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'spitting in the face of humanity', Black Agenda Report, Christopher Columbus, ethnic and racial supremacy, Europe, Glen Ford, Great Britain, Israel, the "white man", the 'great nakba', the Palestinian nakba
Source: Black Agenda Report
“The Palestinians face the last bastion of legalized racial rule on the planet.”
The great nakba, or “catastrophe,”began in 1492, when Christopher Columbus proclaimed the lands of the “Indies” for Spain. Within half a century of his voyage, 95 percent of the inhabitants of the America’s had been killed by European-borne diseases, war, famine and enslavement: 100 million dead , or one out of every five human beings on the planet, the most catastrophic loss of life in recorded history.
But, the nakba had just begun. For the next half a millennium, Europeans would inflict countless “catastrophes” on the world’s darker peoples. As Mumia Abu Jamal and Stephen Vittoria document in Murder Incorporated: Empire, Genocide and Manifest Destiny, the Europeans killed or enslaved 60 million Africans, depopulating one continent, repopulating two others with captive peoples, and fantastically enriching the third, from which emerged “the white man,” an amalgam of “all the races of Europe” (The Melting Pot, 1908 .) Columbus’ voyage began a 500-year western European war against the rest of humanity, known more politely as “colonialism,” in which all other people’s economies and cultures were made subordinate to the master powers headquartered in London, Paris, Lisbon, Madrid – and later, Washington.
“Columbus’ voyage began a 500-year western European war against the rest of humanity.”
With every expansion of European dominion, millions of darker peoples perished, until the whole of the planet was transformed by the unfolding, cumulative nakbas, catastrophes. Global plunder led to global trade, creating the basis for industrial capitalism. Global “white” rule codified racism, leading logically to Nazism, in its many manifestations.
Whole peoples were erased from existence. The King of one small European country, Leopold of Belgium, caused the deaths of ten million Congolese during his reign. At least six million more Congolese have died as the result of U.S. policies in the region, since 1994. The subcontinent of Asia that became known as India suffered repeated mass murders during centuries of British rule. Ten million Indians died in the aftermath of a native revolt against foreign domination, in 1857. Less than a century later, three million Indians died from starvation and disease caused by British colonial policies during World War Two.
At the end of that war, the one-third of the world’s people’s that still remained under colonial rule were demanding self-determination. But the newly-formed United Nations had one more duty to perform on behalf of the five hundred year-long Euro-American colonial project. On May 14, 1948, the greater part of Palestine was given to the Zionist Jewish settler state-in-the-making that had been backed by Great Britain, the colonial power in the region.
The establishment of the state of Israel was like spitting in the face of humanity. The post-war period was supposed to be a time of national liberation for the colonized peoples. But before that process was allowed to proceed in earnest, European Jews — whose “whiteness” was the last to be recognized by other whites — were to be awarded their own colony. The act was justified as consolation for Jews having suffered murderous oppression by other Europeans — a logic that only makes sense on white supremacist terms. The resulting oppression of the Arab majority was of no consequence. The Palestinian nakba began, with the exile of 700,000 Arabs and an inferior, Jim Crow political status for those that remained in the new, Jewish state.
“The establishment of the state of Israel was like spitting in the face of humanity.”
With the fall of white rule in South Africa in 1994, Israel is now the world’s last apartheid state, a government based on ethnic and racial supremacy. Its very existence is an insult to humanity. Israel is the antithesis of civilization. It is, by nature, racist barbarism. So, it is no wonder that the scenes from Gaza look like the movie Schindler’s List , where the Nazi concentration camp commander took sport in randomly shooting inmates from his window.
[All] the civilized peoples of the world are in solidarity with the Palestinians, who face the last bastion of legalized racial rule on the planet. Their catastrophe, their nakba, was among the last acts of a racist imperial order that must ultimately we swept away.
If not, then the final nakba is coming — for all of us.
For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford.
BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford@BlackAgendaReport.com.
thanks , norman.
