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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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):

  • Erdoğan: Love him or hate him. There is not much of a middle ground at this point.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

  • 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.

East Asian counties at least have a lot of smart people and seem to utilize cognitive capital well, maybe also Nordic countries in this regard too and Israel. .. the same cannot be said elsewhere. the brain drain problem , dysgenics/low-iq problem is real.

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.

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.

Yup. Ex-US market have lagged big time since since 2010, such as in terms of stock market gains, GDP, innovation, etc. See no reason for this to improve. 2002-2010 was an outlier that will likely not be repeated. It does also call into doubt the Keynesian assumption that you can print your way to prosperity; except for the US, this has failed.

Even in the US, the macroeconomic policies of the 2010s were closer to monetarism than Keynesianism. Obama brought down the defict, the Fed kept broad money and nominal GDP growing at a very steady rate, and the economy did ok in spite of greater regulatory/tax burdens during than e.g. the 1990s boom.

In terms of growth, there has been a general movement in the developed world away from economic freedom since about 2000, and I don't think there's much to be explained once this + demographics are accounted for. The crises of the 1970s and 1980s temporarily made it politically profitable for politicians to pursue pro-growth policies, in spite of the fact that these tend to go against well-organised special interest groups, but once this had suceeded, the tendencies identified by public choice theory reasserted themselves: more taxes, more spending, and more regulation. Leviathan went on a crash diet, but he's now gorging again, and the consequence is stagnation, especially in the hyper-cautious and social democratic world of the EU, which has seen more or less no per capita GDP growth since 2007.

Ex-big tech has lagged. If you look at the same kind of stocks in other indexes - banks, cyclicals, etc the US has not done that well.

It’s something something quit enforcing monopoly laws allowing big tech to capture economic rents and develop market caps never seen before.

Networks effects and moats. These cannot be fixed with regulation but are intrinsic to the type of technology . Having total market dominance is not the same as uncompetitive behavior.

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.

shrinking populations are bad, but producing vastly more welfare recipients is perhaps even worse

Shrinking population produce a lot of welfare recipients. These are typically called “retirees”. Unlike the young welfare recipients, the retirees cannot be made to work very effectively.

the ultra orthodox, like the Amish, grow unabated.

Kiryas Joel, the poorest city in the US.

Do they literally do nothing? Why do they get welfare? Surely they would be okay working in ultra-orthodox kosher food factories or something?

Probably a ridiculous percentage of the world’s population above IQ 160 is currently engaged in studying Halakhic law in dingy East Jerusalem Kollels

To be honest this strikes me as a good thing in a way. Another ridiculous percentage of the world’s population above IQ 160 is currently engaged in absolute useless or harmful rat races in academia/law/finance/tech and making 1.2 children per women. At least some hidden geniuses are busy pumping out 10 children per family and providing the genius pool of the future.

Probably a ridiculous percentage of the world’s population above IQ 160 is currently engaged in studying Halakhic law in dingy East Jerusalem Kollels

Dread it, run from it, autism arrives all the same.

So what made the prior generations of Jews to put down their Talmud’s and join society?

If modern society leads to low tfr it would seem beneficial to have a 6-7 tfr isolated community that occasional dumps a bunch of their people into broader society.

What is so interesting about the Talmud? I kind of want to read it if some of the smartest people in the world continuously devote their lives to reading it.

So what made the prior generations of Jews to put down their Talmud’s and join society?

They didn't have a welfare state to exploit. They may have been zealots (so to speak) but they weren't going to starve just to study the Talmud.

Hindu and Buddhist scholars have spent thousands of years studying their own ancient texts, to much the same outcome. You could spend a lifetime studying The Lord of the Rings.

You're selling your people a bit short here. Reading Orthodox Jewish commentaries really does feel like "big-brain shit" in a way that say, reading Christian commentaries doesn't.

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So what made the prior generations of Jews to put down their Talmud’s and join society?

Socialism. Well, at least in many cases.

This is amusing given Israel’s demographic future is economically catastrophic (shrinking populations are bad, but producing vastly more welfare recipients is perhaps even worse),

Perhaps, but what happens when you can't afford to provide for those welfare recipients? They cease to be welfare recipients. And in that case they are again a national resource, whereas a future where they instead don't exist that resource is not there to be tapped.

Israel has the disadvantage of being surrounded by hostile neighbors though. I can't imagine downscaling the economy is a good idea in that situation.

Israel might well do a better job of managing that transition than Argentina or South Africa, it’s true. On the other hand, they might not.

Or the productive people increasingly leave as the country enters a death spiral.

I'm not sure that's worse than demographic decline.

Demographic decline in what sense? Korea is in a bad place but Japan will probably be fine. Obviously AI timelines will shake things up anyway, and Japanese debt is largely held domestically.

And high savings rates seem to be mitigating the problem in Japan.

I remember reading a long time ago that as a democratically supported populist Erdogen always faced push back for bureaucracy and basically the PMC. Any time he tried to keep them in line and enforce his Democratic backing he came off authoritarian. And this is the way of all populists who always end up fighting the PMC and that fight always comes off unnatural. Same as Trump being investigated even before being elected by the fbi. The constant bureaucratic roadblocks makes a guy look authoritarian while they appear organic. Also same with Desantis attacks on DEI in universities - top down but Democratic control over organic PMC action.

