual citizen (and they must be Australian citizens), so an equivalent to Arnie in Australia would need to renounce their foreign citizenship before standing for election. This seems like a better middle ground than "must be born in the country" to me.
> would need to renounce their foreign citizenship before standing for election
I'm really glad we all live in a world where nobody lies to gain position, or no foreign enemy has ever tried to infiltrate their operatives into key positions by becoming double agents and renouncing anything
Natural birth is not a defense against that.
It is a defence against it. Just not a perfect one.
It's right up there with the question on the form that asks if you are a subversive or not (or whatever the actual wording is). If you were a subversive, wouldn't you be exactly the type to lie about the answer?
What's your argument for that?
I mean, it might be meant as a defensive, sure. But is it any better than excluding women or left-handers?
I think Arnie is a great example, especially because he was a governor for two terms for one of the richest and most populous states, California. If he was allowed to run for president, he would be an excellent candidate.
As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people who moved to the US before a certain again (maybe 10 or 12) or have lived in the US for 20+ years. If you want to go a little further, you could require them to renounce any other foreign citizenships upon successful election.
The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years because a bunch of MPs accidentally had US citizenship by birth to Oz parents living in US or one parent was a US citizen, but they never lived in US. (US citizenship is a bit viral in that sense!) I don't remember all of the details exactly, but it did make me think more deeply about a nationality policy for MPs. I think it is a reasonable requirement.
> The Australia law caused a bunch of trouble in the last 10 years
It has, although the case you mention isn't really my main worry.
In theory some random rogue state (Hello North Korea!), can just grant all of the Australian parliament citizenship. Suddenly they're all ineligible under the constitution.
That said, I assume modern scholars would make the definition more robust than the 19th C definitions used in Australia (which was an attempt to take the best of the UK and USA models, particularly following the US with regards to being a Federation of States, while still maintaining a proper Westminster system without a "King"/Executive branch like in the USA).
> In theory some random rogue state (Hello North Korea!), can just grant all of the Australian parliament citizenship. Suddenly they're all ineligible under the constitution.
It's funny how Russia, of all the countries, had this problem - there are a lot of immigrants from ex-USSR countries, and some of these countries make it very hard to relinquish citizenship. For example in Ukraine this is done only by a presidential order, after a long bureaucratic procedure, and the last such order was signed in 2021. So Russia had to invent a mechanism which allows to write an affidavit certifying you would not exercise any rights given to you by foreign citizenship, and with such an affidavit your citizenship is considered "effectively relinquished" by Russian authorities.
> As a modern compromise, I think the US should allow people [...]
Your compromise would probably work well as a compromise, but honestly, it feels a bit superfluous to have all those restrictions, when you have voters who can apply any criterion they like anyway.
Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour.
> IMO Arnold Schwarzenegger, to pick a random foreign born politician, should be able to stand for President.
The reservoir of potential candidates is vast. The risk this mitigates seems important enough to give up on additional potential candidates.
It's not like other countries aren't protective. Have you looked at trying to even just immigrate to Japan?
Regardless of how you feel, a country should be able to set its own policies.
Ignoring that the Japanese economy is currently weaker than the US economy (which affects your chances of getting an offer in both places as a foreigner), in terms of paperwork and bureaucracy, Japan is much easier to get (and keep) a skilled work visa compared to the US. If you are not looking for a skilled work visa, there is a long term tourist visa (6mo+6mo) that is also easy to get, but you need to have about 200K EUR in liquid assets. Again, the US doesn't have anything as low friction.
>The reservoir of potential candidates is vast. The risk this mitigates seems important enough to give up on additional potential candidates.
I've recently grown to value this idea of "No single person is special or necessary for the government to function." According to the Census Bureau, there are over 150,000,000 native US citizens aged 35 and older. We could have a new president every month and still have a massive number of people to choose from. The only problem would be disruptions from rapid hand offs. The pool is not the issue. Taken to the extreme, this means political assassinations are only meaningful in dissuading replacements from taking the same views and causing temporary disruptions. The lives of politicians aren't inherently worth more than any other person.
Well the American born presidential policy is just strange because it seems so un-American. You’d think the country would have had at least one range to riches president who was a refugee from some war torn country by now, it’s just such a fundamental part of the nation’s mythos.
No, the mythos is more like a couple hundred years of WASP gentry dominance and then occasionally they let a Catholic get elected.
Quite a big deal when JFK was the first. Look it up.
> Regardless of how you feel, a country should be able to set its own policies.
And in a democracy that means that voters should be able to set the policies.
Voters can already resolve by themselves to vote only for people who are native born, or who are of a certain age, or under a certain age, or who like the right football team, or have the right haircolour.
We don't need to further restrict who voters can and can not vote for.
Unless you don't trust voters. But then, why have a democracy in the first place?
If voters care so much, they can change the policy. Everything is mutable with enough will.
America was founded as a colony fleeing its imperial oppressor. The fact that the rules are so strong here is a testament to the bloody and deep scars we gained from overthrowing our foreign oppressors.
It's a direct consequence of our nation's founding. There was a lot of pain felt at the hands of foreign powers, so we encoded it into the DNA of our governing rules.
> America was founded as a colony fleeing its imperial oppressor.
Haha, no. That's nice propaganda, but the Brits weren't oppressing the colonists. In fact, they ran just about the most liberal regime in existence at the time (with perhaps the Dutch being the main competition for top spot).
North American colonists were also paying less taxes than people back in England.
See also Canada for what happened to the colonists who stayed 'oppressed'.
Btw, did you know that only a minority of people in the 13 colonies were even in favour of insubordination against the Rightful Authority of the Crown?
For me "botn in the country" or "born a citizen of the country" does not mean much.
This is like assuming that your birth status makes the person. Think minarchy, castes, ...
You can be a naturalized citizen in live with your country, or a born citizen plain stupid and with worst interests in mind.
Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master. Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me.
I'm one that questions the whole pledge of allegiance forced to be recited by children that have no wherewithal to understand what allegiance even means or the ramifications of that pledge. Yet, I'm okay with born in country and of a minimum age.
> Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master.
Not in the modern world it doesn't.
The UK's recent prime minister Boris Johnson was born in the US two British parents who happened to be studying in Manhatten at the time. They all moved back here a few months later. The idea that he could be some sort of US sleeper agent is hilarious, though.
Well, formally the Prime Minister is just some random bloke appointed by king to help him run the country. The PM doesn't even need to be a member of parliament!
Now the king, that guy can't even be catholic! And until recently, couldn't even be female with living brothers.
Tradition does dictate that the PM is an MP, and tradition in UK parliament is pretty binding. However, an MP does not even need to be a British citizen: an Irish or a Commonwealth citizen can become an MP and go on to command the confidence of the house.
> Tradition does dictate that the PM is an MP, and tradition in UK parliament is pretty binding.
I hope it stays that way.
The US had pretty strong traditions in politics, too, but they are increasingly being eroded.
To give an example that's hopefully far enough in the past to be non-controversial: when they banned alcohol in the early 1920s, they felt that their constitution did not already explicitly give their federal government the power to do so. So they passed the 18th amendment to give the feds that power to specifically ban alcohol.
Decades later, in the context of the war on drugs, everybody seems to take it for granted that the federal government can obviously ban arbitrary substances.
And yet when you look at the great espionnage stories, the perpetrators were citizens of the country.
When you look at people who were "almost born" (came to the country as toddlers) or naturalized because of the love of their new country, purple claiming that they are second category citizens are hard to listen to.
Maybe because the policy exists that people have not so easily been able to get to the top position. Remove that policy and Putin himself could run for the office. It's an idiotic comment for an idiotic misunderstanding of why the policy exists
> Remove that policy and Putin himself could run for the office.
And I say, if the American people want Putin to be president (and Putin is willing to take the job), they deserve him.
At least, if you believe in democracy.
If you don't believe in Democracy, I suggest putting some obscure German house of nobles on the throne.
You seem to put people in the category of "born here, so good" and "birn elsewhere, less good". Fair enough.
If you are a supporter of, say, Trump you therefore say that Biden or Harris are much better than any other, naturalized citizen, as presidents?
It's hard to see the logic here, probably because I am an idiot, but if where you were birn defines the man for you then fine - everyone has their opinion.
it's so unamerican it is part of the constitution that defines america and deliberately placed there by the founding fathers. i'm sure they were concerned that the king would try to undermine the new country the first chance he got by placing someone loyal to the crown to undo all of the work that led to the constitution.
it's not a good better best situation like you seem to think. at this point, i really think the unwilling to see how attempting to limit the new nation from being led by a foreign operative would be so important to the survival of the new nation. only, new is now 200+ years old (yet still a babe in the woods to other national histories) so the "threat" seems lessened by people like you.
i also started the entire thread by stating we have a foreign operative in place now, so if you can't read between those lines in who i didn't vote for then you're really just being deliberately obtuse about the situation is the only logical explanation i can see.
> it's so unamerican it is part of the constitution that defines america and deliberately placed there by the founding fathers.
Apparently, as of last year, the constitution also says that the president is actually above the law. Given that they've written it after having just gotten rid of a king, I'm assuming they also put that part in deliberately. Truly, their wisdom and foresight was boundless.
It's an interesting document, but as time passes, its practical uses seem to become more and more limited. We're now at the 'people are getting disappeared into a gulag in El Salvador because the president decided they are criminals' stage, by the way. No judge, no jury, just an executive order that makes a person go away, and no mechanism to stop it from happening.
(I don't actually have strong opinions about that provision. It's certainly saving us from, heaven forbid, a Musk presidency, but only by an utterly uninteresting accident of his birth. People like him aren't foreign adversaries, trying to subvert the country, they are domestic adversaries, who bear no allegiance but to themselves.)
> Born in another country then naturalized still does not rule out sleeper agent situations. Seems pretty obvious to me.
Voters can take these things into consideration when casting their ballots. No need to make these choices for them.
I think recent events in the US make it quite clear that voters don't really consider the things that actually matter when electing a president.
Choose your evil:
Elect a dynasty to rule forever
Limit voting rights of group X,Y and Z to get "better" votes
Remain with the rule of the majority system
Elect ChatGPT to rule forever with a "be nice pls" prompt
Well, you could at least move to Approval voting instead of first past the post.
Or you could try sortition, which you haven't even considered at all.
The dream is probably dynamic voting through some login system where it's not done every X years but whenever you decide to change your vote maybe using ATMs as physical voting terminals for accessibility. Then voters can change their mind at any time and cause a change in leadership should the vote not be corrected over Y time. Then on top of that you can add multiple parties, individual person voting, etc. It probably won't happen in my lifetime since governments aren't built to be flexible\agile but one can dream.
Good gawd that's a nightmare system. Election by mood based polling.
So if a person's poll numbers drop below some threshold, they are automatically recalled? Do you then set a minimum amount of time to keep the polling below that threshold. 0s? 24hrs? 1 week? You've now also limited the number of eligible voters to those with cards that work in ATMs, so people with some form of wealth which is probably in line with how the framers intended
The ATM bit is just because we already have a system of safe terminals all over every country that are used to deal with personal data on the daily. It doesn't have to use a bank card per se. The idea is just to provide options outside of PC/phone login though even grandma has an Android nowadays.
The solution to the mood based polling is the "should the vote not be corrected over Y time". Y can be determined depending on what gov can handle but is it really mood voting if you get voted in, a year later you've not been in the lead position for over Y time (say 3 months) and you get replaced by the new favorite?
> You've now also limited the number of eligible voters to those with cards that work in ATMs, so people with some form of wealth which is probably in line with how the framers intended
Calling them ATM cards was probably just a short cut in describing how the system would work. Not a suggestion to connect with the banking system.
