Pasha
Defend Kebab
No bio...
User ID: 481
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
that leg-lengthening procedure if your problem is height
Isn't this an extremely invasive and painful surgery where you cannot function normally with your legs for 1-2 years while recovering? I would really suggest just dating short girls instead
wigs or medical hair replacement (dunno the clinical term) if you are balding.
OP, this is much recommended. Turkey has a large industry of medical tourism for plastic surgery but especially for hair treatments so I know lots of people who did this and it can really change a balding guy for much better.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Is it healthy to dwell so much over it everytime some city degenerate dies and the media decides to make it a “thing”? What would you or anyone else gain from this knowledge?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
I am not a court of law. If harassing and scaring random people around is a regular day in someone’s life then that’s a degenerate who wouldn’t survive for long in 99% of human societies that has ever existed. I don’t have to care about the specifics of their mischiefs to come to this conclusion.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Yeah this is ridiculous. The alternatives are:
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Sausage fest.
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Face checks at the doors which accomplish the same outcome but only the higher status men are allowed inside to mingle with the women.
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Invite only parties where any woman is easily invited while only higher status guys are.
I get the feeling that anyone who cheers something like this simply hasn’t had much of a nightlife.
Such blatant unfairness raises my hackles
"The game" is unfair either way. It will never be fair as long as we are mammals with certain sexual instincts. Hear me out.
What you are objecting is a situation where the unfairness becomes explicit instead of implicit. But this is a horribly bad strategy!! If you are not a "gigachad" and/or "absolute player" type of guy, this is exactly what you want! When the rules of the game becomes more explicit it gives more chances to people who lack the deep social instincts for playing the implicit game. And forgive me for stereotyping, but I have literally never met an Indian guy (from India proper) who had very strong instincts in this regard and I know many.
When ladies get cheap booze explicitly from the bar there is less expectation on you to do the classic move of introduce yourself with confidence, say a couple witty funny things, and ask what she wants to drink. For some guys this is second nature. For many this is nerve wrecking and they will fuck it up. If you are in the group that gets the nerves from approaching a pretty girl like this then you should absolutely welcome a ladies night. It takes some pressure off you.
This is the exact reason why dance classes, blind dating, formal courtship, even arranged marriages etc are all good strategies for men too awkward to just ask a girl out from zero. Each one of these options add an extra dose of explicitness to the interaction.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
“I refuse to entertain the subtleties of life because some people some time ago came up with some legal principles on which I shall base my entire thought process” isn’t a very good jumping point for a conversation or deliberation. But you do you
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
But I really hope that's not the only thing they are trained to do
Why are you exactly hoping for this?
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
absolutely cut off, besieged on all fronts
I suppose except their entire shoreline from where they can always freely be supplied by the most powerful country in human history which unconditionally supports them diplomatically economically and militarily often to the detriment of its own geopolitical standing.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
I believe this sentiment is actually very common with online Hindu nationalist types. My best guess is that they see Israel as a country of hyper-competent Brahmins (without the 1.5 billion riffraff bringing them down) and associate its enemies of "Muslim hordes" with Pakistan.
While the threat of getting any physical harassment is quite low, you definitely did the right thing by just walking away. Scammy oriental bazaar carpet seller and "tour guide" is a stereotype that existed as long as Westerners became rich and started visiting the East. IMO the best Turkish comedy movie of all times literally has "scammy carpet seller gets abducted by aliens" as its plot. The opening scene where he is scamming Japanese tourists with fake wares is considered pretty hilarious by most people.
I have had similar interactions in Israel and multiple Arab countries. Unfortunately it seems almost inevitable when modern industry and commerce makes the institution of bazaars obsolete and a corrupted version of it survives solely due to tourist inflows. These people develop a good eye for the most gullible and loaded foreigners and spend their entire working life making good money from it.
The worst offenders tend to make the national news and the police usually does something about it if you were truly coerced. But this is definitely not a boundary you want to test as a foreigner and even if you can get restitution you still ruined your holiday.
Istanbul is typically right on the edge of modernized decent mega-city and third world shit-hole. If you intend to visit more third world destinations in the future it is a good training ground for not looking and acting too much like a credulous cash-cow tourist.
