Licenses of 21,000 Turkish teachers have been revoked

The whole thing seemed fishy that night. I was watching Erdogan's plane circle southwest of Istanbul for an hour or so on FlightRadar24. Then suddenly it lands where just a couple of hours earlier coup-controlled tanks were patrolling the runways. Huh? The "coup" had control of fighter jets that were buzzing Istanbul and Ankara (live on TV), yet they let his plane circle, for all to see, just minutes away?

It seems more and more (to me at least) that the coup d&#x27;état attempt could have been allowed, if not blatantly organized by the ruling elite of Turkey.<p>There&#x27;s actually a great scene in the end of the <i>Anthony Bourdain Parts Unknown</i> Istanbul episode where someone close to the ruling class (a business owner), makes the following comment[1]:<p>&gt; &quot;Fear works. Fear gets votes.&quot;<p>Beyond that, I can&#x27;t find a clip, but it was the most real-life foreshadowing I have ever seen in my life.<p>[1] <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eater.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;11&#x2F;8&#x2F;9684640&#x2F;parts-unknown-recap-istanbul-anthony-bourdain" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.eater.com&#x2F;2015&#x2F;11&#x2F;8&#x2F;9684640&#x2F;parts-unknown-recap-i...</a>

It&#x27;s starting to seem like they had these lists made up ahead of time and have been waiting for the right time to start cleansing the ranks.

21,000 teachers and 1.5k deans. This is the kind of thing that pushes the education system and thus the country back a decade.<p>How are they gonna find replacements? How are the students gonna cope without teachers? What is Erdogan trying to do..

This after Erdogan has already purged 2,700 judges and 8,000 police officers:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;turkey-security-judges-idINKCN0ZW0OZ?irpc=932" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.reuters.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;turkey-security-judges-idINKC...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.eu&#x2F;article&#x2F;turkey-dismisses-8000-police-after-failed-coup-judges-military-personnel-recep-tayyip-erdogan&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.politico.eu&#x2F;article&#x2F;turkey-dismisses-8000-police-...</a><p>This looks very much like a real-world version of Supreme Chancellor Palpatine&#x27;s &quot;Execute order 66&quot;:<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;starwars.wikia.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Order_66" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;starwars.wikia.com&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Order_66</a><p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=09n0qd_n4c0" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=09n0qd_n4c0</a>

Reichstag fire.<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reichstag_fire" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.m.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Reichstag_fire</a>

How Turkey could possibly still be in accession talks to join the EU is baffling and appalling to me.

Turkey&#x27;s civil service is not going to be in good shape after this purge. It seems hard to run a modern society in a very precarious neighborhood with undermanned services and not risk your own citizens getting angry or outsiders using the opportunity to strike.

What a shame. Erdogan is cementing his position and thus totalitarianism and islamofascism. Driving out the intellectuals and freethinkers is a significant step. Every month he and people like him are in office will take Turkey years to recover from. If this isn&#x27;t stopped now, and it seems like it isn&#x27;t, I doubt I will see a free Turkey in my lifetime.

I am mostly a-political, 3000 years later none of this will matter. A few billion years later andromeda &quot;collides&quot; with milky way. So let people play.<p>That being said, how does a successful military coup increase a country&#x27;s democracy in any conceivable way? How is this a &quot;last ditch effort for democracy&quot; as so many people here seem to be thinking? And why is the answer always &quot;oh it was a fake&quot;? How does it work in the first place? Do you think people will suddenly stop voting for their favorite party and ideology (opposing the ruling secular elite) after 14 years?

Reactions like these makes you wonder if the coup attempt was staged.

&quot;We&#x27;d like to join the EU now.&quot;

Why was everyone screaming democracy when they never had one in the first place?

This submission was at the top on the front page -- what happened?

This does not bode well for Turkey. It is unfathomable how 21,000 teachers were directly related to the coup attempt.<p>It makes me think that the coup was Turkey&#x27;s Reichstag fire moment.

&gt; are mostly linked with terrorist activities<p>All of them!?

The coup was a last chance effort. Now Turkey has become a totalitarian dictatorship, there is no doubt about that. To be more precise, it already lost its status as democracy years ago when Erdogan had hundreds of prosecutors and policemen fired who dared to investigate corruption within his family.<p>But with the latest purges you&#x27;ve got to wonder where they want to get the replacements from. Any sane person will probably try to leave the country rather than being clubbed to death by AKP fans.<p>Moral of the story: NEVER trust or vote for a party that has the word &quot;justice&quot; in its name.

Obama and Hillary made a huge error in judgment by siding with a fascist. It&#x27;s amazing how we haven&#x27;t gotten ourselves in deep sh!t already given how badly our leaders judge situations. But maybe we have, and we just don&#x27;t know it yet.

Betcha they&#x27;re all Kurdish.

At least now all those ISIS combatants have a new place to call home :&#x2F;