You mean they haven’t been working to bring liberty, democracy and civilization to the benighted heathens all these years? I am deeply shocked!
Hi, Alan,
I just read a couple of comments you left over at Sojourner’s blog.
With respect to the first, you write:
I hope your students didn’t take your lesson too much to heart. For we both know the worth of the so-called ‘liberal democratic’ process: where money can buy influence and offices, it is money that rules and not people, and this regardless of whether all of the people get off their butts to canvass or vote. (And to suggest that Turkey is a ‘participatory’ democracy is as much as to say that it is currently even more democratic than the Western-style liberal democracies, which remain only farcically democratic, that is to say, ‘representative.’ Turkey: ‘representative,’ perhaps, but ‘participatory,’ highly unlikely.)
But you are a teacher and have a ‘job’ to do and to keep. And that’s what the education system under capitalism is for, isn’t it? To ideologically reconcile the masses to their fate as a resource to be exploited and to make them suitable for exploitation by teaching them such ‘marketable’ skills as reading, writing, and reckoning.
And do correct me if I’m wrong, but isn’t Turkey as yet an official member of NATO? So what in the world do you mean by suggesting that your most vocal students would be happy to see Turkey return to the good old days of its former puppet-hood?
With respect to your second comment, you write:
In what way is Erdogan different than Macron, Trump, and May? Is he relatively less — or more — akin to a fascist? Or do you mean to suggest that he is more of a socialist, or perhaps even a communist, in his policies and civic inclinations?
Now you have me wondering: what in the following brief (2017) by Mikail Firtinaci would be, in your honest opinion, exaggeration or inaccuracy:
Quote begins:
Report from Turkey on recent developments in the country as leader Recep Tayyip Erdoğan strengthens his grip on power.
The official Kemalist/social democratic opposition party, CHP is under huge pressure to act from the left and from its base. Many people want the party to leave the parliament and begin a more active resistance against Erdogan. However, CHP leadership is refraining from any real action or street demonstrations claiming that the government has control over armed paramilitary groups ready to suppress any street action by violence.
Quote ends.
Thanks Norman. Well, as in the past, I guess we’ll just have to agree to disagree. I don’t know who Mikhail Fırtinaci or Libcom are, but most of what is written in my opinion, is fabrication or gross distortion. The last sentence summary – “The general mood in Turkey is explosive. I fear the likely possibilities are an ethnic civil war or the continuation and consolidation of the current dictatorship” is nonsense, and I LIVE here.
So in the year after the attempted “coup,” no people have been sacked and blacklisted on account of their purported political allegiances? No teachers in their thousands? No university academics? No judges and prosecutors? Have no journalists been imprisoned? All of this is fabrication and distortion? What about the repression against the Kurds? Is that also fabrication and distortion?
What about this, published by the INTERNATIONAL TRADE UNION CONFEDERATION, should it also be relegated to the realm of fabrication and distortion (?):
Quote begins:
Dozens of academics have been dismissed for signing a peace statement calling for an end to repression against Kurdish and other people in the Kurdish provinces, several of them have been banned from leaving the country and criminal proceedings have been launched against many. The ITUC has also been informed that 1,390 union members have been placed under investigation for participating in an event calling for peace and democracy. Some 284 are in exile or have been transferred, 403 have been forced to retire, 102 placed under investigation and 97 have been charged with “insulting the President”. Police are also now being deployed against workers taking industrial action, such as at the Renault plant in the city of Bursa.
The proposed amendments to the labour law and employment agency law were pushed through parliament without proper consultation. The changes would give employers a virtually unfettered right to place workers on insecure and short-term contracts, thus avoiding legal obligations and allowing employers to prevent workers from joining trade unions.
Sharan Burrow, ITUC General Secretary said: “The government seems to be intent on crushing unions and depriving workers in Turkey of their legitimate rights, enshrined in international law. This is not the behaviour of a democracy, and will seriously damage living standards and ultimately undermine Turkey’s own domestic economy. The exercise of power and control over people’s lives seems to be more important to the authorities than the well-being of the people of Turkey. We call on President Erdogan to cease the harassment and repression of those who are simply seeking peace and respect for human rights, and to drop the planned labour law changes which will leave working people at the mercy of employers with no way to defend their rights and build a decent life for themselves and their families.”