P.S. Also please don't eat any processed meat from any tourist street restaurant. Just check for very good google reviews online or walk a bit further to the side streets and find a place that doesn't have an English menu if you want an "authentic experience". I can't fathom how people still fall for this.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Lol same. Watched Turkey won as a kid. And then every single year ever since. I feel like it keeps getting shittier and more formulaic every year but maybe I am just grumpy. Also jury voting sucks ass. Who cares about the opinions of some third-rate music "journalists" from Albania? Give me some juicy politics and neighbor voting.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
I suppose a lot of mediocre people entered the software field with expectations of easy work cheap money and now they are pissed and have way too much free time.
Also it is terrifying for any FAANG employee to watch Elon take over Twitter, fire 90% of the work force and keep the site functioning just fine.
So yesterday Turkish Presidential and Parliamentary elections took place. I wanted to give an overview of the main characters and themes.
First of all some clarifications about the election system and candidates.
The presidential system is relatively new in Turkey. Presidents used to be largely ceremonial in Turkey and the cabinet/prime minister were in charge until constitutional changes Erdogan himself advocated in 2017. This was only the second election where the country directly voted for a powerful president. Also, a new system of parliamentary alliances were implemented which allowed multiple parties to pool their votes in electoral alliances. The political system is only recently coming to terms with the full implications of this and we basically ended up with two broad coalitions. It is all too eerily American.
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Recep Tayyip Erdoğan: Good old Erdoğan. Doesn't need much of an introduction at this point. Has been leading the country with wildly different formal and informal coalitions since 2002. He is just 69yo but he has been getting visibly very old and fragile lately. It is likely he has some underlying health problems. Nevertheless he retains a lot of his charisma and political acumen. He entered politics as the energetic young face of the up-and-coming Islamist movement 30 years ago, and at this point the party is simply his personal fiefdom with little autonomous energy or appeal. He gathered in his electoral alliance a strange mix including the ultra-nationalist paramilitary party, old school Islamists, old school social democrats, and the political arm of Kurdish Hezbollah movement(!!) who basically want a loose federation with full autonomy for Kurds, united under Sharia. It doesn't make any sense and it is all held together thanks to his personality and patronage networks.
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Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu: Very uncharismatic leader of opposition since 2010. He leads CHP, which is founded by Ataturk himself and used to be the ruling party during our single party dictatorship period of 1923-1950. He was a high level but unremarkable civil servant until he made a bid for Ankara mayoral elections in 2009, looked competent on TV, lost anyway, but then got elected as the chairman of the party when it turned out former chairman was sleeping with lots of women high up in the party. He has since lost every single election with roughly the same percentage of the votes CHP always receives (around 20-25%). However the laws regulating political party administration in Turkey basically makes it impossible to remove the party chairman unless they really fuck up, so he has simply refused to leave. He is also from the small Shia religious minority of Eastern Turkey, and moved the party to a more left-liberal inclusive direction compared to the hardcore-nationalist-secularist-pro-army position it used to have. He leads an electoral alliance of a fuck-ton of parties, including many supporting it from outside. This group includes another branch of the ultra-nationalist paramilitary party, the main Kurdish socialist party (political wing of the guerrilla movement), another branch of old school Islamists, former Erdogan allies (his former economics/foreign ministers and prime minister, one of them a pro-EU neoliberal, one of them a hardcore neo-Ottomanist), and a bunch of smaller liberal or socialist or nationalist parties. It doesn't make any sense and it is all held together thanks to a hatred of Erdoğan's personality and patronage networks.
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Sinan Oğan: Another branch of ultra-nationalist paramilitary party (!!), organized as more of a protest candidate against the massive refugee waves Turkey has experienced in the last decade. We received around 5-10 million Syrian/Afghan/African and who knows what else refugees and migrants since 2010. This is very unprecedented and many larger cities became somewhat multicultural hotchpotches almost overnight. There is tremendous amount of resentment against this development so it was enough to fuel a third candidate. He is essentially a pro-Eurasianist academic who speaks fluent Russian and was very likely recruited by the intelligence services to liaison with Central Asian Turkic Republics in the 90s when Turkey had hegemonic ambitions in the region. Pretty much any high-up member of ultra-nationalist paramilitary party can be assumed to have shady ties with the intelligence services/deep state.
There is another candidate who was mostly just running over a personal grudge and withdrew before the elections so I will not mention him.
The important issues of the election were (with a vague order of importance):
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Erdoğan: Love him or hate him. There is not much of a middle ground at this point.
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Economy: Turkey got solidly caught in the middle income trap after a period of solid neo-liberal growth. Inflation is rampant, current is in shambles, and inequality is going through the roof as the government practices wage suppression to a keep trade balance discipline, and low interest rates are sky-rocketing the real estate prices. The opposition parties focused much of their effort convincing the people that they can salvage the situation.
