Turkish university annuls Erdogan rival's degree, preventing run for president

I am not confusing anyone with anyone, just discussing the linked Wikipedia article. A few quotes:

>Aydın Ayaydın, a Member of Parliament from the opposition party CHP said that Erdoğan participated in the four-year degree education of Aksaray Academy of Economic and Commercial Sciences, as Ayaydın himself was a teacher of Erdoğan. Expressing that he remembers Erdoğan and his classmates very well, Ayaydın said "one of his classmates is Mehmet Emin Arat, who currently is a professor at Marmara University

>Mehmet Emin Arat himself called the claims on Erdoğan not having a degree "unfair" and "baseless", stating that "the claims do not have any legal, official or historical basis".[14]

>Israeli Journalist Rafael Sadi, who was another classmate of Erdoğan,[15] said that he was irritated by "people that are telling baseless lies just to slander the man for the sake of opposition" and shared the names of professors that he and Erdoğan followed courses from.

Of course they can all be bribed and/or lying, but the Wikipedia article as written supports the version that his diploma is legitimate. Or at least that's my reading.

Or they could get out of the middle ages and stop caring if women cover their hair?

> An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.

They could have just removed their hijab. Nobody was forcing them to keep it on.

"go to Istanbul Airport sometime and count how many un-hijabed vs hijabed women work as the bathroom cleaning staff."

Out of curiosity, what is the ratio?

> Of course, those same conservative politicians then do the exact same shenanigans of corruption, power politics, and authoritarianism, and so the cycle continues.

The curious things was that early in Erdogan's reign, that is during the 2000s, Turkey seemed to be genuinely making progress, especially in terms of economic policy and outcomes. That's when he was still making fairly orthodox reforms more or less along the lines required by the EU for aspiring new members. (Yes, neoliberal reforms work!)

In the last few years we saw more 'interesting' economic ideas from Erdogan, like that high interest rates cause inflation.

Sounds like Trump getting revenge on the PMCs in America now.

Turkey is a military powerhouse and Erdogan is a strong leader. The west wishes to remove him like all long lasting strong leaders and install some puppets which they can control. They tried to coup Erdogan away couple of years ago with the guy who fled to the US, since then he is especially cautious.

> An entire generation of women from conservative backgrounds couldn't attend university in Turkiye until the 2000s because of the hijab ban.

This should have been countered by "forcing" education for everyone. For university, you could do special high subsidies that enable the woman to break from their families. It'll be painful for a couple generations but it does work.

Turkey has a rich history of coups. But when secular parts of the armed forces tried to oust Erdogan's regime by force in 2016, he didn't just fight them off but used the event as a justification to clean house and prevent these things altogether. He's pretty much following Putin's approach at solidifying his position. So 2016 was essentially the death blow to their democracy.

Sadly, yes. I'm not sure what it will take to make people realize that a "strong man" is not the answer.

It's a disrepectful comparison for Turkish nationals working hard to build democratic institutions.

The US hasn't had the same history of coups, insurgencies, pogroms, massacres, censorship, corruption, etc.

Making everything about the US is just rude.

Having someone born in the country they are looking to lead seems silly to you?

With that restriction, it has taken quite some time for a foreign adversary to have a puppet elected vs just shipping in some carpet bagger.

Having a minimum age also allows for some decent life experience. After all, 35 years old is not that old.

If it wasn't silly apartheid kid psychos like Elon or Peter Thiel could run for president. But fortunately they can't because of those silly requirements. Unfortunately that's not enough to stop psychos that can actually run, as we have all witnessed.

Nothing silly about the requirement to be born in the country you’re going to lead.

> no women have ever been elected to this role although the rules don't forbid it

The same is true of the role of Leader of the UK Labour Party–but I wonder how many people would suggest that the UK Labour Party has an "unwritten rule" that its leader must be male?

We had Japanese internment camps, Jim Crowe laws and McCarthyism and survived. Let's not write off American democracy just yet.

He can't run within the Constitution if it isn't changed. OTOH, his concern about whether his actions are Constitutional and the ability and willingness of any other institution to impose meaningful consequences on his unconstitutional acts don't support the conclusion that his future actions will be limited to what the Constitution allows.

