I Do Not Fucking Believe This

[la_samtyr]

Istanbul, Turkey is undergoing a coup? uprising? what-the-fuck ever as I type this.

It sounds like social media has been disabled by the Turkish government? military?

Reports claim that NATO is scrambling? US planes have scrambled?

I'm gonna go get drunk. I cannot deal with this anymore...


ETA: I really haven't paid any attention to anything but US politics -- of course, trying to make sense of either party is an exercise in futility... :(

Also, there is no Turkish community as such where I live. There'd be more likely to be one in Lincoln or maybe Omaha.

Comments

[rhapsody11.livejournal.com]

It may sound strange, but it as long coming after everything Edogan has pulled the last months. There is only so much the military would accept.

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

First thing most governments do these days when there's trouble is disable social media. I\m not seeing/hearing about it on our media right now - it's the middle of the night and the beginning of the weekend - but trouble was definitely brewing there. Guess I'll brave the cold and go take a look at Al Jazeera on the tv.

[rhapsody11.livejournal.com]

Here we get a full coverage (we have a large community of Turks here), for now the news (they just ended the 5 and an half hour live broadcast) here suspect that the coup has failed. So many things are still up in the air, but I hope things will calm down there soon.

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

Looks as though it failed yes, though you can never tell what might be coming down. Still, even if it has failed, I doubt this is the end of it.

We only have a tiny Turkish community here, I don't think more than a few thousand, so I guess it wouldn't be a breaking news priority.

[ysilme]

Yes, it's failed, and things seem to go _really_ ugly in Turkey right now. Like it's said that 2500 judges were dismissed, and Erdogan is using the putsch to "clean out" everywhere.
We were getting our share, too; tonight, in several German cities car parades and commotion bordering on riots happened with showing of flags and so on, although I haven't followed the news closely enough to get many details. We've large Turkish communties in our area, our small city has one, too, although I didn't hear about anything bad happening - but then, we live in a village far enough away to miss things. In Mannheim, large city about 50km from here, there seems to have been something of a beginning riot, but without any catch-up news so hopefully without bad consequences.

I'm honestly not surprised at all, given what's been happening in Turkey lately. Wasn't some social media already banned for good anyway since about a year or so? I think twitter was banned for about a year on Erdogan's orders, but that might have been revoked by a court order. I confess I haven't followed it too closely, though.

[keiliss.livejournal.com]

I remember Twitter being banned a while ago yes, and I think it ended up in the courts. The current theory I keep hearing is that the government instigated the coup so they'd have grounds to go after all manner of dissidents or people who make them nervous. Maybe I'm just seeing this through an African lens - we get a lot of that - but it makes a lot of sense.

[ysilme]

Siljan is reading a lot of non-mainstream news sources and magazines, and he said he heard the same already this morning. This afternoon, our main online newsmag had an article "officially" suspecting the same. I can only agree with you, it makes a lot of sense.

[curiouswombat.livejournal.com]

Sadly it seems to have failed. Under the Turkish constitution it is beholden on the army to over throw the government should they feel that their secular democracy is under threat - those involved seem to have thought that point had been reached.

But their failure will just give Erdogan an excuse to clamp down on everything and become more and more of an Islamist dictator I fear.