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Immigration: Immigration is almost universally disliked. Massive majorities express that they want them gone ASAP in polls. Erdoğan's pro-refuge stance is the main factor keeping this issue under control. Almost all opposition figures made remarks about "solving" this crisis but there doesn't seem to be any good policy proposals, especially if Turkey wants to keep some cooperative relation with the EU.
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Geopolitics: Middle East has always been a dangerous place but the sense of instability and vulnerability is increasing substantially nowadays. Turkey's domestic defense industry has been growing rapidly in order to wean off the NATO dependence in foreign policy and this stuff is wildly popular with basically everyone. Erdoğa does well to take credit.
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Secularity/Western Identity: Always the underlying issue of every other issue in Turkey is this identity crisis. The state has ideologically become solidly moderate conservative under Erdoğan, however it is not capable of producing any real modern alternatives to secularist modernism and nationalist modernism, capable of going beyond politics of resentment against the Westernized elites and become a creative force for the future. This has led to the rapidly rising forces of the ultra-nationalist bloc as well as Kurdish identity politics and Western woke ideology as everyone is aware that the country is stuck, but cannot produce a home-bread alternative. This is all happening with the background of a century of rapid transition that made the country today almost entirely urban, capitalist and social media addicted with a TFR below replacement as of last year.
Business conglomerates friendly with Erdoğan's family took over almost all the private media enterprise in the country in the last decade, and the opposition parties created their own rather amateurish but widely watched alternatives. The public media also acts like an arm of the ruling party. Therefore watching the election coverage and zapping between channels gives you an impression of two parallel universes vaguely aware of each other.
The polling was suggesting prior to the election that Erdoğan would face a big loss, getting solidly defeated in the first round with a large margin even. Therefore the opposition was extremely hopeful, almost in a messianic mood for weeks at this point. However the results were solidly very disappointing if that was what you were hoping for. It looks like it ended roughly 49.5/45/5.5% between the candidates with a small number of ballot boxes still contested with re-counts. I don't expect any changes. There will be a second round but Erdogan's victory is basically guaranteed as nobody expects a principled block voting of Sinan Oğan's supporters in favor of Kılıçdaroğlu. The mood is extremely catastrophic in the Western facing part of the population (which is roughly everyone I know), and there are a fair number of bitter losers with fraud claims (I don't believe any widespread fraud has ever taken place in modern Turkish elections. I volunteered in the past and know the system well and it is quite solid).
This is the day we all woke up today. I moved abroad a while ago and purposefully lowered my emotional attachment with the country and looks like that was definitely the right decision. Still couldn't help but feel solid disappointment watching the results roll on TV yesterday, even though I was very hesitant to vote for such a shitty opposition bloc.
Edit: Forgot to mention, Erdogan's block won a parliamentary majority pretty easily. So even if the opposition wins the Presidency through a miracle there will be a split government situation which is something very unfamiliar to Turkish people. We used to have a lot of unstable coalition governments in the 90s and people absolutely hated them and generally prefer consistent alignments in the government.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Nope they got purged the fuck out. There weren’t many to begin with. They were just very powerful in media judiciary education and bureaucracy since they acted as Erdoğan’s intellectual shock troops to take over complex institutions. Islamist movement has very low human capital so this is something they always struggled it. When they were purged they were replaced either with some sections of the old Kemalist guard or people from party patronage networks.
it sounds like Kılıçdaroğlu is a Kemalist straight out of central casting
The label Kemalist lost its meaning other than “broadly secular” at this point. There isn’t anyone significant who would like a return to the rule of NATO aligned heavily statist army-bureaucracy network which is what Kemalism used to mean in the 2000s.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
I think the EU is quite happy with Turkey’s role as a deportation target for Syrians that cannot be sent back to Syria (because Assad must go or stg). Many of these people have been in the country for close to 10 years at this point and it’s not obvious if Syria would even accept them back.
I think mass deportation is still a possible solution for more recent arrivals of Afghans and Africans, however it is very doubtful if Turkey has the state capacity for such a thing or even the will. The reality is, immigrations of non-Turkish Muslim groups into Anatolia is a very common occurrence (probably the majority of the modern “Turkish” population are descendants of such immigrations) in late Ottoman history and state has been pretty successful at assimilating them into a broad Turkish identity. My best guess is that something like this will happen in the 21st century too.