In any case, it might actually be an interesting idea to perhaps give everyone a base vote for free and then let them have some bonus votes in proportion to actual net taxes paid. Gotta give those billionaires an incentive to not dodge their taxes so hard after all.
> So if a person's poll numbers drop below some threshold, they are automatically recalled?
That's a relatively simple flaw to fix, if you'd actually want to fix it. You already made some suggestions, and there are other ways.
In general, I would suggest trying these kinds of innovations out more locally before you go for the federal government.
That could either be in states or counties, or even for running local clubs and cooperatives and companies.
There's some standard ways for shareholders to vote on the board of directors etc. But it's relatively easy for willing companies (especially new startups) to experiment with alternative forms of governance.
That's a nice dream. Let me shatter it: what you suggest might make policy reflect public opinion better, yes. But alas, public opinion is crazy and we can be lucky that policy by and large isn't quite as crazy.
Have a look at Bryan Caplan's "The Myth of the Rational Voter" for more background.
But now you have a system where the general public still decides who leads the caravan but a potential leader can straight up lie about what they're gonna do and it'll be a pain to replace them before their term is over.
To fix that you need either unequal votes or to remove the voting rights of those with incorrect opinions and understandings. Maybe education but then you'd have to make reeducation camps for those of incorrect opinions and understandings since educating the entire populace will mostly just move the average bar higher.
I'm not talking about doing referendums on every single issue direct democracy style and I am aware that to correctly implement something like this you'd need to do it gradually so that the populace has time to adjust to their increased political power which will hopefully increase their interest in politics in general.
> To fix that you need either unequal votes or to remove the voting rights of those with incorrect opinions and understandings.
Not necessarily. You could also punish liars several after the fact, ie after their term, and hope that incentives will do the trick.
Though my favourite idea is to make voting with your feet easier. If you have more issues decided at more local levels, then it's easier to up sticks and move to the next town over, if you disagree with a policy.
I call that the "McDonald's flavour of democracy": McDonald's doesn't let you vote on their menu, but if you don't like it, you can always just head over to Pizza Hut.
You can either (A) do that inside an existing system by aggressively pushing responsibility down. That's what subsidiarity is meant to capture. And also how the US was supposedly meant to be structured; but over time centralisation won out.
Or (B) you can ensure that by having smaller independent countries. Ideally city states.
That's one of the reasons why Singapore is my adopted home.
Moving with your feet is about the most direct democracy you can get, but you also don't have to worry about the usual downsides of direct democracy.
Punishing the liars after the fact, to me, sounds like a very slippery slope. What percentage of promises have to be upkept? Do they have to be kept if the situation changes and they're no longer the correct decision? Do they have to be upkept in special circumstances such as Covid/WW3/etc? Though I would love a system where applicants list their main plans and their progress (not as done or not but as references to legsilation changes, etc) gets officially documented after their term. It won't be wildly useful but it doesn't sound like too much work either.
I like local governance but you have the same issue on a different scale. Whether the president or the governor runs the show I'd want them to be replaceable in a timely manner and to have a little fire under their ass.
Moving your feet is something I also do but I'm not sure is sustainable. What you get is people going to more social places in the beginning of their adult life to get as much support as possible and then move to the most capitalistic places possible once they start earning big money to pay less taxes/have more buying power. How many people do that, I don't know. In my circles it's a lot and I'm one of them.
It's one of those perfect is the opposite of good things though since centralised politics isn't really better either..
i co-founded the center for election science, which promotes approval voting.
my alternative proposal to simple sortition is election by jury. https://www.electionbyjury.org/
That's interesting!
Though I would just directly fill up parliament with a few hundred MPs picked at random from among volunteers.
Parliament can then make laws and pick leaders for the executive (like in Germany or the UK).
As a slight complication, I would allow people to pre-declare proxies that would sit in parliament for them. Proxy declaration season would be akin to traditional election season.
---
In the UK or Germany, this way you could keep most of the existing political architecture intact. You'd just change how MPs get selected. Compared to your proposal, you also get the benefit of the law of large numbers, and you don't have to have a judge etc.
I would argue against picking a singular leader at random, just because the variation is too high. But in the US, you could re-use much of the existing system: fill up the electoral college at random.
You could take inspiration from the 'National Popular Vote Interstate Compact' https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Popular_Vote_Intersta... for how to accomplish that gradually.
The US house of representatives and senate probably have enough members that you could bank on the law of large numbers.
do approval voting now.
fight for election by jury tomorrow. https://www.electionbyjury.org/
Sure, that's a defensible position, too.
In that case, I suggest finding some obscure German house of nobles and putting them on the throne. Works reasonably ok for the UK.
> Born in the country lessens the likelihood that you are beholden to more than one master.
This may have held true sometime in the 17th century, but it really doesn't in the 21st.
And yet elon musk an immigrant is currently the president
At least he's an African American.
Yes, it seems silly. Which countries have had a foreign puppet elected because they lack this provision?
Traditionally most other countries don't have as many immigrants as the USA.
Israel .
Hitler?
Maybe.
Though probably not: by German law Hitler could already not have been in power, because he wasn't properly a German citizen at the time. (It's all very murky.)
Hitler was already in power illegally. The law we are discussing here would have just made it 'even more illegal'.
(I'm using the weasel wording 'in power' here, because I forgot whether he needed to be a citizen to be a member of the Reichstag at all, or only to become chancellor.)
Hitler was stateless from 1925 until 1932.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naturalization_of_Adolf_Hitler
Hitler was a "foreign puppet"? This is news to me, can you tell us who the puppet master was? Because it seems to me that person should be as widely reviled as the man himself.
Hitler was a foreigner who caused trouble in Germany, to put it mildly.
You are right however, that he wasn't a puppet.
Wait so the real issue you have is with foreigners, or what's the point here? If he was born in Germany it would've been ok? Don't dance around your point, just be explicit.
If you go back up the thread, you will notice that I originally (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43407532) brought up the point that restricting who Americans can vote for is a bit silly, and that includes banning them from voting for foreigners. If the voters want a foreigner, they should get a foreigner. (As long as the foreigner is willing.)
I have no issues with foreigners. I think voters should be free to vote for any willing candidate, and people should also be free to move and work wherever they feel like, as long as they find a willing landlord (or house seller) and as long as they find a willing employer. I myself am a foreigner in my adopted home.
Now to your question:
In this subthread we were looking at the question of any actual examples of foreign born leaders causing trouble for their host country.
In the interest of intellectual honest, I have to admit that a US-style banning foreign born leaders might have conceivable stymied Hitler's rise to power in Germany.
Especially because by the time Hitler entered government in the Weimar Republic, the economy had already started to recover, unemployment was going down. So any roadblocks and delays might have conceivably gotten us over the limited time window where inviting the extremist to share power was even seen as a good idea to try.
Now obviously I could argue against this point; or argue that Hitler would have just put a local-born puppet to be his front man in government, etc.
But that's a more nuanced and fragile argument than the one I would have liked to make: that the US-style ban on foreign leaders is silly and never ever hindered any would-be bad guy.
Is that explicit enough for you?
> In this subthread we were looking at the question of any actual examples of foreign born leaders causing trouble for their host country.
No, we were looking for foreign born leaders who caused trouble because they were puppets for their birth country
Natenyahu ?
Having a minimum age to get some life experience is fine, and 35 I would consider a good age, however the minimum age in the USA these days seems like 70.
As for being born in the country, I'm sure with the challenge to birthright citizenship that will get changed in short order to both being born in the country and having your parents and ancestors also be citizens.
Maybe it will change to more of a hereditary system where people had records to prove their ancestry was noble.
> Having a minimum age also allows for some decent life experience. After all, 35 years old is not that old.
Shouldn't that be for voters to decide?
Singapore seems to be doing fine without that requirement is what that comment said i think talking about different things
Singapore has lots of other crazy requirements, though.
> Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?
Yes and it looks especially silly for a country which used to pride itself on being composed primarily of immigrants. In fact the current president is one of the people who was pushing conspiracy theories about a previous president not being eligible - the "birther" movement around Barack Obama. At the time that movement was small enough and the far right was distant enough from the levers of power that people could laugh it off. But it would not surprise me whatsoever if in the future the US right pulled something similar to what Turkey did here, stripping a rival candidate or a portion of the electorate of their status to strengthen their own bid.
It is silly.
What if a twin is born in Canadian airspace and the other on American soil?
How big of a difference is it if an infant is born on Monday and their parents immigrate to the US legally on Friday?
Irrelevant.
> How big of a difference is it if an infant is born on Monday and their parents immigrate to the US legally on Friday?
I don't think your parents even have to be legally in the US for you to become an American. You just have to be born in the US, legally or illegally.
And we should celebrate it for the civilisational advance that it is, promoting it all over the world, instead of continuously attacking its legitimacy.
We have long rejected the idea that blood should dictate your social position in the tribe; but somehow we cling to the idea that it should dictate whether you belong to the tribe at all. Why? It's not with this mindset that we will reach the stars.
> And we should celebrate it for the civilisational advance that it is, [...]
Well, as far as I can tell, it's only in your constitution sort-of by accident.
They didn't put this 'advance' in original, it was just the simplest and most face saving way to free the slaves without directly mentioning slaves in the text. (Compare the 3/5 compromise for 'other persons', which also avoids mentioning slaves by that term.)
Yes it is silly
If it wasn't silly apartheid kid psychos like Elon or Peter Thiel could run for president. But fortunately they can't because of those silly requirements. Unfortunately that's not enough to stop psychos that can actually run, as we have all witnessed.
By that argument, we should ban everyone whose Social Security number is even from running. That would prevent about 50% of psychos from running.
I say, let them all run, and let the voters sort it out.
At least, if you believe in democracy.
Although I agree on the silliness of the citizenship-at-birth rule, a maximalist approach to democracy can be very dangerous. The most unstable democracies of the past century were, often, the most democratic ones - Weimar, various French republics, etc.
The democratic paradox is real, and finding ways to minimize its worst outcomes can be legitimate.
I agree that this is a valid concern. However, we should then carefully review which restrictions actually help with stability and which restrictions are a nuisance.
It's instructive to compare the constitution of the Federal Republic of Germany with the Weimar Republic. For example, while modern Germany still uses proportional representation, you need 5% of the votes to get any seats at all. (I'm simplifying a bit.) And you can no longer have a pure 'vote of no confidence' in parliament to bring down the government, you need to simultaneously put a new one in power, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructive_vote_of_no_confid...
As for the US president: I think the requirement for a minimum age and for citizenship are fair enough, because these are fairly easy to verify once and for all. But I think that the requirement for citizenship at birth is, if anything, bad for stability: remember the birthers?
Now imagine that in Obama's 6th year in office, some random birther had actually found some reasonably compelling evidence (but not compelling enough to make even Obama supporters agree). Can you imagine the chaos?
Nothing silly about the requirement to be born in the country you’re going to lead.
If you believe in democracy and the will of the people, it seems more appropriate for voters to decide whether they want Arnold Schwarzenegger as president, instead of banning him over a technicality.
The US does have some very weird rules for its Presidents though, both written rules - the "natural born citizen" clause for example, or the minimum age (thirty five years old) and the unwritten rules - no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it, most Americans have also indicated they wouldn't elect anybody who admitted to atheism...
> no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it
The same is true of the role of Leader of the UK Labour Party–but I wonder how many people would suggest that the UK Labour Party has an "unwritten rule" that its leader must be male?
A lot of people.
So they think the UK's main centre-left party has an "unwritten rule" against female leaders, when its main centre-right party very obviously doesn't (having a female leader right now, its fourth, and having just last month marked the fiftieth anniversary of its first election of a female leader). How do they explain that? I mean, what about the UK Labour Party's ideology leads it to having an "unwritten rule" against female leadership at its highest level, while the ideology of the UK Conservative Party leads them to embrace such leadership repeatedly?