On Sunday, some 200 were arrested as police used water cannon and tear gas to stop people reaching Istanbul’s Taksim Square, a traditional May Day rallying point declared off-limits by the authorities. One man was killed when hit by one of the police water cannon trucks. Thousands more took part in rallies at the officially designated venue in the Bakirkoy district of Istanbul and in other cities around the country.
Quote ends.
So which is it, Alan? A short series of paragraphs that are pure flights of fancy or that manage to convey something about the ‘reality’ in Turkey, at least as things stood in 2016?
Or what of this, yet but another sample of hundreds of reports pertaining to the neoliberal turn that has taken and continues to take place in democratic Turkey:
Quote begins:
Trade Union Activists are in Jail in Turkey, but why?
(written by Zeynep Ekin Aklar with contribution from Gaye Yilmaz)
Zeynep Ekin Aklar
Gaye Yilmaz
The repression of opposition movements, particularly trade unions, has been increasing in Turkey since 2008. Today more than 6000 people are in jail as a result of having different opinions from the Turkish government. More specifically, since the end of March 2012, more than 100 journalists and artists, 40 trade union activists, 1000 children, 600 students and academics and thousands of activitists from the Kurdish movement have been held in prison for months without trial. As recently as 25 June 2012, 71 Kurdish trade union members of the Confederation of Public Employees’ Trade Unions (KESK) were detained. For the first time since the 1980 military intervention, Mr. Lami Özgen, a leader of a trade union confederation was detained.
Since 2009, more than 4000 people have been arrested on the claim of being members of or supporting the Union of Kurdish Communities (KCK) that was officially defined as an “illegal” political organisation. There has also been an increasing onslaught against intellectuals such as trade union members Prof. Büşra Ersanlı and Ragıp Zarakolu who are currently on trial possibly facing 20 years’ imprisonment if the prosecution gets its way. Through the AKP policies based on neo-islam and neoliberalism, neoliberalism and neoconservatism have never in the history of Turkey complemented each other as much as they do now. The AKP government regards itself as the second founding ruling power and therefore aims to redesign Turkish society as a whole. In this respect, the government aims to transform all the democratic mass organisations, particularly trade unions, into institutions that are loyal to the neoliberal-neoconservative alignment such that they can be easily taken under its control.
Under these circumstances, this repression and pressure have turned towards trade unions in general. KESK in particular has become one of the mass organisations targeted by the AKP government because of its militant position in society despite its relatively low membership of approximately 220 000. Although all governments targeted KESK since its formation in 1995, attacks have become more systematic since 2008.
It can be claimed that this repression has taken place in three ways. Firstly, the scope of trade union activities has been decreased. Even basic universal trade union rights have been infringed upon. Secondly, the target group has spread. Initially, these repressions were mostly against ordinary trade union activists, but recently the government has raised the bar and targeted elected shop stewards even at the Confederation level. Finally, there is a gender dimension to the repression. In the last three years, the number of women arrested among trade union members has been remarkably high; 7 of them are the female secretaries of KESK and its affiliated trade unions.
We argue that there are three reasons for this repression of trade unions, particularly for KESK, and they are parallel to the Turkish political agenda: the Kurdish question, class struggle and the women’s movement.
Kurdish question
The Kurdish question refers to the denial of identities of more than 20 million Kurdish people. This is related to their right to use their mother tongue, and their political, civil and trade union rights. As part of itsfounding principles, KESK is against every kind of nationalism and racism and has always taken a position in favour of people being subjected to oppression and discrimination. While KESK has always demanded more public expenditure for public services rather than for military, the State of Turkey is resorting to military methods to “solve” this question. According to KESK, it is a historical responsibility to defend the peaceful solution of the Kurdish question. Hence, KESK has always been against the militarist approach, taking a clear position towards the massacre of 35 civilians, 17 of whom were children, during aerial strikes on 28 December 2011 under the military operation on Uludere that is the pre-dominantly Kurdish region of south-eastern Turkey.
