Turkey is sliding into dictatorship

I&#x27;ve read the Economist for a long time, and they should be ashamed of themselves for not calling out how wrong they were when Erdogan was first elected.<p>Their line was that the AK&#x27;s &quot;moderate Islamism&quot; would be good for democracy long-term, and anyone who was afraid of political Islam was regressive.<p>Yeah, sometimes editors and opinion pieces are wrong. But admit it when you are -- I haven&#x27;t seen the Economist staff learn anything from this sad episode.

The only thing about this which surprises me is how Erdogan seemed to really want Turkey to become a member of the EU, and yet has been actively doing everything he can to make that impossible.<p>Then again, he tends to say and do a lot of odd things, so I guess the simple answer is to not assume any kind of competence or rational thinking from political leaders.

This is even more reason to contribute to activists trying to stop the conversion of Hagia Sophia into a Mosque. It is a piece of 6th century history that we as a civilization just cannot afford to lose.

So saddening the amount of ignorance and hate I see here in HN regarding my country. I wish nothing about Turkey gets submitted again here so that I can continue to visit HN as a hackers&#x27; and tech entrepreneurs&#x27; forum.<p>You clearly don&#x27;t know anything about our history. You don&#x27;t even know who we are. You insult us with your superficial readings of superficial wikipedia articles. We don&#x27;t need this at all.<p>We&#x27;re having hard times, but I still have hope. After all, civilisation was invented here. I wish we were able to export the better parts too.

<p><pre><code> The West must not abandon Turkey </code></pre> Huh? So are we supposed to meddle in other countries&#x27; politics and government? Or are we not?

The problem is the vote has likely already been counted and any voting is just for an aura of legitimacy.

All you need for constitutional reform is a 50% majority on a referendum. That seems way too easy.

Sliding? More like rushing full throttle. Ataturk would be disgusted.

Yeah, Turkey is sliding into dictatorship but Egypt is doing very well.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;leaders&#x2F;21709955-belatedly-and-under-pressure-abdel-fattah-al-sisi-has-done-some-hard-necessary-things-two" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;leaders&#x2F;21709955-belatedly-and...</a><p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;middle-east-and-africa&#x2F;21709971-abdel-fattah-al-sisis-reforms-will-make-him-unpopular-can-he-stand-it-sense-and" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.economist.com&#x2F;news&#x2F;middle-east-and-africa&#x2F;2170997...</a><p>Erdogan was &quot;moderate&quot; when &quot;Western Democracies&quot; was able to call a coup a coup and Syria wasn&#x27;t a testing bed for weapons.<p>It looks they need a smokescreen for the blunder in Europe, Syria and ME in general and with his figure Erdo-guy is the best candidate. Oh &quot;The Sultan&quot;, &quot;The Barbar Turk is at the gates&quot;, &quot;figthing with the poor Kurds&quot;, &quot;journalist jailer&quot;, &quot;coup was a theater&quot; etc.<p>Did you really learn anything from the article about what changes in the constitution and what doesn&#x27;t? According to the narrative Turkey was a &quot;dictatorship&quot; a year ago too, is a close &quot;Yes&quot; (or &quot;No&quot;) in a referendum a typical political behavior of dictatorial politics, right?<p>Sorry. When the West reacts like this (and doesn&#x27;t react to real dictators unless they piss to their lawn), it more and more looks like Western intellectual&#x27;s main mission is to create a narrative to open a path for exploitation&#x2F;military politics. God may have died but &quot;Deus Vult&quot; still lives.

Now I wonder, what will the NATO do when Turkey becomes a dictatorship.

sliding?

This website is disgusting. I have to close four dialog boxes and the content takes is ~30% of my screen. I expected better from the economist.