After Cracking Down On Tens Of Thousands Of Enemies, Erdogan Says He's Dropping His 2000 Lawsuits Over Insults
from the say-what-now? dept
For the last few months we've poked fun at Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has ridiculously thin skin. As we noted, he had filed upwards of 100 lawsuits per month against people for "insulting" him -- and this included things as ridiculous as posting a meme on social media that compared Erdogan to Gollum.Of course, more recently (as you've heard) there was a coup attempt in Turkey, which failed, and Erdogan has spent the last few weeks basically using the coup as an excuse to crush all his enemies.
And now, having done that -- including having shut down much of the media in the country and arresting a ton of journalists, Erdogan is apparently in a good mood. He has announced that in a "show of good will," he's going to drop those thousands of cases against people for insulting him.In the first 48 hours, around 7,000 people were detained, arrested, or dismissed from their jobs. That number has been rising constantly, reaching around 66,000 people from all layers of society, but consisting mostly of government employees.
Add to that the family members of those arrested and dismissed and you will reach a number of 250,000-300,000 potential new opponents, most of whom were not involved with the "other" side or had no direct links with it. The memory of the killings, the hatred, and violence, the split in the army and government agencies about who was on which side -- all of this is truly traumatic for the Turkish nation.
Uh... thanks?
Of course, he notes that this is a "one-off," meaning he can start bringing more cases pretty soon. Besides, it hardly seems like a gesture of goodwill when it follows destroying the lives of 100s of thousands of people to further entrench your own political power and interests. Of course, he also has a message to anyone with an opinion on all of this:
"Some people give us advice. They say they are worried. Mind your own business! Look at your own deeds."Yeah. Perhaps Erdogan should look at his own deeds as well.
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Filed Under: coup, goodwill, insults, recep tayyip erdogan, turkey
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Tattered silk glove over iron fist
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Re: Tattered silk glove over iron fist
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Re: Tattered silk glove over iron fist
If you fill the courts with useless defamation lawsuits, you will end up stalling that opportunity. To be able to satisfy EU and US demands for some kind of legal action before execution, he has to clear the courts for his theater to begin.
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Re: Re: Tattered silk glove over iron fist
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Re:
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After the July 20 Plot...
Great moments in history!
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Re: After the July 20 Plot...
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Re: After the July 20 Plot...
If you dig in history it is brimming of tyrants solidifying their power by purging percieved plots against them. It actually seems like one of the most telltale signs of a dictators, szars, sultans or kings to purge opposition by force.
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Re: After the July 20 Plot...
Of course, nowadays you don't need weapons to instate a coup, just look at Brazil.
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Fake coups...
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Re: Fake coups...
I could Godwin for dayzzzzzz.
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We should be more afraid he is going to decide this is a faster way to handle things & start ordering strikes elsewhere.
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An example others should follow?
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"Conan, what is best in life?"
"Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women."
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Conan the Barbarian (the 1982 movie) wasn't the first.
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Travel plans
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Re: Travel plans
Why not? I'm sure it's perfectly safe. Turkey is a "democracy", remember?
/s
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Trump 2016 :p
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Conan's model
If you want to see where Robert E Howard got that quote, google: "Genghis Khan joy is in victory".
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We can do better
Hey Erdogan, saying you look like Gollum is an insult to Gollum!
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Thanks
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Re: Thanks
In fact, the middle east instability started before WWII.
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