It's a party about working men not actually a "centre-left party". Hence its decision to humiliate and probably in some cases kill people in order to "encourage work". It looks centre-left on a simplistic axis where the Protestant Work Ethic is assumed as some sort of necessary background rather than an increasingly weird religious belief.
The US does have this problem to a greater extent - don't get me wrong - but the UK doesn't really have a party which is open to the idea that maybe the objectionable thing isn't the use of the words Arbeit Macht Frei over those German camps, the problem is that they're not true.
Given that people are being arrested for the most stupid reasons in Turkey, I can understand people not wanting to put their life on the line. 10 years ago I could have seen people protesting (see Gezi park protests) but now ? Not really.
What's worse is that somehow plenty of Turk are fine with it. Inflation above 100% for long time, crappy salaries, people can't even afford rents but the leader's party still get about 30% of the votes.
This is also a lesson for fellow Americans: don't think that just because Trump won't be able to lower the price of the eggs, will make rural voters miserable and make America a worse place means that at the next election you get rid of him. Once the environment is set up properly, anything can be justified, and with the right mindset the voter will accept any bullshit. Remember, "we always have been at war with Eastasia"
Well, damn, that was my strategy to deal with Trump, waiting on the economy. I guess it’s all joever for American democracy. 250 years was a pretty good run all things considered.
We had Japanese internment camps, Jim Crowe laws and McCarthyism and survived. Let's not write off American democracy just yet.
I would argue that every prior president at least respected the Constitution, democratic norms, and the peaceful transfer of power. If the ruling party cares more about their goals than democracy, what hope do we have?
These things were despicable but not an attack on the system itself. This time is different. I haven’t written American democracy off yet, but I wouldn’t bet the farm.
Those were the system. The core Americanness of American democracy is white supremacy, and there's a huge number of voters who will demand repression for other Americans. Usually defining them as "not Americans" along the way, as with the attack on birthright citizenship and green card holders.
Even if democracy survives this time round, the people who enabled its demise thus far won’t go anywhere. There are so many angry, misinformed and potentially violent fringe groups with easy access to weapons, it’s truly disgusting. And they’ll feel emboldened by how easy the fabric of society seems to come apart.
I have seen the culture on HN change in the ten years I have been a member. The people who defend Trump and his policies now would never have done so 10 years ago. It goes to show that the USA we remember doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
Trump can't run for election again as it's his second term. Voting doesn't apply.
He can't run within the Constitution if it isn't changed. OTOH, his concern about whether his actions are Constitutional and the ability and willingness of any other institution to impose meaningful consequences on his unconstitutional acts don't support the conclusion that his future actions will be limited to what the Constitution allows.
A constitutional amendment requires ratification by 3/4 of the states. Even getting one proposed requires 2/3 of both houses of congress. This is not going to happen.
Simply ignoring the constitution and cancelling the vote? There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.
> Simply ignoring the constitution and cancelling the vote?
How about ignoring the Constitution and just running anyway?
> There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.
Yeah, even totalitarians these days hold elections for show. I absolutely expect that there will formally be an election in 2028.
> How about ignoring the Constitution and just running anyway?
What does that even mean? He can certainly mount a campaign, and the RNC delegates could even all pick him at the convention, but elections are run by the states, and they are under no obligation to violate the constitution by allowing his name on the ballot or counting write-in votes for him.
I wouldn't be surprised if some of the shittiest red states in the US would put him on anyway, but I sincerely hope it wouldn't be enough for him to win.
Even if somehow he did win a 2028 election, Congress has to certify the results, and, depending on the partisan makeup at the time of certification, that could be a non-starter.
And even if that doesn't stop him, even with the current composition of SCOTUS, I find it hard to believe they'd allow him to remain in office for a third term. Of course, courts can be ignored; then it's up to the military, and then we've truly lost.
There are so many ways pushing Trump as the 2028 candidate could blow up in their faces, I don't think even the GOP is stupid enough to allow that to happen, regardless of what Trump's base wants.
> I absolutely expect that there will formally be an election in 2028.
There isn't "an" election. There are 51 elections, run by each state and by DC. I think this is one of the few strengths of our electoral system when it comes to federal elections: making elections into a totalitarian sham means subversion on a difficult level. Blue states will never bow to that, red states don't have to (as they'll already vote red), and there's so much scrutiny on the swing states that it would be incredibly difficult to pull off.
> What does that even mean? He can certainly mount a campaign, and the RNC delegates could even all pick him at the convention, but elections are run by the states, and they are under no obligation to violate the constitution by allowing his name on the ballot or counting write-in votes for him.
The majority of states are GOP governed, and are unlikely to disqualify their parties nominee even if they are Constitutionally ineligible. As for other states, the federal courts already stopped them from removing Trump from the primary ballot in 2024 over state determination of constitutional ineligibility, why wouldn't an even-more-Trump-appointee-dominated federal judiciary do the same in 2028, leaving ineligibility determinations to the Congress when it judges the electoral vote?
> There's no way he will be able to shift the Overton window that far in ~3 years.
Given how far it's shifted in two months, how far it shifts every day, and given that there are 46 more months to go, I wouldn't hold my breath on that.
3/4 of all states not currently in rebellion have to approve amendments. Already states like California and New York are displaying suspicious DEI tendencies, unlike the patriotic states around the Gulf of America. What if they start rebelling against our elected leader?
https://www.thirdtermproject.com/third-term has some ideas:
> Constitutional Amendment: The U.S. Constitution can be amended by an act of Congress. Republicans must publicly get behind the third-term project.
> Running as Vice President: President Trump can run as Vice President with a space filler as President in 2028. Perhaps Donald Trump Jr. could run on a Trump/Trump ticket before gracefully resigning on Jan. 21, 2028 after securing victory. This plan while unorthodox would show that MAGA cannot be stopped by any procedural rule.
> Supreme Court Ruling: The 22nd Amendment bans anyone from serving two terms in office, but it is not completely clear if that refers to two presidential terms under any circumstances or two consecutive presidential terms. There are legal challenges in the works to clear up the ambiguity regarding the 22nd Amendment. The conservative rule-of-law justices on the Supreme Court would be able to settle this once and for all, making it clear that the 22nd Amendment would allow Trump a third term as it would only be his second consecutive term.
Also, Bannon: "We're working on it."
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politic...
Are you 100% sure there are no obscure laws or something that can be used to postpone an election somehow? :(
How about simply refusing to accept a loss, calling the election rigged and fake..
Or simply putting a puppet as the candidate. Believe Putin did this some years ago.
He wouldn't need a law. He'd just do what he wants, some judge will rule it illegal, and he'll ignore the ruling. That playbook has worked up until this point, why stop?
Elections would be held, but there's no reason to assume their outcome will be respected.
Start a war perhaps? Taking an example from the Netanyahu playbook.
> Start a war perhaps?
Or just declare that one already exists because of a foreign invasion or attack. Which he has already done once in the past week (as a pretext for invoking the Alien Enemies Act), and has given pretty clear signals (via his "fentanyl is a WMD" order) that he intends to do again, more broadly.
A constitutional amendment to change presidential term limits is essentially impossible to get ratified.
The states run the elections, not the federal government, so any state that actually is faithful to the constitution will not put him on the ballot in 2028 (and will not count votes where he's written in), regardless of what he tries to do. Hopefully that's more than 270 electoral votes worth of states.
The worry isn't that the law says he can't, the worry is that the law won't be sufficient to make the attempt unthinkable.
He couldn’t run this time, constitutionally speaking. He is an insurrectionist, according to a state court.
The SC said that didn’t matter, it would take an act of congress to disqualify him.
The same mechanism prevents (or doesn’t, rather) him from running for a third term as prevented him from running as an insurrectionist.
I assume they’ll say he was robbed in 2020 and it’s two consecutive terms he gets. And congress won’t stop him. At least 40% of the electorate will support him. Most states will put him on the ballot, threatening to remove the democratic candidate if the others don’t. He will be in charge of the FEC and the various enforcement mechanisms, as he is now. So then what?
> I assume they’ll say he was robbed in 2020 and it’s two consecutive terms he gets.
That's not how it works. 22A says:
"No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once."
Terms do not need to be consecutive to count toward the two-election limit.
There is, I believe a loophole: he can be elected vice president in 2028, and the president (whoever it may be) can resign, elevating Trump to the presidency again. Not sure if the courts would allow that, but who knows if the courts will be particularly relevant by 2028. Even if they wouldn't, they could elect a puppet president that just signs off on anything Trump wants to do.
Ultimately, though, I think all of this is kinda irrelevant. Trump is a huge problem, certainly, but the playbook for his administration this time was written by other people. JD Vance, for example, could be the one executing that playbook, and do more or less just as much damage to the country. The GOP doesn't need Trump in the future to continue to dismantle our democracy and funnel wealth more and more into the new American oligarchs. They just need to continue to dupe gullible, disaffected voters into supporting destructive politics.
Obviously that’s not how it works but do the majority of Americans know that? Vaccines also don’t cause autism but here we are.
The question is still who is going to stop him.
The main obstacle to perpetual trump rule is his own age.
Vance certainly can ...
That's just a dumb rule and only losers would follow it. /s
Trump's made no secret about the fact that he doesn't intend to leave office, his enablers have disdain for democracy and want a king. They very well may pull it off, as they've done whatever they liked regardless so far.
I want to be wrong about this but my hopes are tempered.
Despite everything that's happened, I'm still fairly optimistic. While it's true that Trump has been purging people loyal to the constitution, and installing toadies in their places, I still have faith that the military would refuse to support Trump if he were lawfully required to leave office, even if a good chunk of military leadership are Trump loyalists. Officers and enlisted soldiers can still refuse to follow illegal orders, and I do believe that, by and large, our military has plenty of honorable people in it who would do the right thing, and remember that they swear their loyalty to the constitution, not to the president.
And even with purges at the FBI, US Marshals Service, and Secret Service, I have to believe there are still enough people in those organizations that would not stand for Trump illegally remaining in office.
Just because someone is a Republican, it doesn't mean they'd support a lifetime dictator in office.
Of course, if it comes down to the military to ensure the proper and legal transfer of power, we're well and truly screwed.
It will probably end up like those Gezi Patk protests with people dead and injured.
>Confirmed: Live metrics show #Turkey has restricted access to multiple social media platforms including X, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok; the incident comes as Istanbul mayor Ekrem Imamoglu and dozens of others are detained in events described by the opposition as a "coup"
https://x.com/netblocks/status/1902230361968427206
>Turkey detains Istanbul mayor Imamoglu in corruption probe
https://www.dw.com/en/turkey-detains-istanbul-mayor-imamoglu...
it's a quite common occurrence here. twitter and instagram get blocked regularly for a few days, even during smaller incidents.
discord is also blocked since last year. not sure the reason. some lgbtq stuff i think.
and when there's an event that could cause uproar, certain areas just get blocked with fences and hundreds of police officers.
it can be quite annoying for me, since i live in the center of istanbul. during women's day two weeks ago for example, i almost couldn't get home since i forgot to take my passport and had to argue with 5 different police to let me through without proof of address. took an hour or so extra.
this happens about 3-4 times a year.
it's a shame, because turkey is actually a really nice place to live, and the people in general are very modern and nice. but every now and then, you get reminded of how good we have it in terms of freedom in most western countries.
Wow.
https://xcancel.com/netblocks/status/1902230361968427206
> Prosecutors accused him of corruption and aiding a terrorist group, calling him a "criminal organisation leader suspect".
* https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c5yren8mxp8o
> Authorities also closed several roads around Istanbul and banned demonstrations in the city for four days in an apparent effort to prevent protests following Imamoglu’s arrest.