Class struggle
In this socio-political environment within which the trade union struggle has been constantly increasing, what is happenning in the labour market and trade union struggle is aimed at blockading the trade unions. There is an explicit policy towards union busting by forcing KESK members to change their unions, change their work place, taking them under custody and keeping them in jail for reasons such as distributing handouts, attending press releases, and for staging demonstrations on internationally-recognised political days such as May Day. The AKP government aims to create state-controlled trade unions. While the trade union movement has been constantly weakening under the pressure of neoliberal policies in the world and in Turkey, Memur-Sen, the government friendly trade union confederation, has increased its membership by 1230% since the AKP came into power by establishing cooperation with government representatives in public institutions and municipalities. There is no rational reason for this increase within the true trade union movement.
In Turkey, despite the rigorous repression, authentic trade unions are in resistance and struggle against neoliberal attacks. In this period, executive committee members, ordinary members, even the staff of KESK have been arrested, the headquarters of KESK in Ankara were raided by the police twice in one month, computers and documents were confiscated. Moreover, the mainstream media, that rarely reports KESK’s demonstration as news, took advantage of this incident in order to damage KESK and reported it in detail. However it is very clear that this operation was not only against KESK but rather was an attempt to intimidate public employees fighting for trade union rights and freedom, against class struggle, for labour and democratic powers through KESK. During interrogations, the detained people were asked questions such as “why are you a trade union member?”; “why did you go on a strike?”; “why did you participate in trade union meetings?”; “why did you shout the slogan: we are not giving in to the intimidation by AKP?” In reaction to this operation, many international trade union confederations, primarily International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC), European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC) and Public Services International (PSI), sent protest letters to the Prime Minister Mr. Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and expressed their solidarity with KESK[1].
Women’s movement
The women’s movement in Turkey has been one of the most militant and visible sources of activism, composed of various local and national women’s organisations and female members of trade unions. The most recent agenda of the women’s movement has been the murders of women. The ratio of murders of women increased by 1400% between 2002 and 2009 under the AKP government (Ministry of Justice, 2009)[2]. Women have been systematically and increasingly exposed to violence and killed. The increasing violence at work, sexual harrasment and mobbing is an indicator ofthe extent to which violence against women has increased and expanded. However, despite this adverse atmosphere, the women’s movement has been rising at every level, particularly in the streets. Every attack against women should be counted as an attack against the women’s movement. In May 29, 2009 10 female Kurdish activists -including the female secretaries of KESK and of the Education Trade Union of KESK ( Eğitim-Sen) were arrested. This year 9 Kurdish women (including new female secretaries of KESK and of the health and municipality trade unions were also arrested.
Conclusion
The most significant difference between what happened during repressive times in the past and the present repressionlies behind the fact that the anti-democratic policies that we are facing today are being implemented in the name of democracy and freedoms. This situation has been weakening the opposition and at the same time it has misled the international community. The concept of “terror” has been used as an excuse for any kind of prohibitions, repression and arrests. All opponents have been arrested and sentenced on charges of being “terrorists”. Nonetheless, while every activity is juristically questioned, to what extent the current legal system is fair is being disregarded. Besides, the legal system has been considerably specialised through the specially authorised prosecutors and courts. People are being arrested on charges of subjective indictments of specially authorised prosecutors and security department and it may take years till the indictment is proved to be insubstantial. In conclusion, while KESK is a labour organisation, it does not only focus on probems in the workplace. KESK does not only believe in the importance of labour struggle, women struggle, struggle for identity, struggle for peaceful solution of Kurdish question, freedom of belief, struggle for democracy, justice and equality but also the actors of these struggles. KESK has deepened its understanding of these issues through its diverse membership profile, composed of women, Kurdish people, Alevi people and other activists who are aware of the prolems in their societies and thus can be part of the struggle for for peace, democracy and equality.
