> Twitter, Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram Restricted in Southern Turkey
It's kind of incredible how that head line are so terrifying. The only explanation for this is that people don't want information getting out of that area. It's so fucked up.
Maybe this is a bit naive to say but I really hate that this is just how things are. We all know what's going to happen and there's nothing that can be done about it. It doesn't really seem like it'll ever change either.
I hope some federated system like Mastodon picks up in popularity, it would make it harder to blacklist all instances and effectively blackhole the entire platform.
Wouldn't Starlink by Space X solve this? Authoritarian govs. would make it illegal to subscribe... but like VPNs it would be very hard to police, even harder.
He hasn't really had reason to, none of his businesses thus far have involved media, telecom or social media. Not saying it's particularly likely that he would go against the grain, but its a bit unfair to say he hasn't when he hasn't had occasion to yet.
People talk about Starlink like they never heard of RF engineering or something? I mean really, what does Starlink change when the entity doing the blocking is a state level actor?
"Must be willing to own a device that can get you disappeared" is not a realistic solution to state-level censorship, despite cypherpunk dreams to the contrary.
No, ground based lasers can deactivate. Nation states have these.
The only thing we can do is strengthen non-authoritarian governments. Unfortunately, western business leaders made the mistake of strengthening authoritarian countries for a profit. We have a dark two to three hundred years ahead of us.
An unfortunate side effect of the way HAM licenses are handled worldwide is that each government has a handy list of almost every citizen with enough knowledge and experience to build, service and use radio stations - complete with addresses and a partial inventory of equipment in circulation. It makes confiscating radio equipment and detaining operators much, much easier.
The knowledge is free and available to all and not that difficult. Amateur, citizens, and even AM/FM are cheap and easy to operate.
We are talking about how people get a message out in a martial law / wartime scenario. Radio is your best bet because no one can really stop you the way they can block and DNS server or just outright tell the ISP to shutdown.
Big social media companies could offer an API that offers a list of IPs that serve the app and any data it needs from an unblocked source. Then if you're under oppression by a malevolent leadership that blocks a social media, it could be so that you only need to hook your Twitter or Facebook app to internet via Starlink for the millisecond it takes to fetch the unblocked IPs, and the app would be configured to automatically use those in blocked countries. Those new IPs got blocked? Just hit the API again with Starlink and get back to using normal internet. It could be default behavior for the apps in countries where they are blocked to do that if a Starlink connection is up.
If a couple of bytes of information every now and then is too expensive to fetch with Starlink in poorer countries, it is too expensive to use for normal internet use for normal people anywhere on the planet.
Since you are using normal internet except for fetching the IPs, you are not subject to government snooping or sabotage any more than you would be normally. It also would require normal people at maximum the same level of tech-savvyness as a VPN to just connect to Starlink for a second.
Another key difference would be that a VPN requires you to reach the VPN server somehow, and the country can arbitrarily block cable traffic if they have the resources and will. Whether it's technically feasible for most VPNs is another question. But anyway, for Starlink... You would really need to wreck their satellite off the orbit or mess with their radiosignals to block it.
Not that social media companies would do anything to piss off authoritarian leaders / oppressing governments. But they could if they thought it's right
I just meant that unless customers were talking to satellites directly, presumably there would still be a Turkish ISP in the middle that would be able to route Facebook et al into the æther. But maybe I’m misunderstanding how Starlink works.
I think the current plan is for them to talk to the satellites directly? One of the reasons they're trying to get the costs of the antennas down to ~$300.
I mean, it's next to a war zone, with tons of military hardware moving about, preparing to enter fighting. It sounds like pretty reasonable counter-intelligence (not to mention counter-propaganda) move.
They did the same thing in 2017 during the anti-corruption protests in Turkey. This is just a means to prevent atrocities on behalf of Erdogan's government and the military from leaking out into the public sphere.
Right now in Turkey criticizing the operation is considered "terrorist propaganda" (120+ persons already detained), as is reporting that there are victim among Syrian civilians (a few independent journalist already detained and released) any website/tv reporting negatively is being closed by the state TV watchdog.
So it is not only about counter-intelligence.
I'm not commenting on the war, the sides taking part in it, etc. I'm merely saying that muting social media in the vicinity of troop movement is a logical move by any government engaged in a war.
I disagree. Keeping your opponent in the 'fog of war' is a legitimate, reasonable military aim. In the olden days, radio/TV transmissions and newspaper publication was severely restricted during military operations. Today, those are largely irrelevant as news is spread on social media, so this block is the modern-era equivalent.
Note how my argument does not depend on whether we're talking about a good war, bad war, just war, evil war, etc.
That seems like a convenient justification and minor strategic benefit rather than the real issue. This is about PR / image management and controlling the narrative. An outraged domestic and international community can limit your options (look at Hong Kong).
Erdogan got a green light from Trump, who publicly accused the Kurds of not helping with Normandy landings and taking the USA's money (he never mentioned ISIS). The American government supports you, who needs PR?