* https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/3/19/turkiye-police-deta...
interesting how we even see this happening constantly in the US, on both sides. just accuse your opposition of being a criminal as much as you can, and throw as much at them as possible, and when the absolute smallest thing sticks, you blow it out of proportion
Well, of course. Loudly and repeatedly accusing other people of things you are guilty off is a pretty good strategy to make low-information people stop giving a shit about what you did.
It also works on people who don't believe in an objective reality, people who can't tell two shades of gray apart, and on people who are just looking for some thread of motivated reasoning to excuse your behavior.
Note that two of the other popular opposition parties’ leaders are in the prison right now. Imamoglu is the candidate for the main opposition party (CHP, Social Democrats) and is leading in the polls. There are multiple investigations for Imamoglu as well. So imprisonment or a political ban is still on the table. This was just a low-key attempt to disqualify him without further ado.
Update: He is detained. That was quicker than I expected.
on terrorism charges(to give more context on the audacity of the attempt)
The really interesting news here is that in Turkey you need a degree to run for president.
I'm sure it sounded like a good idea at the time but this proves once again these kind of limitations placed on leadership positions can and will be exploited.
In 2028, The State of Indiana is going to issue a corrected birth certificate for Pete Buttigieg showing him to be 32 years and therefore not eligible to be president.
I'm LGBT and I feel fairly confident in saying that there's no way in hell America will elect a gay man in my lifetime.
If Pete is the Democratic candidate, it's a freebie to the Republicans.
I think that Democrats that believe a Pete win is possible live in a bubble. Their views are invalid until they travel the States more to increase their exposure to the rest of the electorate.
I (straight guy) unfortunately agree.
I hope he runs, at the very least to keep LGBT people visible in all types of politics, but doesn't get past the primary. As much as I hate hate hate hate this, the Democratic party needs to find a charismatic straight white man, preferably one who has served in the military, probably in his late 40s or 50s. Not someone boring (hence the "charismatic" bit), but someone who "fits the mold", has clear policy proposals on things that average voters actually care about, and doesn't present as radical or "different" in any way.
This unfortunately means someone who won't push social/racial justice issues too hard (alienates white/religious/older people), won't be too science-focused (alienates voters without college degrees) and who will mainly focus on the economy and health care (what people actually claim to care about when making voting decisions), and at least make the right kinds of noises about crime and immigration (even though their impact on those things is somewhat limited as president).
Maybe someone like Mark Kelly would fit the bill, I dunno.
The Democrats don't need a white man, nor someone who served in the military or anything of that sort. People who think this are also living in a bubble. Obama wasn't elected via magic spell.
Democrats just need someone, anyone, who actually has the support of their own party. The last two times they ran someone like that, they won. The last two times they ran someone who either didn't win a primary, or who won a rigged one, they lost.
This feels like Politics 101 yet the party would rather make it about race and gender (not hard to see why - because it helps distract from the party leadership's mistakes and need for replacement...)
> gay man
i think you're wrong and i certainly don't live in a bubble. but the reason i think you're wrong is not that america is progressive enough accept a gay man but because he's basically not gay; he's absolutely the least gay presenting man in the history of gay presenting men (exaggerating a little). he has no lisp, not an ounce of flamboyancy, nothing, zilch, nada. I'm aware he's fully out and there are photos of him with his husband and child and etc.
he's also young, handsome, ivy-league educated, was an officer in the military and deployed, intelligent, extremely well-spoken, and charismatic (not to mention experienced but who cares about such trivial things). he has all of the qualities that made obama successful in 2008 just swap black->gay. most importantly, and i'm not flaunting this: he's a man.
so i do hope he runs because he i think he has a better chance than bernie or kamala or walz or newsom or hakeem or aoc. but hey we all know there won't be an election in 2028 anyway so what are we even talking about here lol.
I really don't think any of that matters. "He can pass for straight" is not going to sway much of anyone who is uncomfortable with the idea of a gay president. Sure, some voters would be more comfortable with Buttigieg than with, say, a flamboyantly gay man, but overall I don't see the electorate going for him.
You're missing the key point of my claim: in 2008 you could literally take your comment, replace gay with black, and it would've been just as "credible". And yet Obama was enormously popular and successful. Lots of people even made colorist remarks about him being "white passing"!
I wonder if he'd "dedicate another apse in his cathedral mind" [0] to trying to find out.
The amount and shamelessness of sycophancy that modern American politicians cultivate is staggering (Trump being the chief example, of course - but seeing this with someone as relatively obscure as Pete is also spectacular).
[0] https://www.wired.com/story/pete-buttigieg-interview-god-bee...
> I'm LGBT and I feel fairly confident in saying that there's no way in hell America will elect a gay man in my lifetime.
I think its much more likely that America would elect a gay man than any member of the neoliberal wing of the Democratic Party.
Which, I mean, still means Pete is out, but for a different reason.
> I think that Democrats that believe a Pete win is possible live in a bubble. Their views are invalid until they travel the States more to increase their exposure to the rest of the electorate.
No one is going to win that doesn't understand that campaigns are about moving the electorate, not finding whether they are already are (from which a competent opponent will move them while you are chasing them.)
The Constitution requires Presidents “have attained to the Age of thirty five Years” [1]. It cites the fact, not the certificate.
The Turkish law doesn’t seem to require an education, it requires a degree. Minor difference. (And the text of the law wouldn’t matter in the end.) But an interesting difference nevertheless.
[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/
Can't this be fixed easily by another university bestowing an honorary degree to this guy then?
> Can't this be fixed easily by another university bestowing an honorary degree to this guy then?
No. That’s a technical solution to a political problem.
But, we’re on HN! Does anyone have a good English translation of the relevant statute? The loopholes to a certificate problem are with the certification authority—how is a compliant degree defined?
Cancelling his degree is just as technical a solution to a political problem.
Sure but Erdogan can just have him cut up for kebab if he doesn't take the hint. Not so the other way around.
> Cancelling his degree is just as technical a solution to a political problem
Violating a law versus violating a norm. Big difference.
Or claim he wasn't even born the US...
Very commonly seen in corporate politics. A promotion has certain requirements which seem objective, but all someone has to do to block your promotion is simply make sure you never get assigned any work which would fulfill the requirements.
United States from the 1890s to the 1960s required voters to pass a literacy before they could vote. We should bring back this rule. Voters should have a minimum level of knowledge about the world, science and democracy in order to vote. This would have prevented the current disaster which threatens not just our democracy, but by denying climate change, the entire planet.
I'm not even American and yet where I'm from it's common knowledge that literacy tests were used to systematically disenfranchise black people from voting.
Right, and that was apparently constitutional. If so we can bring back the law, but this time to disenfranchise dumb voters.
You think at the time they openly said they were trying to take the vote from black people? Or did they say exactly what you're saying now, that they were simply trying to ensure that only smart and educated people could vote.
Your argument is valid, but isn't it clear that the status quo can't continue? Close to half of US voters decided it is OK to ignore climate change. Is it possible to educate them?
No, it wasn't. https://www.annenbergclassroom.org/timeline_event/literacy-t...
As you see in the article you linked, it was ruled unconstitutional only because it violated the 15th amendment. That amendment makes it illegal to deny the right to vote based on race, color, or previous condition of servitude. It is still legal to deny the right to vote if someone is deemed not smart enough.
The literacy tests in question were designed from the start to be ambiguous, so that the same answers could be marked wrong for a black person and correct for a white person. Frankly, there is nothing that could convince me that the Republicans wouldn't try to repeat the same thing if given the opportunity.
It's incredibly naive to think that a tool like poll tests will only be used in the narrow way you personally would like them to be used.
No matter what kind of voter you particularly would like to target, the people administering the poll tests will (ab)use them to disenfranchise whomever they please.
Even if you believe the people in power who administer your elections would do this the "right" way, if you give them power, then the next people who come along -- who you may not agree with -- will also have that power.
Uhhhhhh you do know that even the fairest test for "dumbness" would do exactly the same thing as before, right?
Why would this be a good thing?
Keep in mind that the word "dumb" gets thrown around in all sorts of situations and has no objective, easily-verifiable test for "dumbness". It's entirely plausible that merely "making a decision I disagree with" could be construed as "dumb". Imagine if, say, Biden and Fauci had decided to disenfranchise anyone who refused the COVID vaccine as "dumb", or, worse, Trump and RFK decided that taking those vaccines made you "dumb". See how easily this can be abused?
Even with that aside, the natural consequence of disenfranchising "dumb" people is that you want to fuck them over somehow. No thanks.
I suspect that any configurable or discretionary barrier to voting will be used to disenfranchise voters unfairly, at least some times in some places. As it is, I'm aware of an age requirement (18 years) and a criminal status requirement (not a felon, sometimes just not incarcerated).
A literacy/civics/logic/knowledge/etc. requirement would at best discriminate against people who are uninformed, unintelligent, uneducated, unable or unwilling to take a written test, etc. But they are people whom the laws affect and who should be able to vote. I don't think that they are a comparable category to the exceptions mentioned above, but that's debatable.
Most importantly, the test would be optimized to exclude whoever the test designers and proctors consider, knowingly or not, unworthy.
I understand the desire to exclude the dummies. I know thoughtful and educated people who espouse the same wish, but it's just too dangerous.
If you've seen some of the kinds of poll tests that were administered, especially during the Jim Crow era, you'd change your tune. These tests can very easily be structured to be ambiguous, and can be graded in such a way to disqualify whatever groups of people you want.
Right but now you can have ways to remove bias. Like automated assignment and grading
creating unbiased tests is a really difficult thing to do even when trying really hard, and whatever tests we have for voting would absolutely get used to disenfranchise certain groups of people. just look at how bad gerrymandering is despite being explicitly illegal
Wait until you see what the requirements are to run for president in Singapore:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presidential_elections_in_Sing...
Mysteriously, the requirements are tightened up and/or new ones are invented every time a credible-looking opposition candidate pops up. Most famously, before the 2017 election the requirement was imposed that the president has to be selected from a rotating selection of races, in this case Malay, which by complete coincidence disqualified the otherwise-qualified Chinese opposition candidate:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Singaporean_presidential_...
Turkish law experts: say some other university grants an honorary degree in response to this.
Would that make him compliant again to run for office?
IANAL, but you generally can't rules lawyer your way out of an autocracy.
well, if you can arbitrarily nullify degrees, you can also decide the new degree is not valid.
In other, recent, non-related news, Columbia University revoked the diplomas of some pro-Palestine protestors[1]. The CBS headline buries the lede, but revoking diplomas is not too low for American universities.
1. https://www.cbsnews.com/newyork/news/columbia-university-pro...
From the article it sounds like they were revoked due to causing property damage to the university. Even if you disagree with that move, it seems like a rather different situation.
I think in such situations it can be withheld but not withdrawn, it's pretty common for universities to hold back credentials until debts are paid. But once it's been given I think the only scenario which it can be withdrawn is if it was given under fraudulent circumstances. Like a newspaper retraction, it can only be retracted if the original statement was found to be false.
The perpetrator should be sued for damages which is the normal thing to happen. Withdrawing properly received credentials opens the door to yet another extra-judicial punishment and we already have too many of those.
(EDIT) I've since googled around a bit and am surprised that there does seem to be a degree of discretion available to the university to revoke degrees that I was unaware of. I had always considered degrees to be like an affidavit, a statement of a fact as the institution understands it. There are plenty of horrible people who have done heinous things and I've never heard of their degrees being taken away. Perhaps one difference here is that the behavior under question was during their undergrad.
> Withdrawing properly received credentials opens the door to yet another extra-judicial punishment and we already have too many of those.