[1] http://www.ituc-csi.org/IMG/pdf/no_g_01_ituc_list_nov_2006__001gc.pdf
http://www.ei-ie.org/en/news/news_details/2081
http://www.world-psi.org/en/15-public-sector-trade-unionists-have-been-arrested-turkey
[2] http://bianet.org/bianet/kadin/132742-kadin-cinayetleri-14-kat-artti
Download this article as pdf
Zeynep Ekin Aklar has been working as a project specialist in the Mother and Child Education Foundation since November 2011. She worked at KESK as trade union expert between 2006-2008.
Further Info
A letter from Ms Sharan Burrow, General Secretary of the International Trade Union Confederation, to the attention of the Prime Minister of Turkey, concerning the 71 detentions of trade union members which took place in some 20 different cities in the whole of Turkey on 25 June 2012 can be downloaded here.
Quote Ends.
I’m not sure, but I think that Zeynep Ekin Aklar and Gaye Yilmaz, like you, Alan, both live in Turkey. It would seem, then, that not everyone in Turkey has exactly the same perspective on what life in Turkey is about. I also note that the last link in the quoted material is to a letter addressed to a Prime Minister who was then going by the name of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
Luckily Zeynep and Gaye have managed to stay out of prison, despite disseminating abroad material clearly not in the best interests of Turkey’s government. Wonder how they do it ???
So no one has been arrested, then? None of their claims hold any water?
Who knows, Norm? But we should be very sure about our sources before republishing stories about other countries we don’t have first hand experience of.
What makes you so sure that I’m not being careful about the “stories” that I’m republishing about Turkey? If you are certain of my carelessness, then it must be that you can disprove the main contentions of the “stories” at hand. In what details, then, are these “stories” false, Alan?
You make the accusation of “fabrication and gross distortion,” but you do no really provide any evidence of “fabrication and gross distortion,” other than making an appeal to the authority of your LIVED experience in Turkey. But what of Zeynep’s and Gaye’s LIVED experience? On what grounds do you discount their LIVED experience?
Or do you imagine that if repression and arbitrary arrests are real occurrences in Turkey, that absolutely everyone in Turkey will have experienced these abuses firsthand, including yourself?
In repressive societies, it’s not the entire population that is repressed, but only its most restive elements, and then among these factions, usually only those who are identified as the leading shit-disturbers. That probably has something to do with limited resources for both direct surveillance and repression . . .
. . . so unless you yourself frequent shit-disturbing environs, or are yourself a trouble-making dissident — and you don’t come off to me as someone overly at odds with the values of the establishment(s) that write the laws in your adopted country and by which you must live — then it is unlikely that anything you will experience firsthand will square with all of “those fabricated and grossly distorted “ reports of high-handed repression issuing from other people every bit as much physically rooted in Turkey as you yourself are, Alan, albeit perhaps in other regions of the country slightly beyond the purview of your LIVED or direct experience.
What can’t be disputed, however, is that a lot of people in Turkey are making claims that you disbelieve. The question is, then, or should be: why do you disbelieve them?
What is the basis for your rejection of their accusations?
Have you verified that their claims are indeed “fabrications and gross distortions?”
Thus, presumably, when people like Zeynep and Gaye claim that Erdogan and Co. are rewriting the portfolios of laws regulating employment to the gross disadvantage of the Turkish working class, you should be able to prove to us that this claim is fabricated by providing counter-evidence that either no existing laws have ever been re-worked or replaced by the AKP in such a way that collective bargaining is now more difficult than it formerly was, or indeed, that if anything has changed, juristically speaking, it is that labor is now in a better position to pressure employers on behalf of employees to secure all around better working conditions.
Can you provide such evidence, Alan? If not, why not? Is it that you haven’t gone looking for this evidence? Do you think it possible for you to go looking for it? And if you find the opposite, what then? And if you find what you hoped to find, why not point to it and thereby discredit with evidence the claims of the likes of Zeynep and Gaye? Isn’t that how the parsing of information and claims is supposed to work, Alan? That is to say, if you believe Zeynep and Gaye to be false witnesses, show us that they are.