At first I was thinking that intelligence operations probably have better ways to gather and exfiltrate date but I guess now that their allies have abandoned them they might not actually have better ways to get or share info. This is one of the reasons I can't wait until there are more satellite providers. It's hopefully much harder for a country to block a bunch of satellites in LEO than terrestrial lines.
It's not about stopping the military, it's about stopping regular people from communicating. Don't want you posting troop positions, pictures of dead people, etc.
It's disturbing that it's happening so often it's becoming a norm. I guess it's fair then for people to assume the worst. That the government is committing acts so heinous they can't allow them to be discussed.
If they didn't want information getting out of that area perhaps they would block better. It seems they just want to block ordinary non-techie users from communicating this way.
This ban is not to keep the Kurds from receiving information, they know they are getting bombed when their houses blow up. It's to keep information out.
To exfiltrate information, all the Social Media anti features are a plus.
We do? I don't know. I find we rarely know what's going to happen. In 2016 everyone had for weeks talked about how Aleppo was going to go up in flames. And in the end, it turned out to be an actual operation to rid the place of rebels and then they established order when the city fell. Maybe in these towns the same will happen. But it's hard to say "we all know what's going to happen."
I find Turkey and its government are behaving like an authoritarian regime, much alike Saudi Arabia. I don't understand how invading another country's territory is accepted in 2019. On the other side, the Kurds have lost thousands to fight ISIS (on the behalf of the West), have strong equality men/women etc. We should support the Kurds and cut connections to Turkey
> I find Turkey and its government are behaving like an authoritarian regime
They are an authoritarian regime. Turkey is similar to Hungary in so far, that there is a cosmopolitan capital and the rest is rural. While the cosmopolits want a liberal democracy, the rural people usually don't want it. So, whatever democracy there is, the majority will vote non-democratic regimes.
Economic growth that favored urban areas created a social wedge that was exploited by a coordinated international operation. It's the same pattern, and even a lot of the same people in Brazil, the UK, Hungary, Turkey, and the US.
It is simple to manipulate angry people with nationalist propaganda. You appeal to a sense of aggrievement to create unity among a marginalized group, manufacture an enemy to exploit fear and anger, and associate adversaries with that enemy to override rational behavior. Then exploit the divisions that creates in your enemy.
Facebook is the greatest gift to authoritarians in the history of humanity. It may be that a few hundred people will control the world at this rate.
I am hesitating to respond as it may derail conversation from the actual subject at hand, but various territories have been annexed ( Crimea ) some of those annexations recognized ( Golan ) with comparatively little consequence. Add to that Chinese creating their own islands. 2019 is all about grabbing as much as you can. It may be wrong, but this is basically the world we live in.
This is the sad reality. An international world order in which borders are somehow sacrosanct was a nice feel-good fiction, but ultimately if it cannot be enforced, it's not real. Not to mention that, like you said, long before Crimea there was Golan, Kashmir, etc.
I would like to point out one detail which is the fact that these forces has been killing our civillians and soldiers even before I was born. They claim that these territories (East part of Turkey) should be governed by them thus they perfectly find it acceptable to kill "enemy soliders and civillians" and then uplaod every single video of their "operation" to their website and demonsrate their "great" achivements which is simply what we call as Terror. I am completely fine with creating their own governments outside of our territory but sir/madam, trust me if someone likes to invade your country and start killing your people you will not welcome them.
The kill ratio is roughly 5 Kurds for each Turkish death. The cost to turkey has been hundreds of billions of dollars too. The reports from international human rights organisations like Amnesty International are grim. Turkey is using murder and torture systematically. While what I can see likely has bias, if you are in Turkey it is far harder and possibly dangerous to get good information due to state censorship and oppression.
Almost any other way of handling this situation would be better, but I haven’t the faintest idea what the average Turkish citizen could do to help this.
Thanks for pointing out the wiki regarding kurdish-turkish conflict. I will be doing further reading on overall conflict just to inform myself even further.
I also would like to make a point on something but in order to do that first I invite you to imagine how is it like to fear just to travel some of your own country cities because when you are travelling there is a possibility of rocket or bomb ambush among the mountains. Imagine, teachers in those cities are captured and killed in your schools. Imagine regular people doing their job get rocket attacks thus get killed on a monthly basis. Imagine many more things like that could happen on a monthly basis in your very own country. Finally, imagine that this is going on for over 30 year and all of those attacks performed by single terrorist organization with ultimate purpose of taking control of approximately 1/4 of your country.
Now, do you think after thousands of death happend in your country for over 30 years, bombs detonated in your home cities. Would that death ratio still make sense while all of these events possibly still going on to you?
If still you think 1-5 ratio still make sense and we should stop defending ourselves against terrorists, I encourage you to do this mental exercise of imagining all of those events one more time and possibly see what are the typical reaction of countries towards this kind of hostility in their own lands. (Although I haven't done comprehensive research on 11/11 event, I think it possibly has potential to demonstrate how could one country go further when it faces with such terrorist attacks to stop it.)