I don’t understand why this is even an option? So the degree is never truly owned by the recipient then if it can be withdrawn/ revoked? Just another reason not to invest time and money into it.
Big education is worse than big tech. At least we only add ads to your TV and car instead of straight up yoinking it. /s
> Just another reason not to invest time and money into it.
No it’s not. Not unless you plan on taking over campus buildings and vandalizing them, I guess.
The degree isn’t some unrevocable item that you own. It’s an endorsement from the university. There are contractual agreements involved and it doesn’t take much imagination to think of how taking over a campus building and vandalizing it (while encouraging current students to join you) is grounds for them to cancel the degree.
> The degree isn’t some unrevocable item that you own.
This is what I find so surprising. Having contractual stipulations I would need to abide by AFTER getting my degree for fear of revocation is nonsense to me, gross even. I don’t care if you’re the Unabomber. It’s silly for a university to be policing that. I guess I’m naive.
To be clear, so there’s no temptation to move the goal posts, I’m talking about a degree “already earned and received”.
> Having contractual stipulations I would need to abide by AFTER getting my degree for fear of revocation is nonsense to me
The conduct in question happened pre-degree even if the punishment was after. I think that is a pretty important distinction.
most contracts cover conduct during the contract even if it only comes to light after the end of the contract, so that wouldn't be so unusual.
Sure I hear you. I agree that this distinction matters.
What annoys me is that revocation is even an option at all. I think this scenario is such an edge case that it really doesn't need an exception, and if supporting it means having the power to revoke a degree, then in my mind it's a lever for abuse and not something we'd want to normalize. It seems, to me at least, like a petty abuse of power that they shouldn't even have.
Eh, I attended a conservative Christian college and there was a pretty strict religious code of conduct students were required to abide by. I would find it pretty disturbing for the school to retroactively rescind my engineering degree due to my having drunk underage or being an atheist.
You can come up with whatever justification you want, but this action is unprecedented and clearly a politically motivated punishment.
My high school wouldn't let you graduate if you had unpaid library fines, i can't imagine what they would do if you caused tens of thousands of dollars in damage. I agree rescinding post-granting degree is weird but we are still talking about behaviour that happened while they were students and that happened relatively recently (such that disciplinary procedures could have realistically started while they were still students).
It is unusual, but the situation is unusual. I think calling it unprecedented is a bit much. Its plausible it could be politically motivated, but it seems equally plausible that the school is pissed that they now have to find thousands in the budget to repair the damage done. Causing tens of thousands of dollars in damages is a plausible reason for the school to be mad.
Ekrem İmamoğlu, the man whose degree was taken away, is 55 and got his degree in the early 90s. What is "recent" about that?
I was replying to someone comparing the article to pro-palestine protestors from columbia who had their degree removed.
I agree 100% that people like Ekrem İmamoğlu is a totally different situation. That was the thing i was trying to argue.
I think you're claiming the Ekrem İmamoğlu case is completely different, I don't think that's what anyone else is saying.
In any case Columbia had ample time to address it's students before granting them diplomas - no facts have changed between them and now, nor have any new facts been made public. It's only turning heel because of political pressure by the President of the United States.
I actually tend to agree with this (once its given i think morally its too late to take it away, except maybe if they cheated). I still think its a totally different situation than the turkey one though.
They are both situations in which a University was politically pressured by the government to revoke degrees for political purposes. The difference is just the specific goals of the government doing the pressuring. You don’t think Columbia just coincidentally decided to take this action months after the fact, after having its funding pulled by the US administration, do you?
I don't agree with politically pressuring organizations but it could just as easily be politically motivated to not enforce established rules on criminal behaviour.
This is honestly something very strange to me, because a bunch of academics are the furthest thing on Earth from the police. Why can't vandals have a normal day in court and go to regular jail?
I don’t think you understand how long it takes for universities to decide how to handle punishment situations.
This one has a significant complication of parallel legal action. They seized and vandalized a building. They’ve been reviewing evidence and building cases for a long time.
These things take time.
If you’re operating an honest judicial board and you’re receiving high profile threats from the US government backed by huge funding cuts to the University, you have a choice. (1) Comply or simply appear to comply, by rendering a favorable ruling immediately, (2) Establish that your ruling is not the result of government pressure. You’d do the latter by (for example) showing your work and proving that the results were already determined before the pressure campaign began; or you’d change the timing so that it doesn’t look like cause and effect; you could even suspend your ruling on the grounds that maintaining the appearance of the University and Board’s independence is a higher priority than punishing a few protestors.
Columbia did none of the things in category (2). I know it’s 2025 and we have to pretend that this apparently corrupt thing is innocent, even while the folks involved make no effort to defend it. But it isn’t innocent, and everyone involved knows what’s going on.
Did the trump admin reverse course?
There is no point in giving into threats if the other party is still going to follow through regardless. I think the best argument against this being due to political pressure from trump is it doesn't seem effective in getting rid of that pressure. If trump is the thing they care about here, why would they bother if trump is going to do trump things regardless.
I don't know what "reverse course" means here. This is extortion, not a simple transaction like purchasing a sandwich in a deli.
The Trump administration is withholding funding and simultaneously making a series of explicit (and completely inappropriate) demands that it wishes Columbia to comply with. I assume what we're watching is a kind of "negotiation" period in which Columbia either does or does not do various things, and then over time the Trump administration decides whether to relent or punish them further. There is no real pressure on the administration to just stop.
One of the explicit demands the administration made was for Columbia to disband the University Judicial Board (the exact group that handed down these decisions) presumably because they felt that it would not sufficiently punish the protesters. Coincidentally, around the same time this happened, the board "independently" decided to punish the protesters quite severely.
> in such situations it can be withheld but not withdrawn, it's pretty common for universities to hold back credentials until debts are paid
The article says Columbia “temporarily revoked the diplomas of some students.” I imagine this is what’s going on.
Well they can't force you to regurgitate the knowledge you got there or remove it from your resume, so big deal.
[dead]
The article says they took over a building on campus, barricaded themselves inside, and damaged it. It also says they rejected a deal that would have resulted in dismissal of the charges but it’s not clear why.
That’s certainly a very different situation than simply being a protestor. I understand that everyone has different definitions of what protest means, but regardless it’s not a free pass to escape the consequences of your actions.
If any current or former students had taken over a campus building, locked others out of using it, and damaged it they’d probably end up in jail with a long list of charges. Having their degrees “temporarily revoked” seems like a massive slap on the wrist for the situation, not some dystopian unfair outcome.
That sounds like an excuse to do whatever they were going to do.
>" Even if you disagree with that move, it seems like a rather different situation."
Nope. It is the same. Twisting arms to remove opposing political views. If they've committed crimes then there are laws to deal with it.
Damaging property is a crime. Plenty of universities withdraw degrees for vandals, kick them out, and sometimes prosecute them. Claiming “free speech” has never allowed “break laws without repercussions.”
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How would they revoke someone's degree in either country? Do they break into someone's house and steal the piece of paper? A degree is awarded by the institution but I don't see how they could then claim that they did not meet the requirements for the degree retroactively absent some proof of academic misconduct. What possible difference would such a renovation make to anyone outside the university?
> What possible difference would such a renovation make to anyone outside the university?
In some places, potential employers call the university to verify that you have the degree you claimed to prevent fraud. If so, the university can simply tell them the degree had been revoked thus blocking you from a job offer if it requires it.
Sure but wouldn't the institution have to justify the revocation? If it was, say, due to supporting the wrong faction in the Middle East the employer might not support the revocation. Without justification, couldn't the degree holder sue the institution for some sort of defamation?
> Sure but wouldn't the institution have to justify the revocation?
The people answering that phone or email are low-level admin staff far removed from those who decided to revoke the degree – I don’t know whether they have access to the reasoning or justification behind the revocation.
> Without justification, couldn't the degree holder sue the institution for some sort of defamation?
I honestly hope so – I’m quite against being able to revoke a degree due to other reasons than plain fraud (like plagiarism or fabrication). But I don’t know the laws well enough to answer.
They will deny that you have a degree from them if asked. The difference it can make:
When a future employer has degree requirements, the university will say "no, he has no degree from here" when someone calls to check, closing off all sorts of jobs.
If someone is doing a background check, the "claims a fancy degree but the school denies it" line is not going to look good.
Etc.
Sure the person still has the education, but they haven't got the right credentials in a verifiable way.
The value of a degree is in that the institution confirms, at any request, that said person has that degree.
It's not the paper.
Definitely not the education that occurred there it seems
You can get education for free on Kahn Academy ... but not the networking or confirmation of credentials.
That’s an unnecessarily reductionist take. The value is obviously having demonstrated that you’ve completed the studies required.
The degree is simply the formal proof. If a degree is revoked, that’s a secondary signal that the studies were marked as completed at one time but something later happened that was so egregious that the university felt the need to rescind any endorsements.
Discovery of rampant cheating to achieve graduation would do it. Taking over a campus building and vandalizing it seems like a reasonable thing to cause the university to want to rescind their endorsement of you.
> Taking over a campus building and vandalizing it seems like a reasonable thing to cause the university to want to rescind their endorsement of you.
I take it you are unfamiliar with what happened at Columbia University in 1968, and in particular how the university feels about it now.
TIL, diplomas are not actually owned by the recipient.
Their diplomas were not revoked for being pro-Palestine, they were revoked for seizing a building, trespassing and vandalism. That's a false equivalence to what is happening in Turkey.
Still crazy that diplomas can be revoked for non-academic problems. Diplomas should only be able to be revoked if it turns out they were gained using academic misconduct (in my opinion).
If I murder someone during my diploma, get the diploma, and then get caught, will the diploma be taken away? How does that make sense?
If you murder someone on the campus of the university, then yes, they might cancel your degree.
Why?
Lots of felons keep their degree.
In this case, no one was murdered. The crime is more like trespassing. Should we take degrees of people who get caught dealing drugs? Insider trading? Pirating movies?
Do you think this punishment represents a consistent policy of the university, or was it applied under government pressure?
The diploma says you've successfully completed an education, and has the knowledge and skills it should confer.
Murdering a professor doesn't change that fact, so from a strict logical standpoint it should not be affected.
That said, I don't really have a problem if they do.
The theory put up is that your behavior in university, before you get the diploma does matter. If you get expelled due to an action you took before the diploma was granted, the diploma may be revoked, even if that decision is made after the diploma is already in your hands. This is true. If you're caught cheating or commit a crime your diploma may get revoked, including in the situation that you already have the paper in hand.
In that sense this is not revoking a diploma, it's just applying the punishment for what they did before they graduated.
And while obviously Columbia's actions are politically motivated, I still don't think it's remotely comparable with what's happening in Turkey. The New York protestors really are being punished for what they did, and not to prevent them from running for election (which most of them couldn't do anyway, as you cannot do that on a visa, I don't think even a green card lets you hold public office)
> The theory put up is that your behavior in university, before you get the diploma does matter.
Ok, but why should it?
The diploma doesn't certify that you're a pleasant person, have good morals or follow the law. It means that you passed some exams and are expected to have some competency in your subject. The only reason to doubt that this is the case after already giving someone a diploma is cheating, which means they didn't actually pass the exams. Other misconduct during working on the diploma has nothing to do with the qualifications for the diploma.
University used to prove that you are an upstanding citizen capable of holding public office and doing that well, honestly and fairly. Not destroying stuff and following the law is part of that. That's the reason it's required in Turkey. It was very much part of the fabric of the Roman Empire, and when muslims conquered the eastern roman empire, they didn't conquer it to destroy it, they just wanted its money and power. So they kept everything intact, except the head of government, and they kept the rules about public office requiring a diploma. They went so far as to repress islam, even keeping most of the social progress that "the prophet" swore to destroy (such as the abolishment of slavery, which they mostly kept abolished, at least in Turkey itself) to try to maintain the economic power of the empire, which of course didn't work, but ...