It’s not enough merely to assert that their claims are “fabrications and gross distortions,” and that you know this because you LIVE in Turkey and haven’t personally experienced anything of the kind . It’s not exactly as if only Zeynep and Gaye are making such claims. A lot of other people also LIVING in Trukey have been and are making similar noises.
And speaking of ‘fabricated’ and doubtlessly exaggerated numbers, here is a link to an article that makes the claim that there are “70,000 students in prisons in Turkey.” Wow! Now that’s a lot of ‘students’ in jail! But is the figure entirely fictitious?
Well, I had my research assistant look into the matter, and he came back with these two corroborating sources:
a) The highest number in history: 69 thousand students in prison
This article appears to be sourcing information from the Turkish Ministry of Justice. And we have proof that the first article to which I linked made a false allegation: the number is not 70,000, but closer to 69,000, give or take a few.
b) [PDF]turkey 2017 human rights report – US Department of State
The latter is another document that appears to be sourcing its information from the Turkish Ministry of Justice, and the number of incarcerated students it touts is 69, 301 individuals. Still, that’s a lot, eh.
Here is the relevant paragraph as it reads on page 7 of the document:
So three different sources, apparently independent of one another, citing roughly the same figure for incarcerated students in Turkish prisons. It is likely, then, that in 2017, roughly 70,000 students were indeed locked up in Turkish jails and apparently living under difficult conditions.
Clearly, Turkey has a serious delinquency issue, or something else is going on. What do you think, Alan? I mean if you read the second article to which I link, according to the Turkish Ministry of Justice, “. . . in May of 2013 there were 2,776 detainees and convict students in prisons.” Then by 2016, the number is up around 69,000.
What? A sudden upsurge in youthful rebellion, maybe? Drugs? Too much exposure to Death Metal?
Or maybe the number is out-and-out bullshit?
Maybe you can be the one to disprove the figure and tell us what the true number was for 2017 and what you figure were the ‘reasons’ for the incarcerations, whatever the ‘real’ number might have been.
Wouldn’t waste my time trying to disprove that nonsense, Norm. People who have already made up their minds are not susceptible to counter-arguments. I hear some US citizens think Donald Trump is a great guy! And quite few of them believe guns should be freely available. What can you say?
Well, nobody wants you to waste your time, Alan.
As for having made up one’s mind, I’m open to countervailing evidence. But if you don’t provide any, and I myself can’t find any, then what is one to do?
On the other hand, if incarceration ‘rates’ are any indication of whether or not a state is becoming more repressive over time, the following source, World Prison Brief, which ostensibly compiles data from official sources, has compiled trends that suggest that Turkey is indeed incarcerating greater and greater numbers of people, and the overall trend was significantly up even in the years prior to the attempted ‘coup.’
Interestingly, if one compares data for Turkey with that for the United States, the latter is by far and away the more repressive country.
But if you speak to ordinary Americans about whether or not they live in a highly repressive society, the majority would admit to no such thing, because despite the U.S. being in objective terms one of the most repressive societies in the world, the majority of Americans do not “experience” that repression, both because they are ideologically blind to it and because, abiding by the strictures of their society, they are not the objects of any direct harassment by the state apparatuses of repression.
As it is in the U.S. from the standpoint of the ‘law abiding’ citizen, so it is in Turkey.
And you have to be impressed that Turkey’s Justice Ministry is happy to release statistics about their repressive activities. But maybe the guy who released those figures will end up getting disappeared.
Okay, Alan. The statistics are bogus. Although they are the Turkish government’s own numbers.