>> I don't understand how invading another country's territory is accepted in 2019. On the other side.
What is special about 2019 ? Borders move, countries expand and contract. New countries form, old countries disappear. Happens all the time.
The areas that are being occupied by Turkey have been under ottaman rule since 1500s to WW-I, and only the last 100 years or so they were not! Countries like Syria, Iraq etc have borders that were drawn on maps by people who did not live there. So, long story short expect many countries in Middle East to reconfigure their borders, new autonomous regions spurt and old regions disappear.
Border changes happened all the time but the two world wars and the subsequent world order and bloc politics have frozen these changes. Now that post-war order is slowly crumbling so are the dynamics in various parts of the world.
First of all, Turkey is not invading any country. This is just a military offence for securing our borders. It is a basic instinct that every state has nowadays. It is like border that US is now building on Mexico. Just imagine bunch of mexican gangs trespassing your US border and make some unrest. This is almost same situation. Turkey is the country that killed most ISIS fighters.
Having strong equality between man/women shouldn't be the only parameter when you are picking up your allies. US and Turkey are member of NATO and we have operations together since then. (Including Korea, Afghanistan and Iraq). Situation for Syria is a little bit different here. Because, it is too close to Turkey. If you cut connections to Turkey, it will cost you more.
I’m not condoning Turkey’s actions, but this reasoning only works assuming there is a functioning government capable of securing its own territory on the other side of the border and that is not currently the case.
If hostile paramilitary forces were organizing attacks on the other side of the Mexican border at a time when the Mexican government and military itself had collapsed, I can promise you the US would have no problem establishing a safe zone beyond its formal borders.
The only good argument IMO is that the Kurd's YPG won't distance themselves from the (actual) PKK terrorists. If they made steps to do so then Turkey wouldn't have nearly as good of a justification and I wonder if this would be different. Although I'm doubtful Turkey would still make that distinction.
The border security argument is a bit weak. You shouldn't need to cross a border to defend a border.
The fact that the PKK is a terrorist organization is not at all a given. It is propaganda pushed by the Turkish government. The US government follows and so NATO too but without real ground for it (other than disliking communists a lot, I mean). The UN does not consider the PKK as a terrorist organization, and the EU Court ruled that it should be removed for the terrorist organizations list.
Both sides are using terrorism on civilians but the label doesn’t stick when the explosives come from a plane or gun barrel. Both sides are US allies and this can be solved with pressure from other states too.
The "both sides" diversionary tactic doesn't help anyone in these debates. It's the favourite excuse of every dictator and bad guy.
The radical Kurds aren't going to win anything by engaging in it nor will the more moderate Kurdish groups gain anything by quietly supporting them.
Turkey has much to lose in the years to come by exposing their soldiers in Kurdish majority areas and they are only further alienating themselves from Europe and the world, especially if they get too zealous in the process. They haven't even faced any real resistance yet since they focused on Arab areas first. Their decision making won't be without cost.
There's no way this will be easy ride for them. Nothing in the middle east is ever like that. This is just downtime between the next major conflict. There's only so much to gain for anyone involved.
> The only good argument IMO is that the Kurd's YPG won't distance themselves from the (actual) PKK terrorists.
It is not logical to call some people terrorists when they are being massacred by a large professional army and try to defend themselves by whatever means they have. If the kurdish nation exists in 50 years, today's "terrorists" will be remembered fondly, just as the glorious french resistance is.
I don't know if we can call this "sharing core western values" without diminishing what it really is. From what I've read and what I've been told by people who lived there for a few months, I believe man/woman equality is much more important in Rojava than it is in Europe or in the US. Maybe not in principle but clearly in practice.
Not exactly. I'm not going to go too much into the distinction between the PKK and the YPG, but they are not the same organization. The correction I want to make is to note that the official ideology of the YPG is [Democratic Confederalism][0]. It is a form of libertarian socialism, strongly influenced by the ideas of Murray Bookchin.
A brief quote from the Wikipedia article:
Democratic confederalism is a "system of popularly elected administrative councils, allowing local communities to exercise autonomous control over their assets, while linking to other communities via a network of confederal councils." Decisions are made by communes in each neighborhood, village, or city. All are welcome to partake in the communal councils, but political participation is not mandated. There is no private property, but rather “ownership by use, which grants individuals usage rights to the buildings, land, and infrastructure, but not the right to sell and buy on the market or convert them private enterprises.” The economy is in the hands of the communal councils, and is thus (in the words of Bookchin) ‘neither collectivised nor privatised, it is common.’ Feminism, ecology and direct democracy are essential in democratic confederalism.
As I went walking I saw a sign there,
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing.
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
No, they aren't. They're fundamentally democratic confederalists, which is a leftist tendency, but distinctly different from Marxist-Leninism. There are some Marxist-Leninists among the PKK and YPG, but that's not the core ideology of either group. Furthermore the PKK and the YPG are not synonymous groups and viewing them as such is not an accepted position anywhere that isn't inundated with Turkish propaganda.