For that purpose it makes 100% sense that good behavior is a requirement of getting a diploma.
That's the reason the Turkey situation is what it is (of course Erdogan has already destroyed public institutions in Turkey, during the Erdogan-orchestrated "coup" against Erdogan). There, it's being used as an electoral weapon, and that's not what's happening in the US.
The American situation is different, but some parts remain. A diploma is not meant to just prove knowledge, it is meant to prove that you can be trusted to (help) organize a particular part of society, and that includes things like behavior standards. A lot of this, such as loyalty oaths (as in multiple, most famously the hippocratic oath, but certainly not just that one), the requirement to be accepted by currently important public servants (e.g. there was a time in Europe that to pass lawyers needed to present themselves to a judge from the supreme court and survive whatever test he wanted). There were globally mandated subjects, as in for every university degree (philosophy, state structure, religion, law, rhetoric). Those were not just mandated courses you had to take, you had to pass. 100% on everything, but fail religion? Tough, no diploma (one famous example of that was Einstein, who made it a sport to fail religion class, and was as an exception granted a diploma anyway)
Why?
What if you murder someone off campus? Is the moral issue the location the murder occurred?
Which is ridiculous.
2 questions:
1. Why now (for Columbia)?
2. Why now (for Turkey)?
The fact that it's in the realm of possibility that the answer is the same for both (political expedience) is a stain on America/Columbia U.
The Columbia incident was only a few months ago and they’ve been going through the process of building a case, pursuing legal options, and reviewing evidence.
The article says there were over 40 people involved and they’ve been building cases against each of them.
I don’t think there’s a conspiracy here. These things are a lot of work, involve a lot of lawyers, and take a lot of time. It’s only been a few months.
You don't think the fact that the current White House has withdrawn funding as leverage, and is pressuring universities to suppress pro-Palestinian sentiment is relevant?
Not so long ago it wasn't enough for justice to be done, but it has to be seen to be done.
In addition to the other commenters points occupying and renaming Hamilton Hall is something of a tradition at Columbia. These students were already facing criminal/civil charges where appropriate.
> they were revoked for seizing a building, trespassing and vandalism.
Allright, I'll bite the hook.
1. Precisely what categories of crimes do you think degrees should be revoked for?
2. Should it be automatic, or up to the whims of a political appointee?
2.1 If it's the latter, is that really the society you want to live in? Why?
It's easy to find a reason to shit on people you dislike. It's a lot harder to find a principled reason to do so, that can stand up to basic scrutiny.
(Of course, the current solution to this quandary is to gleefully abandon any principles.)
> they were revoked for seizing a building, trespassing and vandalism
To be precise, it sounds like they’ve been revoked until damages are paid back. This is no different from a diploma being revoked because your last tuition cheque bounced.
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But they earned that degree and received it upon graduating right? Isn't this like trying to erase the past? Did they graduate from the university or didn't they? It feels like just another sign of the fabric of our society coming apart.
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So you don't support freedom of speech? Or you support it only for people who agree with you? Do you believe the government should pressure institutions to punish people who express messages the government doesn't like?
It's interesting that Columbia protesters get their degrees revoked but J6 protesters get pardons. How do you explain the difference?
J6 protestors are lawbreakers. IMO, they should not get pardons, but Trump is a despot with the power to issue pardons. I can't do anything about that.
The people at Columbia were not mere "protestors". They were physically abusive bigots who trampled the freedoms of people around them. If they were Jews chanting islamophobic slurs, destroying property, and preventing anyone with a keffiyeh from attending class, they should suffer the same consequences.
I get that "peaceful protest" can be seen as an oxymoron. But what happened at Columbia should have been stopped the moment it started. It is bigotry. It is hypocrisy. But even if you ignore the moral and ethical failings, it was against the rules.
> They were physically abusive bigots who trampled the freedoms of people around them.
If true, ok, charge them with a crime. That's why we have courts. Implementing a punishment, under pressure from the president, without due process or a chance to defend themselves, is contrary to American law and values.
We already have laws on the books to deal with physical violence. As for verbal abuse, welcome to America - aka sticks and stones country (as guaranteed by our constitution). Anyways, why should a particular faith get special privileges?
When people physically block your access to classes you paid for, on a campus you have an equal right to be at, and they're blocking you on the basis of your faith or ethnicity, that's not "sticks and stones".
Edit: clarity about the basis
There's laws on the books to deal with blocking access and movement. You mentioned verbal abuse, that's different. If campus safety nor law is not getting enforced, there's avenues for addressing it.
There are laws on the books for hate speech as well. This was hate speech dressed up as "protest"
It's clear that you hold these positions pretty strongly, and there is nothing wrong with that. However, I am wondering why you felt compelled to post your closely held personal positions from a throwaway account? It minimizes the statement quite a bit and makes it looks like a drive by posting.
Because I have a life and I have no desire to become a target for the mob, "woke" or otherwise. This is a sensitive subject. People hate. Anonymity here allows me to speak my mind in safety. It's the opposite of drive-by posting.
Also, I don't need people digging into my identity and using that to deconstruct what I say.
Doesn't the sheer amount of dissonance make you think twice though? Maybe just a little bit? Consider the commitments you need to make and secondary beliefs you need to have, just to keep this narrative alive right now. You have pretty much implied this point yourself. I can't truly imagine what it must be like to live in the world you do, and I am sorry.
I mean, the world is not much better for the other side I guess, but at least there there is sense of international solidarity, fighting for a common struggle; that the bad guys are specific and nuance in everything is structurally required. It just seems like you need to literally sign on to having gang stalker mentality about the whole world, all because there is one big thing you can't possibly question.
I am truly sorry for how this has affected you, nothing bad deserves to happen to you either way, truly.
Thankfully I enjoy anonymity behind my throwaway handle.
There is no justification for mobs chanting for the death of me and mine. Their coded slogans are not very coded. "Anti-genocide" protests who call for genocide are not honest nor legitimate.
There is not justification why several decades after Brown v Board of Education, there needs to be any gray area around equal access. A durable mob preventing people from feeling safe going to classes they paid for is no different from the KKK. No matter whose politics they espouse.
You're not _truly_ sorry if you're concern trolling. The Israel/Palestine conflict is my lived experience of nearly half a century. My opinions are opinions, but they are very far from uninformed. I have no way to prove this to you.
I am not trolling! I guess I am just pointing out that what you are saying is quite literally shocking, and would be to anyone who believes this is what is going on. And you don't have to listen to me and you can keep wishing whatever pain you want on strangers or whatever; but I think it would at least behoove you to step back sometimes and appreciate just how dissonant things are from this perspective. Like how do you even explain this level of generalized evil in the world? What do you think happened to this culture all of the sudden, to step it up to this level? Even being more grounded, what could be going on, in your view, at the admissions office at Columbia et al to allow in so many literal Nazis in, so to speak?? Like, truly, I can't imagine how you are grounded at all, I definitely would be going crazy.
Like is there anyway you could even appreciate the Occam's razor here that at the very least, the protestors in this case may actually minimally think they are doing the right thing? You can believe people to be trying to be virtuous even if they are misguided or deluded or somehow led astray. Is that too worthy of such punishment and ire?
Is it really the case you can see only prejudice and hate from the other side here? That this many just ordinary people (read annoying liberal arts kids) are just pure evil? There is no room or evidence at all to see that we are all just fumbling around, reacting to the terror and pain we are all disproportionally exposed to? What sickness, what trauma could be so universally applied to all of us to create such a universal and bewildering hate? This is not rhetorical, I am truly curious.
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This is not only revoking his diploma, but establishing a very dangerous precedent in Turkey: "all rights are temporary and can be revoked on a whim"
This is absolutely nothing new for Turkey.
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Do you not see how preventing your opponent from running for election is different from temporary measures to protect people in a pandemic that has killed millions?
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I have to admit I'm offended.
Your arbitrary borders include whole eastern europe, most of the balkans, sweden, finland, estonia, latvia, around half of africa, greece, middle east, basically whole asia, indonesia, india, china, russia, and half of australia. There may be countries equally as bad in that list, but saying everyone does it with "some tiny exceptions" is egregious.
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That sounds like pretty arbitrary borders you are setting: I don't really see much difference between stuff happening West of Vienna and East of South Korea too (one of those countries has a president who basically tried to stage a coup, and now are back in power ignoring any rule of law).
> one of those countries has a president who basically tried to stage a coup, and now are back in power ignoring any rule of law
President Yoon of South Korea has been suspended since December, as a result of the martial law incident and the following impeachment. (Actually, Yoon's prime minister, who first became acting President, was also impeached and suspended. It's someone else now.)
He was talking about Trump
I see. Droll.
Exactly.
India is quite big. Any Indians around here want to comment on whether these shenanigans are common there? I have the impression they're not but maybe I'm wrong.
Talking about India, Lex Fridman interviewed Modi [1] recently, worth a listen or read.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43405546
India has its own set of political issues, but as far as I can tell nothing this egregious.
Lets consider the fact that after 10 years of Modi and the BJP having overwhelming majorities in Parliament, with Modi’s personally popularity close to all time highs, over a period where many external watchdogs essentially claimed democracy was dead in India, in an election where the BJP was expected to completely whitewash the opposition, not only did the BJP do worse than the previous election, they lost their standalone majority in parliament and had to form a government in coalition with other parties, and were a handful of seat losses away from losing to the opposition coalition.
In general the parliamentary system with a figurehead president as well as India’s extremely culturally diverse nature and weak federal government system, and strong judicial system, seems to have kept Indian democracy almost unreasonably effective relative to India’s poverty, education, and development levels.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rupee_note
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardeep_Singh_Nijjar
If your point was the Indian government was involved, there is not evidence to it.
https://m.economictimes.com/news/india/no-hard-proof-canadas...
Not sure what your point is. Nijjar was a terrorist linked to assassinations in Punjab and committed to destruction of India. A nation , democracy included, has a right to protect itself.
A nation has a right to protect itself.
It does not have a right to use extrajudicial assassins in a foreign country to kill someone who does not actively pose a threat. In a democracy you have a right to a trial, to see the evidence against you, etc. you don’t just kill people.
By the same logic, India would be fine if Canada sent covert assassins to India to go after the assassins and the people that ordered it? Should Canada send assassins into India to go after the people that have been illegally influencing Canadian elections? After all, they pose a threat to the country, and a country has a right to defend itself…
There is a process for extradition, and international prosecution. India chose to not pursue that process, and assassinate a Canadian citizen on Canadian soil.
That's a interesting point considering that Nijjar had been denied asylum more than once and caught lying on his application. Giving him asylum was a result of weird ghetto vote bank politics of Brampton and Surrey.
It's not that Canada has never sent assassins to foreign nations. Canada participated in Afghanistan war and people including children, in Pakistan were killed by NATO airstrikes. Where was the due process for those kids playing soccer who were killed?
I do not condone any killing by anyone. But people in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.
> Canada participated in Afghanistan war and people including children, in Pakistan were killed by NATO airstrikes.
That's horrible. It should not happen. I was very clear that extrajudicial killings of civilians are wrong.
> I do not condone any killing by anyone. But people in glass houses shouldn't be throwing stones.
Agreed. If NATO did something that you find comparable and you condemn it, then by your own standards, what India did is also a violation and never should have been done.
What India did is arguably even worse, since the killing of kids in a war zone at least had no intent or malice, just incompetence. Whereas the killing in Canada was a purposeful and intentional violent and public assassination, performed by hired civilians outside of internationally agreed military command and justice structures, it should be seen as an even more egregious violation of international standards.