Now, why would the number of overall people imprisoned since 2000 have gone up over 400%? Nothing ‘structural’ has happened? It’s nothing to do with an intensification of ‘policing?’ People have just begun, for no apparent reason, to transgress the country’s criminal laws and are thus being rightly imprisoned for their transgressions? Because as everybody knows, no one ever ends up in jail who doesn’t deserve to be there, and no behavior has ever been criminalized that wasn’t criminal. But the increased rate of incarceration that the Turkish Ministry of Justice has released, and by which we are consequently impressed by the Ministry’s forthrightness, is a mirage of sorts, most likely an expression of purely coincidental increases in misconducts, of a lot of people just suddenly engaging in criminal behavior, just ‘because,’ eh?
Do you remember Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and Robert Conquest? Do you recall how they had claimed that tens of millions had been both imprisoned and murdered in the Soviet Gulags? Turns out that the actual numbers were closer to half-a-million political prisoners at any given time, in any given year, with at most several hundred thousand having died in the labor camps from any number of causes. So you know, that bit about “60 million alleged to have died in labor camps,” well, on the basis of government archives — which all governments keep, even the most dishonest and ‘repressive,’ like the U.S. — that number was obviously made up and completely unfounded. Or are we to take Solzhenitsyn’s and Conquest’s numbers at face value and altogether discount the Soviet archives, archives which those two reactionaries claimed would absolutely confirm their allegations, because we prefer their numbers more than the “obviously” doctored numbers of the Soviet archives, “obviously” doctored because, in the end, these archives belied as “fabrications and gross distortions” the claims of those two liars and fraudsters? Thus it is that ‘documented numbers’ are now to be discounted altogether, and that preferential bias becomes the basis by which we are to discriminate between the probable veracity of contending claims, eh?
But in the matter at hand, the Turkish numbers are, by any one side, neither overstated nor understated, that is to say, the government detractors and the pertinent government ministries are tossing about similar numbers, and the trends of these numbers do tell a tale — or don’t they? Not a ‘story’ that you want to hear, of course. And I guess that would explain your reluctance to engage with and ‘interpret’ the numbers and their trends.
But I’m the one who has made up his mind, by insisting on at least a modicum of actual evidence for belief.
Norm, I used to write detailed replies to the lies and black propaganda that were circulated about Turkey – but I stopped, for the reason stated in my previous reply.
Hilarious! The Turkish government then presumably conducts ‘black propaganda’ operations against itself by having the General Directorate of Prisons and Detention Houses and its Ministry of Justice bureaucracies publish exaggerated rates of incarceration, eh?
Well, so as not to push you too far beyond the limits of your tolerance for nonsense, two more simple and straightforward questions for you, questions that should not require that you go too deeply into any sort of detail so as to refute the ‘lie’ and the ‘propaganda’ that their framing will ‘obviously’ imply:
a) would you agree that the 1980s in Turkey were years of ‘repression?’ If you answer ‘no,’ then clearly you do no understand the meaning of the word ‘repression.’
But if you answer ‘yes,’ then:
b) how do you characterize the ‘fact’ that the incarceration rate in Turkey between 1980 and 1985 — which was around 150 / 100,00 — was less than the incarceration rate in Turkey between the years of 2010 and 2016, with a peak rate of 251 / 100,000 for 2016? (These numbers are not ‘made up,’ Alan. They are sourced from Turkey’s Ministry of Justice. I already gave you the link to the relevant source of the data. In case you missed it: Prison population trend up to 2000 .)
Looks like I’m in a lose-lose situation, Norm. I give up! I’m overturning my queen.
“Giving up,” are you? Seriously? You didn’t even try to argue your position, Alan. But I guess if something is pointless to begin with, then why even try, eh?
And I entirely agree. But I would take that tack one step further: if you already know that ‘tut-tutting’ will be as good as you will be willing to give if challenged in any of your assertions, then why even bother making any assertion in the first place?
You think it’s wrong to lump Erdoğan and Putin together with Macron, Trump and May. Why do you think that, Alan? Oh, but that’s right: “tut-tut.” I shouldn’t ask, should I. For I would either not understand the subtleties of your reasons or would not want to. And thus it is that you ‘give up’ and ‘overturn your queen.’ Says a lot, doesn’t it? I mean, of course, as you would have it, about me . . .
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