I would much rather have a society of equitable Marxist-Leninists (which they are not) than authoritarian far-right Turkey. At least their values would be in line with mine, regardless of their political ideology.
It's pathetic that you're using this red-scare nonsense to justify a borderline genocide.
It's not _just_ a different point of view though. It's Turkish propaganda and even includes a "hordes of others" reference which comes from an ultra-nationalist viewpoint that is incompatible with modern values.
Furthermore, no one is censoring them beyond their comment getting a bit more gray, downvotes are not the end of the world. We don't need a community of people justifying massacres because they're scared of retaliations from the same foreigners they're subjecting to brutal oppression.
Seems like a fair threat to me. Turkey has been bearing the burden of accommodating the majority of Syrian refugees. If Europe blocks its efforts to stabilize a part of Syria so it can repatriate Syrians, it seems logical to tell Europe "if you won't support our solution, you should share the cost of accommodating the refugees".
I don't see your point. If I say a military invasion is not semantically equivalent to an "effort to stabilize," I leave open the possibility that some invasions do have a stabilizing effect, but that is never something evident but something that has to be argued for. I don't feel like digressing into drawing Venn Diagrams.
Fair enough, but I would argue that a military operation conducted by a neighbouring country dealing with the fallout of war (Turkey) is more justified and possibly stabilizing than any American or Russian incursion. Turkey has more of an incentive to "stabilize" its direct borders than America has in that region. What is America's interest in that region anyway?
Turkey has spent more than $30 billion on refugees and was already host to 2 million refugees in 2015 (i.e. before the deal) [1]. So, no, that deal hasn't brought any meaningful change.
I was aware. But the costs of accommodating refugees are more than just financial. The social cost is much bigger. I think it's fair that Turkey is looking for a longer-term solution for asylum seekers, not simply taking money and feeding them.
> If Europe blocks its efforts to stabilize a part of Syria
It's not trying to do that, though that's the pretext. As with Turkey’s previous interventions in Syria and Iraq (and its ongoing internal campaigns), it's trying suppress the Kurds. If it's trying to create a pacified area, it's to avoid having a safe space for Kurds, not to repatriate Syrian refugees (except perhaps to repatriate non-Kurdish Syrian refugees to displace the Kurds, which is certainly a plausible Turkish strategic aim.)
This is not the first operation that Turkey has been doing. I believe this should be 3rd or 4th one. In previous ones, there weren't a refugee strike through borders.
"Turkish guards at the border with Syria are indiscriminately shooting at and summarily returning asylum seekers attempting to cross into Turkey, Human Rights Watch said." https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-mideast-crisis-syria-turke... This occurred during Operation Olive Branch.
From what I’ve read in mainstream US news sources, Europe, NATO, and the US have no faith in Turkey’s ability to execute its plan. And setting up a mini-state isn’t something you can really mess up without having catastrophic humanitarian consequences.
And quite frankly, I don’t see any reason why Turkey would succeed. Just look how much trouble the (presumably better resourced and more experienced) US has had in setting up stable governments in Iraq and Afghanistan which (in my admittedly nonexpert opinion) seem to be the best historical parallels for attempting to create stable societies out of a legal vacuum with little-to-no useful institutions and peoples with minimal experience/exposure to operating in such a society.
Its doubtful all the refugees will want to leave ( they want to go to syria). Europe made its bed , and he s taking advantage of it. The only hope is that the offensive will end soon
To add to this; Turkey has had a very turbulent past when it came to internet censorship. Politicians have been baffled at (and as such scared by) the speeds at which information spreads online, and have been actively attempting since then to include the internet in their crusade for media censorship.
Also, Wikipedia has been blocked in Turkey for two years now (see the logo at https://tr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anasayfa - "being missed for two years"). It's just a miserable status quo... Savvier users can circumvent these censors just like anywhere else, but the peoples are powerless whether they can access information or not.
domain fronting basically transfers the burden of availability to another player. It wont last long. China blocked the whole IP block of Google, FB and Twitter. And AWS IPs are actively blacklisted.
i live in istanbul/turkey, and i read most of the comments. the solutions provided ( dns, telegram, other mediums to use etc... ) seems practical but you are missing one thing, that part of the turkey, just started to use tools like twittter, fb, etc.. they don't have same knowledge as we in istanbul.
Blocking twitter, fb, and other tools, was their only chance to get information. i don't say all the information on those platforms are %100 correct but still, they are better then government provided.
Also imagine that, people on that area are just close to the border, yesterday two bombs dropped and 9 people died, 48 people injured and that is just the beginning. there was only social media for them to speak out now they don't. I don't usually follow the press but just because this is a fckng war, i read some news and articles. I can say that, if those people don't distribute the news or stuff happening there, I'm pretty sure the world will not know what is going on there and they will continue to create their own stories.
I'm still shocked at how thoroughly the United States betrayed the groups like YPG that we were working with months ago.
Destroying fortifications on the Syrian border [1], providing intel to Turkey.