> A nation , democracy included, has a right to protect itself.
They were not doing that when they committed an assassination and violated a nations sovereignty to do so.
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> "all rights are temporary and can be revoked on a whim"
That is the basis on which practically everything I have purchased from American companies (or their subsidiary in a tax haven) exists.
Everything?? Or do you just mean digital media?
Everything connected to Internet
Everything. For example, try not paying your property taxes for some time to see if it's really your "property".
Not paying your taxes is not equivalent to "revoked on a whim".
I have a homestead exemption, because I have a homestead. So I don't pay property taxes. Furthermore, my family had their property imminent domained in southern California, where property taxes are quite high, so I'm not sure this comment makes sense, from either direction. "Its your land unless the government really needs it" means it isn't your land.
A lot of the value of land comes from its neighbors: roads, schools, trains all cost money but make land more valuable. It's only fair the cost of those things comes from taxing the increased value of the land.
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Erdogan has turned the country into an electoral autocracy. The Swedish Varieties of Democracy centre released its annual report analyzing the state of democracies around the world as of the end of 2024. America is still listed as a liberal democracy. It's an open question whether it still will be by the end of next year.
https://www.v-dem.net
Equally shitty is the fact that 27 other people probably got their degrees annulled, just as a cover your ass measure from the unis side.
Equally shitty? That affects 27 people, ruining the democracy and rule of law affects millions!
Wasn't aware that a university degree is a requirement to run for president in Turkey. I'm not aware of any other country that does that.
edit: Wikipedia actually has a list[1]. Did you know you need to have a bank account to be eligible to become president of France?
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_presidential_qualifica...
I googled a bit around because I found the requirement weird, and it's slightly misleading. Candidates need to have a separate bank account for the election, so that it can be monitored (there are various limits to how much funding they can get and so on as far as I understand).
> Did you know you need to have a bank account to be eligible to become president of France?
In combination with Europe’s PSD2 directive [0], that effectively means you need to have a Google or Apple account to become President of France.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Payment_Services_Directive
How do you get from PSD2 to Google/ Apple?
More and more banks have put their money on smartphone apps to implement the 2FA requirement that PSD2 mandates. Turns out that European banks really like that walled-garden thing. Some banks still allow you to use SMS but pressure is mounting to do away with SMS-based 2FA. Other 2FA solutions (e.g. national CAP schemes [0]) are on their way out, too. So are call centers, which used to let you do banking on the phone.
In Europe, you are living in increasingly difficult times if you want to do banking unless you happen to own a smartphone running an OS made by Google or Apple, and to be a customer on their respective app store.
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Authentication_Program
Didn't know that. Thanks. In Belgium, everyone has a card and an authenticator device so the problem doesn't occur.
Wow, you have to have a university degree to run for election as president? That’s a wild law.
Why it is a wow?
Well at least in my opinion, it seems extremely undemocratic.
University education is a privilege that some people won’t be able to experience (financial constraints, having to care for relatives, …), and I don’t think it’s a unique qualifier for being a good president.
I think if people want to elect someone who didn’t go to university, they should be able to.
Democracy doesn't work when ordinary people are not educated. Education in Turkey has been very poor. Many people have finished only 5th or 8th grades. Many didn't go to a high school. Thus people are not critical thinkers. They are voting as if they are supporting a football team. Someone popular with a low education can fool people, just like in Turkey or Venezuella. And now here we see the result. Erdoğan has no diploma and he is trying to keep his seat by doing everything.
Would you mind your money in the bank managed by illeterate person? Or would you mind going to a doctor without any degree? Why you are going to trust somone who does not have legal degree?
In my opinion university degree is not enough. He should have at least masters degree.
If the democracy doesn’t work because voters aren’t educated, you can’t just bolt on constraints onto the election process until you like the result. That’s undemocratic by definition. The solution would be to educate voters.
> They are voting as if they are supporting a football team
In the post-TV era, I believe this is true in all countries.
> Democracy doesn't work when ordinary people are not educated
When USA was formed and for the first couple hundred years of its existence, most people in it didn't have a high school or college degree. In fact many of the founders of the United States had no degree, including Benjamin Franklin, who was a newspaper editor, scientist, statesman and inventor.
Literacy can be learned by the 5th grade by most people. It can continue to be improved by self-study. Other skills can be learned by life experience.
Modern schooling can mostly be faked. It's pretty easy to breeze your way through a four year degree these days. Professors are even incentivized to make the courses easy. Hell, you can even have LLMs do your homework for you these days.
I don't think many people look up to USA and think "oh yeah, that's a great system, we should have it". Many systems cannot be replicated for cultural, historical and other reasons.
Frankly, requiring basic qualifications for a very complex job is actually a solid thing. Especially when any trade school/university degree would work. I don't agree with revoking of the degrees part, but that's just government trying to shut down the opposition. If it wasn't for the degree, they would've done something else, just like it happens during every election.
I think many people actually do look up to the USA given the hundreds of millions who want to migrate here. I will give you that culture matters when it comes to political systems.
However, there are no arbitrary qualifications or certifications worth imposing on a country's leadership. They are blatantly gameable and trivially corruptible, as seen in the example.
Leadership qualities are apparent in their own right and can be earned from a diverse path of life achievements. Those might include founding a successful business, acting as a general, major, or captain in the military, inventing new products or technologies, running a charity, heading a police or fire department, running a church, working up the corporate ladder from entry level, etc etc. There are thousands of career paths that don't require degrees and there are phenomenal leaders within those domains. It's incredibly ignorant to deny those unique and valuable people from being eligible for arbitrary reasons.
Critical thinking ain't something that you get somehow magically taught on university. Life, its hardships and some sort of keen interest in understanding people and society around you may lead one to such wisdom. Undemocratic countries in fact go directly against that, having education system producing obedient uncritical drones. The more time you spend in it, the greater effect it has on you. IQ doesn't matter that much neither here.
This sort of primitive elitism ain't the healthiest approach.
Democracy works just fine either way. You just might not like the results.
Also, because a person doesn't have an education doesn't mean they are stupid or can't think critically. Further, there are plenty of educated people who vote for their favorite team.
Apparently colleges and trade schools count as well.
Except actually they don't, because no matter how you qualify, it will get taken away anyway if you try to use it.
For a quick reference to anti-freedom-of-the-press and Internet censorship under Erdogan in Turkey, recently:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Turkey
You know how people are always saying not to write laws like "Only people with college degrees can run for office", because bad people might weaponize it down the line even if you write it today with the best of intentions?
An authoritarian can weaponize any law really
Well, yeah, but you have to get more creative to weaponize "thou shalt not kill".
That ship has sailed long time ago, we had crusades, jihad or orthodox church representatives blessing weapons going straight for battles
Why did they annul it? I'm assuming they gave a reason, not sure if that's a reasonable assumption.
Real reason: Opposition (CHP) is the first party since the local elections and it is almost certain that Imamoglu will replace Erdogan in the next elections. CHP primaries will be held this weekend and Imamoglu was the sole candidate.
Made-up reason: Imamoglu transfered to Istanbul University from a foreign university (Cyprus) in 1990. They claimed that university was not accredited by Turkish Higher Education Council. That was not really a requirement for the transfer at the time and the universities used to have more autonomy. Today they also annuled the degrees of 28 more people who did the same thing in 1990, just for the optics. I think one of them is a college professor.
> I think one of them is a college professor.
I saw an argument about this latter decision which (rightfully) claimed that, if what happened is lawful, then they should also revoke the diplomas of all students of that college professor.
Per the article:
> In a statement, the university said 38 people had transferred to its management faculty's English-language programme in 1990 in an irregular way.
> The graduations and degrees of 28 of them, including Imamoglu, were annulled as being "void" and due to "clear errors" regarding the regulations of the Higher Education Board (YOK), the school said.
They annulled it so he couldn’t run against Ergodan.
It's interesting that people seem to think the problem is "politically motivated" revoking of degrees, rather than the degree requirement itself.
It's like no one thought even a single step ahead about the consequences of a degree requirement. It just moves power to the people that give out degrees. Some people are clearly only pretending not to understand this, but a significant amount seem to really not understand it.
This extends to other areas of economics and politics too, where most proposed systems only move or concentrate power and don't have the desired effect at all. I'm not sure where the educational failure here is. It seems like the only people that engage with these problems honestly and seriously are cryptocurrency developers and cryptographers. I would imagine mainstream economists are only pretending not to understand. Meanwhile some large fraction of the population really does think you can just declare by fiat that presidents have to be more educated and it will just work.
I doubt the university did this for non-political reasons, and requiring a university degree to hold office is a bad idea anyway.
What happens if some foreign university confers an honorary degree on him?
In Turkish educational system, honorary degrees are only applicable to the institute granting the degree itself. You instead need to have an earned degree to be able to use the privileges outside the institute granting the degree.
Thanks, I wanted to look it up but don't trust machine translation on legal documents.
I'm sure this will come soon to the US with our new overlords looking for new dystopian ideas.
In the US, what are the privileges that you earn by possessing a degree?
Debt
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43404726, though, it sets a dangerous precedent: any right can be revoked anytime for any reason, nothing is truly earned.
I think, at the end of the day, the root cause comes down to whether the judiciary is truly independent. In theory, Turkey is governed by the rule of law, with a separation of powers and secularism. In practice, however, there’s a deep divide between various subcultures and a significant lack of trust.
Would that be possible in the US?
Could Havard annull a degree retrospectively e.g. due to pressure from donors or the president ?
You can't even have US-political posts on HN (like you can have Turkish one here) so it probably would be possible.
Columbia just did, after pressure from the Trump Administration: https://www.jns.org/columbia-says-it-expelled-some-anti-isra...
Erdogan worries me as a NATO partner. They're incredibly important geopolitically.
The rule of law appears to be disappearing, and its turning into a Lukashenko/Putin situation.
The NATO was never an ideological partnership. It's a strategic partnership, that's all. There have been other dictatorships in the past that were NATO member as well: Greece, Portugal.
> The NATO was never an ideological partnership.
ROTFL.
Just like how Putin had two actual opposition Presidential candidates ruled ineligible due to 'irregularities' with their applications.
The more fundamental question is why a degree should be necessary to run for President. US does not require one for example.
https://archive.ph/Y81Z1
The Trump administration is similarly trying to purge / stifle academic institutions and bend them to their uses.
For example, the Trump administration has told Columbia to dissolve specific academic departments. See this earlier discussion:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43358925
The US and Turkish governments are operating under the same authoritarian rules of engagement, it's just that the Turks are further along the trajectory.
I love how these things always turn into a game of telephone. That link, which links to something else, does not say what you claim it does.
The most egregious is the General Service Administration requiring that Columbia place one department under academic receivership (which is nothing like dissolve) for 5 years, in order to continue receiving federal funding. Columbia notably is also a private Ivy League university with an endowment in the tens of billions of dollars whereas at stake is apparently up to ~$0.4 billion of Federal funding. If Columbia feels the demands are unjust and wanted to legally challenge them or even take a stand on values, they could do so extremely comfortably.
LINKED IN THE COMMENTS (I was trying not to repost stuff that was in the prior thread):
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/13/nyregion/columbia-univers...
A direct quote from the letter the Feds sent Columbia reads:
MESAAS Department – Academic Receivership. Begin the process of placing the Middle East, South Asian, and African Studies department under academic receivership for a minimum of five years. The University must provide a full plan, with date certain deliverables, by the March 20, 2025, deadline.
The NY Times article provides a directed link to the PDF of the letter.
Awaiting your retractions doubters...
Columbia university can do whatever it wants. However, if they want to take free money from the federal government then they have to jump through more hoops.
That article you reference says nothing about dissolving academic departments. Perhaps you are referring to academic receivership.
