
Turkey referendum: Erdogan camp set to win after most votes counted - gpetukhov
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-39612562
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adamnemecek
A de facto dictator wins the majority in a "democratic" election. News at 11.

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Cyph0n
> With about 98% of ballots counted, "Yes" was on about 51.3% and "No" on
> about 48.7%.

What majority? Typical "elections" in the Middle East have the dictator get
80-90% of votes. Examples include Egypt, Tunisia (pre-Arab Spring), Algeria,
and Syria.

The guy actually has quite a following in Turkey, so 51.3% voting "Yes"
doesn't surprise me at all. I know that Erdogan is proposing a system that
gives him virtually unlimited power, but that doesn't mean that the vote was
rigged.

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narag
It's not the outcome, but the referendum itself that's undemocratic. Removing
usual safeguards by half the voters is just asking if democracy should be
liquidated.

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Cyph0n
Yes, my response was to point out to OP that the referendum itself is probably
legitimate. And I think it's the responsibility of the voters to decide if
that should happen, just like with (to a lesser extent) Brexit and the recent
US presidential election.

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cjslep
Liberalism (in the classic democracy enlightenment-age concept, not the US
partisan party sense) has flourished and waned over the years across the
globe. It will be interesting to see where this goes in the next 50 years.

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bonzini
The Guardian says things are getting messy (not that anyone was expecting
anything else, I might add).

"There is still confusion about the number of votes counted in Turkey and any
result, whether declared by the president or not, should be treated with
caution. [...] the supreme election commission is reporting that only between
65-70% of votes have been counted, while Turkey’s official news agency Anadolu
is reporting that 97-98% of votes are in."

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MrQuincle
Nationalism has influence on the type of tech developed:
[http://www.dailysabah.com/technology/2017/04/08/national-
tec...](http://www.dailysabah.com/technology/2017/04/08/national-technology-
move-to-transform-turkeys-technology-industry)

Apart from that, foreign investments might also dwindle.

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heifetz
And regardless of how much good you think a leader actually does. Two big
warnings signs of corruption and self enrichment.

\- staying in power for a very long time. Putin and Erdogan. \- Self
enrichment during the time in power.

People should be automatically suspicious why these two want to stay in power
for so long, as well as change the laws to give them more power while they're
in office.

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louithethrid
I think, every democracy should have always a "versioning" system, where if
2/3s of the people vote for a return to a certain law revision (in direct
vote, on the village center) - the goverment, the jurisdiction, military,
finance and/or the totalitarian president are overruled and dispossable.

Are there any democratic islamic countrys left?

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harunurhan
I think it's better to wait a little bit and see what happens, because there
is still controversial things (such as unsealed votes being counted) going on
which is usual after every election in Turkey, but who knows.

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ozgurozkan
some ballouts are illegally counted as valid. %49 can't do any shit about it.
Earning dictatorship in dictated way and showing that it was democratic. He
just wants to save his life nothing more.

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heifetz
this is a bit outside looking in, but you get a sense of how easily people can
be manipulated, or intimated in a democracy, without proper safeguards. Look
at our election results!

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qaq
Hope EU is happy about it's long term position toward Turkey.

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jbmorgado
Its long term position of obviously not wanting that a country where more than
half the population backs up a dictatorship backed up by fundamentalist Islam
joining us and let those people have total unrestrained access across all our
borders?

Yup, we are really, really very happy that nobody was so mad as to let you in
the EU... or else this that just happened (and in fact what has been happening
the last decade backed by the majority of your population) would be a major
danger to our existence.

This way we always have the option to just close even more our borders until
you deal with this insanity that is going on in Turkey and then when in some
medium term future you get back to a democracy and show good will towards
respecting everyone's civil rights and liberties we can then resume talks
again.

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qaq
I am not from Turkey :) You are already paying the price for head in the sand
strategy and if some black swan event does not restrain Russia the global
price for let's pretend it's someone else's problem will take the same tall it
did last time.

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andoon
This will not end well for Europe. With the pussy governments we have here and
Erdogan with complete power over the faucet of refugees, we are at a high risk
of becoming Erdogan's bitch.

Either our governments do something, and fast, or the rise of fascism in
Europe will only accelerate.

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jbmorgado
Europe just tried to make a "pleasant deal" with Turkey about the refugees,
giving Turkey a lot of money in exchange for them to close the border on their
side.

But if Erdogan becomes a nuisance Europe can always go through the unpleasant
path, close the border from our side and not give Turkey a cent.

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coboloer
Why the heck is this Hacker News?

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Broken_Hippo
Because major world events effect everyone.