There's an official denial of a "green light", but it's pretty clear that that's exactly what it was -- a surprise withdrawal and support ahead of Turkey's offensive. U.S. hardware, support, and consent.
It might as well be U.S. troops slaughtering them now, but the U.S. press seems to be treating it as something that the U.S. was not deeply involved in, or something deeply shameful for the U.S.
We have some precedents in our own history, especially in the beginning of the WW II, and a lot of people are shaking their heads - we consider ourselves as important US allies but it's clearly interpreted as the sign that you can only count on yourself in this world.
I remember hearing that on the news regularly since at least the invasion of Iraq, and I still don't understand why our politicians keep repeating it. It's bullshit. To the US, we barely register on the map.
Poland and Turkey are both NATO allies. That should count for a bit more than being incidental pawns for CIA / State Dept. interventionism, no?
In fact, the reputation of those latter arms of our government is so deep in the dumpster at this point that I cannot believe anyone who becomes entangled with them can claim naivety.
This idea that the USA has a deep obligation to a handful of communist ethnic militias in the Middle East is an intel psyop, and you're falling for it.
This is a Syrian civil war. Do you expect the military to take and hold territory on behalf of the Kurds? They were a partner of convenience because we happened to have a common enemy. Turkey is also an ally (like it or not), and has border issues of their own they'd like to handle.
Turkey was an ally. I love Turks as people, spent significant time in Turkey. But it's clear that as a government, Erdogan has turned Turkey away from the West, from America, from democratic values, and decidedly toward Russia (and not just ideologically).
Turkey's NATO membership is now just a vestigial momento of the cold war.
The agreement was supposed to protect the Kurdish groups from a Turkish offensive by de-escalating the areas that the US had deemed "safe", while providing an umbrella of US control.
Trump then disgustingly yanked the umbrella away and let the Turks have at it.
Its a CIVIL war that has been raging for the last 200 years. It won't stop anytime soon until there is diplomacy. Real diplomacy and HARD diplomacy is needed here. It can't be stopped unless people sit down and talk things out.
This is a very inaccurate and misleading characterization, there was no one single war, and the warring sides have changed alliances and some were wiped out completely.
Until about 1920s kurds were mostly on the same side as turkish government, and were helping turks to quell rare rebellions of non-muslim population (mostly armenians, greeks, assyrians) who were treated as second class citizens. Only in 1920s after most of the non-muslim population was killed in genocide, or displaced during population exchange with greece, Turkey started using their honed ethnic cleansing skills against Kurds.
There is as much reason for Kurdistan to be part of Turkey, as for African countries to be part of France, but Turkey not only doesn't agree to this but also fights against kurds in neighbouring countries. It can be stopped either when Turkey becomes civilized (1) country, like european countries did, or when stronger countries force it to behave in a civilized manner, like US was doing until now.
(1) denying genocide, having laws against "insulting Turkishness", oppressing minorities are not things that civilized countries do
In a war situation you don't have access to facts until after the dust has settled and the bad things have happened, so two years from now I will revise my assessment of the situation based on "the facts". The facts we do have available are historical record of what happens when self-interested, oppression happy Turkish dictators decide that a group of people are terrorists https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Armenian_Genocide
We don't know the facts. This absolutely might be leading to genocide. The fact that they are cutting social media is even more evidence it might go in that direction.
I see a pro-Turkey bias. They let a guy go on there from the Turkish government and push his propaganda, mostly unchecked. They didn't have anyone from the YPG giving their side.
There was a similar operation last year, was it genocide? Please, that is not a light word you should throw around without any evidence. I am always disgusted by censorship, but thankfully there are many other channels of information out there. Also you know that Turkey is home of at least 15 million Kurds already.
Many of the estimated 500,000 people displaced from their homes in areas under the curfews across the southeast of Turkey in 2015 and 2016 lacked access to adequate housing and livelihoods. Many were unable to return to their homes that had been destroyed during or after military operations during which state security forces clashed with armed individuals affiliated to the PKK.
Many times? During the US Civil War, Great Britain gave serious thought to intervening on behalf of the Confederacy on whom they depended for cotton supplies (India at the time was still experimenting with cotton horticulture), and gave tacit financial support throughout the war. Virtually all of the Latin American civil wars of the second half of the last century saw the US give material or military support to anti-communist forces.
The mental gymnastics in this thread, yeesh. "The U.S. should leave and stop interfering!" and "The U.S. should stay and help the Kurds!" are not simultaneously possible.
I don't see how betrayal comes into play, that is the function Kurds chose as mercenaries in Middle East. They essentially play "Red Communist State" vs American brand of "Nationalist" Turkey/Syria.. etc. They did in Iraq and got themselves a semi-independent feudal state, this time Syria held on with Russia and they are getting nothing.
Have you considered the possibility that a green light was, in fact, not given, and that Putin has simply outmanoeuvred America in this case? I think the evidence points towards Russian intel backing Turkey's latest operation.
America completely failed to implement her interests in the region partly due the absolute mess of her internal politics, e.g. a still completely dysfunctional and understaffed State Department: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2018/11/state-d...