The worry isn't that the law says he can't, the worry is that the law won't be sufficient to make the attempt unthinkable.

He couldn’t run this time, constitutionally speaking. He is an insurrectionist, according to a state court.

The SC said that didn’t matter, it would take an act of congress to disqualify him.

The same mechanism prevents (or doesn’t, rather) him from running for a third term as prevented him from running as an insurrectionist.

I assume they’ll say he was robbed in 2020 and it’s two consecutive terms he gets. And congress won’t stop him. At least 40% of the electorate will support him. Most states will put him on the ballot, threatening to remove the democratic candidate if the others don’t. He will be in charge of the FEC and the various enforcement mechanisms, as he is now. So then what?

The main obstacle to perpetual trump rule is his own age.

Vance certainly can ...

That's just a dumb rule and only losers would follow it. /s

Trump's made no secret about the fact that he doesn't intend to leave office, his enablers have disdain for democracy and want a king. They very well may pull it off, as they've done whatever they liked regardless so far.

I want to be wrong about this but my hopes are tempered.

Well, of course. Loudly and repeatedly accusing other people of things you are guilty off is a pretty good strategy to make low-information people stop giving a shit about what you did.

It also works on people who don't believe in an objective reality, people who can't tell two shades of gray apart, and on people who are just looking for some thread of motivated reasoning to excuse your behavior.

I'm LGBT and I feel fairly confident in saying that there's no way in hell America will elect a gay man in my lifetime.

If Pete is the Democratic candidate, it's a freebie to the Republicans.

I think that Democrats that believe a Pete win is possible live in a bubble. Their views are invalid until they travel the States more to increase their exposure to the rest of the electorate.

The Constitution requires Presidents “have attained to the Age of thirty five Years” [1]. It cites the fact, not the certificate.

The Turkish law doesn’t seem to require an education, it requires a degree. Minor difference. (And the text of the law wouldn’t matter in the end.) But an interesting difference nevertheless.

[1] https://constitution.congress.gov/constitution/article-2/

Or claim he wasn't even born the US...

Right, and that was apparently constitutional. If so we can bring back the law, but this time to disenfranchise dumb voters.

Right but now you can have ways to remove bias. Like automated assignment and grading

> Withdrawing properly received credentials opens the door to yet another extra-judicial punishment and we already have too many of those.

I don’t understand why this is even an option? So the degree is never truly owned by the recipient then if it can be withdrawn/ revoked? Just another reason not to invest time and money into it.

I actually tend to agree with this (once its given i think morally its too late to take it away, except maybe if they cheated). I still think its a totally different situation than the turkey one though.

> in such situations it can be withheld but not withdrawn, it's pretty common for universities to hold back credentials until debts are paid

The article says Columbia “temporarily revoked the diplomas of some students.” I imagine this is what’s going on.

Well they can't force you to regurgitate the knowledge you got there or remove it from your resume, so big deal.

Damaging property is a crime. Plenty of universities withdraw degrees for vandals, kick them out, and sometimes prosecute them. Claiming “free speech” has never allowed “break laws without repercussions.”

Sure but wouldn't the institution have to justify the revocation? If it was, say, due to supporting the wrong faction in the Middle East the employer might not support the revocation. Without justification, couldn't the degree holder sue the institution for some sort of defamation?

Definitely not the education that occurred there it seems

That’s an unnecessarily reductionist take. The value is obviously having demonstrated that you’ve completed the studies required.

The degree is simply the formal proof. If a degree is revoked, that’s a secondary signal that the studies were marked as completed at one time but something later happened that was so egregious that the university felt the need to rescind any endorsements.

Discovery of rampant cheating to achieve graduation would do it. Taking over a campus building and vandalizing it seems like a reasonable thing to cause the university to want to rescind their endorsement of you.

If you murder someone on the campus of the university, then yes, they might cancel your degree.

The Columbia incident was only a few months ago and they’ve been going through the process of building a case, pursuing legal options, and reviewing evidence.

The article says there were over 40 people involved and they’ve been building cases against each of them.