Less than a year ago multiple States attempted to remove Trump from the Presidential ballot. That’s the closer analogue to the shenanigans in Turkey, not the attempted equivalence you’re trying to make.
Refusing to accept that you lost an election and then attempting an insurrection to overthrow the candidate that you lost to isn't quite the same thing.
J6 wasn't the first protest Washington D.C. has ever seen, but it was somehow the first they allowed to get out of hand.
Don't worry, Trump pardoned all his cronies, so it won't be the last.
Biden pardoned his whole family, from what do you think they were gullilty of?
Yes, Trump refusing to send in the DC Guard could be considered allowing it to get out of hand.
The mayor of DC is in charge of DC's guard, and Trump did request their presence, but the mayor failed to abide the request.
This is a lie.
This is a blatant lie: Trump resisted sending the national guard and the Mayor of DC had to ask Virginia and Maryland for police assistance. Ultimately Pence pushed the Pentagon to respond, and he’s never been forgiven for it.
https://www.cnn.com/2021/01/06/politics/pence-national-guard...
Yes, and "The Commanding General of the D.C. Army National Guard is subordinate solely to the President of the United States".
https://dc.ng.mil/Join-the-DC-National-Guard/DC-Army-Nationa...
And they were blocked from doing so. Despite at least having a more reasonable case rooted in the actual text of the UE constitution.
i did a racing-bicycle-with-saddlebags roundabout Marmara sea half an year ago for ~17days. And i am from next country, with somewhat partially related culture/history.
What i observed was that the more and bigger the red flags and Attaturk monuments there are, the better maintained (=funded) the town looked like. The most flashier sported a flag hanging from (near) every balcony, few 10 meter ones hanging from various towers, and several 3-5 meter high statues here or there. Those without any, looked like forgotten shacks.
One night, in Bandirma, there was a ruling-party-preelection event. (Busses bringing) jolly manifesting supporters, jolly horseriders, jolly motorbikers, jolly 4wds and monstertrucks, whatever. Usual rock-concerto after the speeches.
And, there are lots of construction works. Roads (doubling some). Factories. Buildings. Everything. And somewhat visible military presence. On unrelated places.
Some of these things smell familiar. It wasn't that different in my country 40y ago when it was named "People's Republic of"
That sounds so corrupt.
Well, can't some university just award him a degree?
When the oldest university in Turkey can be forced to revoke a diploma, no other university would dare to do that. Also it would be a honorary degree, which probably doesn't count.
Maybe a foreign university can, but I believe he would still need to get a state institution (YÖK - Higher Education Council) to approve the foreign diploma.
Could a sympathetic university grant an honorary degree?
In Erdogan's Turkey, I doubt it.
If they did, I could see their accreditation being pulled.
Erdogan plays for keeps.
What was his degree in? The article doesn’t say.
Business administration.
How many democracies left by now?
> How many democracies left by now?
0
Its so depressing . And the racist culture relativists just going along with that. No analysis, no help, nohackernews, nothing ..
Constantinople yearns to be free.
maybe they failed to take the requisite social media training to maintain it?
he has 2 years to get another degree
I would totally watch Turkish Billy Madison.
So Erdogan wants to be Putin of Turkey. It's up to the Turks if he can succeed.
There’s a noticeable inconsistency in how Hacker News community reacts to electoral controversies in Romania and Turkey. In Romania, the Constitutional Court disqualified candidate Călin Georgescu based on unproven allegations that he was influenced by Russia. In Turkey, opposition leader and Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu was barred from running after his university degree was annulled under dubious circumstances.
Both cases involve actions that directly impact democratic processes—effectively ensuring that those in power remain in power. Yet, the reactions to these events seem to differ significantly.
Does this reveal an inherent tribalism in our thinking? If HN represents a community of intellectuals, are we truly guided by reason and intellectual honesty, or are our responses shaped more by instinct and bias?
Here's the link to the relevant discussion so people can decide for themselves if there actually is a significant difference and come to their own conclusions about why that difference might exist:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42339819
Also, in general I find that people who weigh in with this kind of comment trying to draw parallels and implying that there was some kind of consensus in favor of X which is inconsistent with the opposition to Y both misremember the earlier conversation and forget that these conversations feature totally different people. Judging an extremely heterogenous community for the consistency of its political views is an exercise in futility.
Thank you for highlighting the discussion about Romanian Constitutional Court’s annulment of the presidential election due to alleged Russian interference.
However, there’s a noticeable lack of discourse regarding Turkish President Erdoğan’s actions to maintain power. Nobody is arguing he is right.
Anyway both scenarios involve incumbent authorities taking measures that consolidate their hold on power, yet the disparity in our community’s reactions is striking. This raises questions about potential biases within our intellectual circles. Are we, as a community that prides itself on rational discourse, sometimes swayed by tribal instincts rather than objective analysis? It’s crucial to reflect on this to ensure our discussions remain balanced and rooted in intellectual honesty.
>Thank you for highlighting the discussion about Romanian Constitutional Court’s annulment of the presidential election due to alleged Russian interference.
There is difference, Romanian constitution and laws do not allow unfair elections and the Constitutional Court has the final say. Since the election cancelling a lot more evidence was released to the public , and the Kremlinescu guy with his fascist mercenary friends attempted a violent protest, searches were done , illegal weapons were found, illegal money and finally Kremlinescu after confronted with video evidence admitted he lied all the time when he said he does not know the fascist and mercenary who gave him cache money, cars, protection and threaten the journalist and opponents like a good fascist tradition christian does.
> Does this reveal an inherent tribalism in our thinking?
Yes, it does. We are humans too, not some upper cast of society that is permanently immune to prejudice, emotions and media influence reinforcing the former two. Unfortunately, it is not only Romania that is straying away from democracy. Bulgaria, another EU member state, and by coincidence (or not) a neighbor to Romania, has also been degrading significantly in this regard. To quote a couple of examples:
- A referendum on the topic of delaying Bulgaria's entry into the Euro zone (replacing national currency with EUR) was not allowed to take place by the parliament and subsequently the constitutional court (with really hard to understand and controversial argumentation).
- There were lots of violations during the last elections that were investigated selectively and following a questionable and non-transparent process
- Protesters being detained for a month for throwing eggs on a building - a highly disproportional measure, given the severity of the violation.
There’s a few things wrong here. Being a community of intellectuals doesn’t equal a community of rationalists. And even rationalists may use different criteria than you in matters of international security, arriving at conclusions you may see as inconsistent and biased.
Does this make sense to you?
This definitely makes sense.
Let’s check history…
Many academics, including professors and students, endorsed Nazi ideology. For instance, in 1933, approximately 900 professors signed the “Vow of allegiance of the Professors of the German Universities and High-Schools to Adolf Hitler and the National Socialistic State,” publicly expressing their support for the Nazi government.
So yeah … intellectuals can be very very wrong.
In Romania you had the constitution and constitutional court involved. The sentiment in Romania is that we do not want a Russian puppet as president, this seems to differ in USA.
But let me inform you that MAGAs and president Elon did not like what the constitutional court decided (if only they knew the guy they supported is a conspirationist that thinks Trump is a joke and faked his shooting in the ear and 911 was an inside job)
> The sentiment in Romania is that we do not want a Russian puppet as president, this seems to differ in USA.
The “constitutional court” is a joke. They made a decision under pressure form the EU. They made a completely unprincipled decision to deny the people of Romania their right to vote. They realized at the last minute that a redo of the election would result in the same outcome according to polls, which is why they kept making up new excuses and ended up banning the candidate. This is obviously a situation where the outcome is artificially manipulated and there’s no real democracy left there. It’s too bad because for about 10-15 years, it really looked like Romania was headed in the right direction, towards democracy and freedom and away from its past.
That is your biased opinion.
The constitution demands fair elections declaring ZERO campaign money while in secret getting cacs from a mercenary, getting cars and protection from the same mercenary invalidates the marketing claim he used ZERO money.
Other undeclared funds were spend to pay TikTok influencers to produce content for Kremlinescu , content that was not labeled as sponsored but the inflencers pretended to do it for free
Then TikTok bot farms were used to share the paid TikTok content , there is enough evidence and TikTok also admitted that there were bots and that political content as still pushed in the days where it is illegal to do this.
He was also disqualified because he and his fascist mercenary friend attempted a violent coup.
If you are a MAGA I need to remind you that he shit a lot on Trump, and USA so either Elon is stupid to push so hard for Kremlinescu or is because Ptin is demanding it.
There are more facts to show this guys character of a traitor slut, like admiring Putin, sucking on Trump after he shit on him, dening video proof for months until he had to admit it
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These tactics are often criticized selectively. Why is it a problem when Turkey manipulates elections by banning certain candidates or parties, but not a problem when Romania or Germany or the EU does it? When any country resorts to such authoritarian tactics, it needs to be condemned. Otherwise criticism of people like Erdogan falls flat.
Don't comment about Romania if you are not correctly informed. For Turkey I will wait for judges to decide if what happened was legal.
I am very informed. It’s clear that the Romanian courts succumbed to pressure from the EU, as confirmed by an EU commissioner. The courts fabricated a justification that is weak in order to get the result they wanted. It’s why they slowly stepped from a recount to cancelling the election to banning candidates.
A candidate was ban before Kremlinescu, but guess what Putin and Elon said nothing maybe because she was a woman and not that good looking.
Where was the bot army defending the fascist woman that was desqualified?
It is also a problem in those other cases.
Whataboutism
East and West, No matter what you call this platform or forum, the vast majority of users are from America and Europe. The East is often viewed from an Orientalist perspective in the eyes of the West. However, when it comes to Turkey, it resembles neither the East nor the West. Our electoral system is not like that of the East. There is no fraud or any other kind of manipulation. However, on the road to elections, anything goes. Laws are enacted, changed, or amended as needed. This is the electoral process. But while the elected officials are chosen by the people, the candidates who make it to the election stage undergo intense training and a series of specific events behind the scenes.
Now, if you look at this matter with straightforward logic, you see that Erdoğan unfairly invalidated İmamoğlu’s diploma and that this is against the law. However, I can only explain the reality of the situation as follows: For nearly 20 years, newspapers, the media, news channels, and even certain famous figures have speculated about Erdoğan’s missing diploma. Whether Erdoğan has a university diploma or not remains uncertain. This is something the left in Turkey has always known but often mocked.
I want to emphasize this: The left in Turkey is ineffective because you cannot change the paradigms inherited from the past. Now, the discussion revolves around İmamoğlu’s diploma. But why? Because, quite simply, those who once criticized Erdoğan for allegedly not having a diploma have now been given a president without a diploma in return.
Was this action illegal? Absolutely not. But is justice in the country applied equally to everyone? Of course not. Do not perceive me as right-wing, left-wing, or an Erdoğan supporter. I am analyzing the situation from a historical perspective.
As for the invalidation of the diploma, if there is an absolutely void and legally null action, how can “acquired rights” (müktesep hak) be established? In the case of an “obvious mistake” the decision can always be reversed. Therefore, the diploma is invalid. Even if most Turks here do not accept this, states operate collectively, and only those chosen by the game masters(USA) remain in play. İmamoğlu is neither one of those people nor even on the bench. That is why, even if he won admission to the university, unfortunately, he has no real chance of being elected.
> There is no fraud or any other kind of manipulation
Can you expand on this? Changing the rules or subversive tactics such as getting a degree rescinded seems like that to me.
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Hilarious, as the opposition has tried to do the same to Erdogan.
Sinister*
Banning oposition over irregularities, is perfectly normal in mature democracy! It is a sign that democratic process works, and can heal itself! Ancient Athens have ostracism.
what does this have to do with ostracism? Ostracism was democratic, with secret vote, not a dictatorial obstruction of opposition