Three pieces of evidence that Turkey is drifting towards the Russian sphere of influence:
1. The nonchalance with which Turkey exited the F-35 program preferring the purchase of Russian made S-400 air defence systems.
2. The recent agreement between Turkey and Russia to use the Russian MIR payment system and to settle sovereign debts in Liras/Rubles instead of US dollars.
3. This latest incursion into Syria, which serves no American interest, but clearly serves Putin by taking an American ally out of the equation (the Kurds).
edit: perhaps Trump greenlit it, but America didn't.
Oil, just like everyone else on the planet for the last century. The Tethys Sea ran from the Persian Gulf across central Europe and the Mediterranean hundreds of millions of years ago, deposited massive oil reserves, and cursed the region and its people.
I think the idea that US tax payers funding a military effort that isn’t involved in actually protecting the US should be considered here too, especially since we’ve probably endured more actual American deaths because of such activity.
Spending money not protecting the people who are funding it is bad enough but putting the people funding it in more danger than they were before is really bad, that’s the opposite of what the military is for.
And so you sell out and instantly betray your allies against ISIS the second they're not immediately useful anymore?
Aside from the deeply troubling morality expressed there, you're setting yourself up to never have local allies in any future conflicts as we can all see just how well that's worked out in the past.
The answer to "how do we not fund and die in foreign wars?" isn't "go to war in foreign countries over and over again and then abandon our allies as soon as our immediate objectives are apparently met", it's gotta be more like "stop picking fights in foreign countries".
these loyalty types seem to suffer from classic irrational doubling-down syndrome where because the US made various mistakes in the past, we must atone for them by supporting our "allies" (often complicated, not-so-nice groups who contribute to regional instability even more once armed with latest US gadgets) in perpetuity. after all, what's a couple more military outposts given 100s already exist across the world?
the best time to bring all US troops home was 74 years ago. the second best time is today. perpetual atonement for mistakes made in the past is really just air cover for maintain tentacles across the world, which are tantalizingly useful for continued regime change/provocation/etc.
I understand this point of view and am sympathetic to it, but that's not what is happening here. This isn't an overture of non-interventionism from a Changed America, it's Erdogan calling in a favor in order to extend his human rights abuses from an increasingly authoritarian USA; there isn't some concomitant immediate pulling out of troops in Afghanistan or any of our many other foreign footholds. Framing it as such is mistaken, and maybe disingenuous.
So, to the sentiment you express, I agree! But still think this specific incident is not an example of that sentiment, and I still think it's really, really shitty.
The source you posted seems to support my point, that America was outmanoeuvred. Even if Trump did greenlight the operation, it seems that he was forced to. Trump saying that he did in fact greenlight it is the easiest way to save face.
I'm more shocked at comments like yours that get echoed and promoted without any context whatsoever, but then again "Anti-Turkishism" is a thing.
What I'm shocked about is how a so called ally can side and arm a vowed terrorist group for years and expect there to be no fallout, but then "Pro-Kurdishism" is a thing.
I do love however the narrative that the Kurds are this angelic force that helped us when no other would for no benefit at all. Why don't you and the west just come out and say you want Turkey broken up? It would save us a lot of time instead of being constantly gas lit.
First of all, not all Kurds = PKK (the terrorist organization you are referencing) and not all arms of the PKK commit acts of terrorism. Second, the atrocities committed by Turkey are on the same scale as terrorism, the difference is only in the semantics.
There are families and civilians living in the regions being bombed by Turkey right now and they are defenseless because the Kurds dismantled their battle stations under the recent Turkey-US agreement.
The Kurds have been massacred numerous times throughout recent history by Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Turkey. It would be naive to think a militant organization wouldn't form out of the atrocities committed onto them by these various nations as a means to protect themselves. Not to say this excuses acts of terrorism and corruption committed by the PKK, but a blanket bombing campaign is the worst possible answer.
There has been clashes with the governments(both pre and post revolution), but nothing like what you see in Turkey and Iraq where government targets civilians en masse based on their Kurdish ethnicity.
Having lived two hours from Gaziantep, Turkey did this quite often, this isn't anything new. Often times many sites were blocked, then unblocked depending on the whims of the government.
I lived in a country that recently had an election and while you may think that this is "evil" (judging from the public sentiment of Erdogan and his rezime), I have to say that Social Media is very very ugly pre-Election and during Election (even post-election).
So much propaganda from _BOTH_ sides. Even what perceived to be the "good" side also had their own dirty Social Media move.
What makes it even worse is that Social Media recommendation engine tend to create some sort of Bubble so you will see propaganda that you've already subscribed to and your counter-part will see propaganda that they subscribed to.
It seems like federation is actually more censorship resistant in some ways than fully distributed p2p systems. Because an ISP could block ports and things required for p2p connections, right?
Wouldn't the authorities just keep blocking instances (i. e., servers)? I may be wrong, but I don't think a federated platform is censorship-resistant in any meaningful way.