No clue. It’s still up in the air. Everyone was falling over themselves to have a phone call with Oğan last night. My expectations:
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Erdoğan will almost definitely win regardless, which means Oğan can get some actual power in exchange of support. Opposition promises are as good as worthless.
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Opposition block includes the support of the Kurdish independence movement. I doubt how many of his voters would follow him if he came to an agreement with KK.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Lol. I don’t know anything about guns but good to know. A lot of the inflation is definitely primarily meant to keep the export industry and employment strong at the expense of the middle class purchasing power
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Can't point to hard data, but as I lived through 2000s and 2010s in Turkey I can definitely say people had quite a lot of optimism about the future roughly between 2005-2015. Combination of strong economic growth as well as a positive ideological framework for the future changes (increasing liberalism and EU membership in our case) can really work some serious magic.
Both of factors basically disappeared since in most of the world. Few countries have experienced significant consistent economic growth in the last decade (China, US and Israel as exceptions), let alone productivity growth. Also neo-liberal borderless capitalism and almost limitless human liberty through internet does not function as the great ideology of the age as it used to anymore. The economic crash killed the belief in the first and the Arab Spring in the second.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Not even 100% sure why but he feels like a natural ally
I suspect because you don't know much about the topic and just project your own prejudices on him.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Maybe I can clarify what you are trying to say here. After the absolute devastation of the 1999 İzmit Earthquake, there was a significant civic and political push in Turkey for rapid urban renewal in order to make the cities more robust against future earthquakes and also to have decent rescue and relief organizations. The governments of the time imposed earmarked taxation for earthquake funds, which were supposed to be used for, well earthquake stuff. But the truth is there was nothing in the laws that actually forced the government to use this money for anything specifically. It was a Parliamentary democracy, money goes where the budget voted by the Parliament of the time wants it to go. So a lot of these funds got used in much more popular (people forget fast) infrastructure projects or just general spending. So it is a form of misusing funds, but embezzlement is a bit strong. I am sure there was some embezzlement somewhere but that is always the case with any government fund.
Also I am not sure what you are talking about with shutting down the social media.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Perhaps you only hear of the bad news? The Turkish stock market (BIST 100) did an absolute rally since 2022, and the currency has stabilized in the last 6 months as well (consistent small devaluations don't hurt the real economy much if they are predictable). A semi-independent posture from NATO is seen as a positive in the country. The country is preparing to normalize relations with Syria since their civil war is over (although they still have to keep starving because the EU and the US wants to "punish" Assad or something).
nothing but bad news that makes America's problems seem quaint by comparison
If you are rich you can sustain a lot more ruin in the Adam Smith sense. The Culture War threads here are 90% dedicated to absolute ridiculous bullshit that Americans produce and sustain constantly thanks to their wealth after all.
There is quite a lot more to life than politics and many people find happiness and meaning in their lives even while living in a country that is not materially ideal. You can do a lot worse than Brazil or Turkey as places to lead a life.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Yes looks like the system is quite stuck and individual small countries are also stuck playing a game which is not working well for them anymore. I found Michael Pettis' work quite enlightening and interesting in this subject: https://americancompass.org/bad-trade and also the theories that relate developmental stall to deindustrialization https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2022/11/the-long-slow-death-of-global-development. I believe the two ideas work well together to explain quite a lot. But I am not an economist.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
Yes this is pretty much spot on. One man increasingly making almost every single decision and taking personal control of almost every patronage network in a diverse country of ~80 million for 25 years has had quite disastrous consequences no matter what one thinks about his opponents.
Ironically, his main victim has been the center-right/conservative/Islamist-ish* political movements. He totally hollowed the organizations out and blocked the paths of succession for talented people in favor of his own syncopates.
*always good to keep in mind there are very few Islamists in Turkey in the Salafist sense, and these people typically consider Erdogan also an absolute degenerate enemy of the true faith.
Pasha
Defend Kebab
11mo ago
It wouldn't surprise me much. NGOs which are mostly actually just funded by various government funds and have a political purpose next to their regular work has been a common thing in Erdogan's "patronage networks" I have been mentioning. As far as I know this one mostly builds and runs university student housing and does some relief work, typically with a religious tone. It is a method for offloading government responsibilities to institutions which can be more selective in the ideological and political constitution of their members, as opposed to regular civil servants who are more or less the average of the country by definition.
This should sound rather familiar to anyone who knows how the Western NGOs function. It is of course less professional and more embezzlement-y.
Asking out of ignorance, doesn’t autism make it difficult to interact with classes full of rowdy teenagers all day long?
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