I don’t think there’s a conspiracy here. These things are a lot of work, involve a lot of lawyers, and take a lot of time. It’s only been a few months.

J6 protestors are lawbreakers. IMO, they should not get pardons, but Trump is a despot with the power to issue pardons. I can't do anything about that.

The people at Columbia were not mere "protestors". They were physically abusive bigots who trampled the freedoms of people around them. If they were Jews chanting islamophobic slurs, destroying property, and preventing anyone with a keffiyeh from attending class, they should suffer the same consequences.

I get that "peaceful protest" can be seen as an oxymoron. But what happened at Columbia should have been stopped the moment it started. It is bigotry. It is hypocrisy. But even if you ignore the moral and ethical failings, it was against the rules.

When people physically block your access to classes you paid for, on a campus you have an equal right to be at, and they're blocking you on the basis of your faith or ethnicity, that's not "sticks and stones".

Edit: clarity about the basis

Because I have a life and I have no desire to become a target for the mob, "woke" or otherwise. This is a sensitive subject. People hate. Anonymity here allows me to speak my mind in safety. It's the opposite of drive-by posting.

Also, I don't need people digging into my identity and using that to deconstruct what I say.

Thankfully I enjoy anonymity behind my throwaway handle.

There is no justification for mobs chanting for the death of me and mine. Their coded slogans are not very coded. "Anti-genocide" protests who call for genocide are not honest nor legitimate.

There is not justification why several decades after Brown v Board of Education, there needs to be any gray area around equal access. A durable mob preventing people from feeling safe going to classes they paid for is no different from the KKK. No matter whose politics they espouse.

You're not _truly_ sorry if you're concern trolling. The Israel/Palestine conflict is my lived experience of nearly half a century. My opinions are opinions, but they are very far from uninformed. I have no way to prove this to you.

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> one of those countries has a president who basically tried to stage a coup, and now are back in power ignoring any rule of law

President Yoon of South Korea has been suspended since December, as a result of the martial law incident and the following impeachment. (Actually, Yoon's prime minister, who first became acting President, was also impeached and suspended. It's someone else now.)

India has its own set of political issues, but as far as I can tell nothing this egregious.

Lets consider the fact that after 10 years of Modi and the BJP having overwhelming majorities in Parliament, with Modi’s personally popularity close to all time highs, over a period where many external watchdogs essentially claimed democracy was dead in India, in an election where the BJP was expected to completely whitewash the opposition, not only did the BJP do worse than the previous election, they lost their standalone majority in parliament and had to form a government in coalition with other parties, and were a handful of seat losses away from losing to the opposition coalition.

In general the parliamentary system with a figurehead president as well as India’s extremely culturally diverse nature and weak federal government system, and strong judicial system, seems to have kept Indian democracy almost unreasonably effective relative to India’s poverty, education, and development levels.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rupee_note

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardeep_Singh_Nijjar

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Everything connected to Internet

Everything. For example, try not paying your property taxes for some time to see if it's really your "property".

More and more banks have put their money on smartphone apps to implement the 2FA requirement that PSD2 mandates. Turns out that European banks really like that walled-garden thing. Some banks still allow you to use SMS but pressure is mounting to do away with SMS-based 2FA. Other 2FA solutions (e.g. national CAP schemes [0]) are on their way out, too. So are call centers, which used to let you do banking on the phone.

In Europe, you are living in increasingly difficult times if you want to do banking unless you happen to own a smartphone running an OS made by Google or Apple, and to be a customer on their respective app store.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chip_Authentication_Program

Democracy doesn't work when ordinary people are not educated. Education in Turkey has been very poor. Many people have finished only 5th or 8th grades. Many didn't go to a high school. Thus people are not critical thinkers. They are voting as if they are supporting a football team. Someone popular with a low education can fool people, just like in Turkey or Venezuella. And now here we see the result. Erdoğan has no diploma and he is trying to keep his seat by doing everything.

Would you mind your money in the bank managed by illeterate person? Or would you mind going to a doctor without any degree? Why you are going to trust somone who does not have legal degree?

In my opinion university degree is not enough. He should have at least masters degree.

Apparently colleges and trade schools count as well.