If each instance is only used by a small number of users, it might not easily be identified, since the exchange of the platforms wouldn't be visible to Turkey's censors.
I don't think this really helps as a means of suppressing information. Unless you block everything, the information will get out and once it's out of the region, you no longer have control. I believe it's mostly about soldiers carrying their cellphones around, posting on facebook when they are idle etc, and you don't want troop movements and staging grounds to be quite that public. "Hey guys, please no Facebook" doesn't work at a large scale, blocking those sites is much easier.
Given an internet connection, you can publish information anywhere, so why need these platforms at all to publish the information?
- Viral content, more easily spread among the world network due to the nature of how these networks operate from a social perspective.
When access is restricted to these websites, what is the solution? Several options are available:
- Keep the content you were planning on publishing saved for later publishing if/when access to these resume
- Given that you yourself might not make it (along with your data), it is imperative to be able to distribute your content somewhere else as quickly as possible
This leads the following proposed solutions to problems like this:
- If any internet connection is available at all, then information can be published somewhere such that it is capable of being eventually queued into your public profiles. The only way an authoritarian regime can mitigate this is by completing banning all internet activity and cell phone use (for instance, I seem to remember that you used to be able to tweet to a phone number, or use common endpoints like email to publish your messages).
Ultimately, we can talk about the ethics or whatever around this, but politics has nothing to do with ethics. I find it shocking that we cannot discuss the general nature of the US political system, but are willing to discuss what are ultimately political concerns in other nations.
Either we cover the US political systems, it's treatment of refugees and immigrants, and the ridiculous denial of science and human welfare... or we don't and we leave other countries alone. I am as appalled as anyone by what is happening here, but why would this article be allowed, and not others that point out, rightfully, that this is due to actions by the current POTUS (probably for personal gain, too).
Confessing that human welfare is a political decision makes me sick, but look around.
Here we go again. When social networks are large and centralized, it’s much easier for governments to shut them down (Turkey, Kashmir) or exert pressure on them to put backdoors in their encryption (China, Britain, USA).
I actually think something like https://www.manyver.se is a better example because it uses so many different ways to get information out. Pubs and rooms over the clear net. Bluetooth, direct p2p, same network connections, etc.
I think the future of p2p is utilizing not just one protocol but many of them.
They can block sites that serve the download and they can block any seed nodes that link to hosts in the p2p network.
Tor is blocked in similar ways, which is why we have the battle of maintaining a constant supply of bridge nodes and using obfuscation techniques like ShadowSOCKS and VMess.
In Turkey blocking is done by ISPs. Each uses different methods.
They block with deep packet inspection, URL matching on HTTP websites, and IP blocking with HTTPS websites.
They even intercept and change DNS results from Google and Cloudflare.
Through the whole history we don't know and will never know what's really happened/happening. Have you got an idea of how badly native population of America have been dealt with back then? DO you know what's happening in Kashmiri, Yemen, Africa, etc?
Turkey used to implement DNS blocks but these days (because people learned to quickly circumvent DNS blocks by Google or OpenDNS) they straight up don't route the IPs.
I wonder with IPV6 could you not come up with a IP hopping protocol so that you can't actually block specific hosts without way too much effort? Maybe it would not work for the general internet, but maybe for some alternative just for this kind of situation?
With this sort of thing, you tend to block networks, not individual IPs. Regardless of how many IPv6 addresses you can use, they're going to be groupable, most likely.
Agreed, collateral blocks are not necessarily your worries in such scenarios. You could block all of the (e.g.) AWS datacenters for all that matters, if your endgame is preventing access to social media services.
They still do implement DNS blocks for less commonly visited websites. Turkey does blocking at multiple layers ranging from street terminators to central gateways.
I find it remarkable how when Israel creates a buffer zone for an open air prison because "terrorists" the world applauds and accepts their right to defend themselves, but when Turkey does it they are in the wrong. Surely, there is some double standard here?
everybody is freaking out about Hong Kong, and not without reason, but there are much larger movements going on elsewhere (Ecuador, Kurdistan, Yemen, ...)
Edit: if you think all these places are too far from the "western world", well, think about Catalonia. We have a lot of arrested political prisoners without trial.
> there are much larger movements going on elsewhere (Ecuador, Kurdistan, Yemen, ...)
Nation building is hard. Instilling modern democratic values is hard.
Those fights are worth fighting. But Hong Kong is low-hanging fruit. (There is also loss aversion, Hong Kong slipping backwards feels worse than Ecuador remaining Ecuador.)
what do you mean, exactly? This is just a personal thing, but I know many ecuadorians and I feel very strong emotions to the current events there. For me it is much closer culturally than Hong-Kong.
The idea of Hong Kong, a city-state with Western freedom + democratic values, falling to authoritarian China is far scarier than Ecuador not changing because it shows that China is willing to put in the effort (and we already know they have the power) to strip other places of their human rights.
If Hong Kong falls, what's next? Likely Taiwan, Tibet, most of SEA...it's a disaster scenario that results in the de-normalization of Western values.
I'm from Albania. I totally understand that you may feel ignored by the world when your country too is fighting for Western values against evil authoritarians. Unfortunately, China is a bigger threat to the entire world than any shitty military dictator our countries can install.
Hong Kong is important coz it's a business and financial center, people around the world care about their money, and the lingering hope of American political designs on China.
People are being hypocritical sure, but it's for an alright cause so I'm good with it in this case. I file that under:
"If I can get someone to do the right thing, for the wrong reason? Then score one for me!"
Also, a lot of the hypocrisy stems from the propaganda that our government puts out. The US just doesn't put out much propaganda about those other conflicts. Let's be honest, people think they are acting freely and being critical thinkers and open minded, but we are all controlled mainly by the propaganda we absorb in whatever society we live in. We Americans are no different. So really, if you have a problem with people not talking about those other conflicts, you should bring it up to the government. The people are just following where the government leads.
In Catalonia there is a trial in process, that will edict verdict very soon.
And there are no political prisoners. There are people that believed they could unilaterally break the law of Spain, that is the State they currently belong to, with no consequences.
They are consequences to braking the law. Even considering Catalonia sovereighn, that is not, they would need 2/3 of the parliament to pass laws they passed with simple majority.
> There are people that believed they could unilaterally...
If they only did! Once they go out of spanish prisons for not having delivered the independence that the people voted, they will have to go to prisons of the catalan republic for the same reason; the second time will actually make sense.
But I was not talking about the coward catalan politicians that surrendered themselves. I was talking about the 7 common citizens that were kidnapped at night last week by the spanish paramilitary and are currently in jail, falsely accused of "terrorism".
Comparing Catalan independence with Kurdish independence is a quite a stretch IMO. A more honest comparison might be Flemish or Padanian independence movements.
Did you really just compare Catalonia: A bunch of rich, entitled Spanish brexiter equivalents to Kurds who are being slaughtered by ISIS, Assad, Russia, and Türkiye?
Really???? I spend 2 months per year in Catalonia. There are no kids without legs in the streets. There are not 4 million refugees there.
Catalonia is identical to a bunch of Rich British wankers feeling that they are entitled to "more".
Please don't take HN threads further into political or nationalistic flamewar. Perhaps the GP was provocative, but on HN the idea is not to take provocation and definitely not to blow it up much larger.
We'd appreciate it if you'd read and follow the site guidelines, which you broke badly with this post.
Hacker News has become a forum for uber nationalistic right-winged libertarians. Be them Israeli, Catalanian, Amurrikkkan, or other, HN lays somewhere in-between 4chan and the daily stormer.
People with passionate politics usually perceive Hacker News as favoring their enemies. This is a cognitive bias: the comments we dislike make a stronger impression than the comments we agree with, so it feels like the community is against us. In reality, it's a large community with a wide spectrum. The people with opposite politics notice the opposite comments and so have the opposite picture of HN. Here are some examples from what I assume is the opposite side to yours:
Catalan here (and not exactly rich). I think OP's comment was completely out of place, but trying to disregard the independence movement as rich guys entitlement is a an extremely distorted representation of the political reality of Catalonia.
I think the comparison in situation/contrast in international attention being made is more between Catalonia and Hong Kong. There's certainly a ton of other important issues causing the unrest, but there is a certain element of xenophobia/ superiority complex in play in Hong Kong as well, that has been simmering for many years.
this is getting downvoted but its essentially true. The separatism in Catalonia has strong roots in a sort of local superiority complex, not oppression. It's similar to Lega in Northern Italy.
Are you sure that, existence of separate language and suppression of Catalan culture during the Franco period have nothing to do with the desire to have separate country, and only some strange superiority complex causes it?
Please don't use HN for regional flamewar or ethnic flamewar or racial flamewar or political flamewar or nationalistic flamewar. We ban accounts that do those things.
In my defense, I wasn't trying to do any of those things. I don't want personally want to be involved, I don't want the military of my country to be involved, and to the point of this story: I don't even really want my internet connection to be involved. In the final analysis, I would prefer to be on another planet entirely.
Dear Ladies,Gentleman and all non binary people,
Turkey is doing a really important military offence and I strongly believe that having this kind of cautions should be in place to control unexpected things might happen in the region. Last but not least, this is an actual war not a movie in your tv set. So, governments should have basic instinct to protect their citizens.
> you can devote my comment. But, you can't change my mind.
Is that really something to be proud about?
Maybe you meant "By simply downvoting my comment, you don't change my opinion, so it's better to write a comment with actual counter-arguments", which would be a comment i would upvote.
But what you wrote sounds like a statement that you have an opinion which you are unwilling to change independently of arguments and facts, and that is sad.
It's kind of incredible how that head line are so terrifying. The only explanation for this is that people don't want information getting out of that area. It's so fucked up.
Maybe this is a bit naive to say but I really hate that this is just how things are. We all know what's going to happen and there's nothing that can be done about it. It doesn't really seem like it'll ever change either.