Therefore, I support Erdogen. Not even 100% sure why but he feels like a natural ally. It feels like Trump versus Biden and I’m not voting for Biden. Also when the west does need something it seems like Erdogen always falls in line and helps.

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.

Two things can be true: Turkish "democracy" may have always been democracy-with-an-asterisk. That asterisk being a Kemalist deep state willing to overthrow and jail opponents (like Erdogan) for being insufficiently secular. So a pretty big one.

Erdogan may be their chickens coming home to roost - hard to make the moral case for democratic restraint when the deep state and some of the more liberal Turks were fine with illiberalism to maintain their preferred status quo against the broadly Islamist populace (similarly, "liberals" in Egypt reacted...badly to Morsi).

But that doesn't mean that Erdogan isn't an autocrat now or that he's good for Turkey.

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.

*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.

I meant it in a much broader sense: relative to laicite especially, so many Muslims would count as "Islamist" . They don't actually have to be a crazy Salafist type or even the state-opposing Muslim Brotherhood types.

TBH the whole term is a fraught one, partly because it's a tempting way for Westerners to criticize Muslims while claiming to not criticize Islam-as-such, and to apply Protestant assumptions to Islam - obviously the "right" sort of Islam wouldn't be so politically problematic (even though a lot of inconvenient things in Islam are just part of general doctrine).

Erdogan's magic with regards to Islamism was to take over the Muslim Brotherhood type Milli Görüş movement which was making large sections of the population as well as the elite rather uncomfortable at the time, and merge it with the more folksy traditional Islam of the population, liberal pro-EU currents, as well as the dominant center-right capitalist developmentalist tradition of Turkish politics.

Later on he did one more pivot and moved to a type of Islam that the rulers of the Ottoman Empire would be very familiar with, where protecting the religion is the source of the state's legitimacy, and in exchange the state gets the power to define what religion means. This could take on very radical forms, as even implementing laicite can be an act of upholding the religion if the state determines this is what it will take to protect the community of believers(Obligatory photo of Ataturk praying with the muftis and imams at the opening of the first Parliament of Ankara). After all, what does Islam even mean if the Muslims are not strong enough to keep existing? Currently this is what Erdogan-style Islamism ended up transforming into. However the problem with such a model is that it is also quite despotic and spiritually empty, which are two problems Ottomans also often struggled with.

Therefore, I support Erdogen.

Dude embezzled funds for earthquake victims and shut down social media when people started talking about it.

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.

I hate being the “source” guy, but I googled your claim and got nothing. That’s a big claim so I believe you need to back it up. The only thing I got is a cell phone tax they claim went to pay IMF loans and general government expenses. That would not be embezzlement.

There are a couple in German: 1, 2. Automatic translation from German into English is usually quite good.

I don’t believe the articles are describing “embezzle” which in the usage Im familiar with involved taking public funds and putting them directly into your pocket.

These articles describe using earthquake money for general government money. Which is of course quite common and the US does that all the time and every day.

The article cites a journalist called Mumay claiming that a fake address was used to channel earthquake relief funds to one Ensar foundation "close to Erdogan". I am not sure exactly what is being claimed here, maybe @Pasha knows more?

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.

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.

The good news is that pretty decent quality Turkish made pistols have never been more affordable. Seriously, I picked up a forged frame 1911a1 clone for $300. And you can get reliable polymer framed guns for about the same. There's even some HiPower clones for $500-600. I've also heard that there will be a 2011 for less than $1k soon.

Any Turkish ammunition production available in the US?

Yes, and do not purchase it.

The quality control is horrendous.

I am in the middle of breaking down 5000 rounds of questionable Turkish 9x19 for the primed brass and bullets.

Good to know, thanks.

I alternate between hearing this and hearing that Turkish guns (mostly shotguns) are crap. I’ve already my 1911 but I can’t deny that a 2011 is appealing!

I always hear Turkish shotguns are crap but I have no direct experience.

I don't think you'll find anyone saying Turkish pistols are crap. The fact is they're easily as good as anything Rock Island or Springfield are putting out in the mid or low range.

I keep thinking about picking up a HiPower clone, it seems really fun to have both major Browning designs.

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

Do you reckon Zafer Party will be able to come to some kind of agreement with KK?

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:

  1. 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.

  2. 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.

I was talking about this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_Cause_Party

Their name (HÜDA PAR = Allah Party using one of the many names of Allah) is a bit of a pun on Hezbollah which simply means Party of God.

The state in the past has used them from time to time for dirty urban contra-guerilla stuff against the Kurdish movement. Members of the state security establishment sometimes tacitly acknowledges that Islam is what really binds Kurds to Turkey, and without Islam there is nothing other than brute force that can keep them loyal. Therefore sometimes extreme groups such as this are tolerated.

Despite his current nationalist bend, Erdogan is the first mainstream politician that broke a great many taboos with regards to Kurds in Turkey, and he typically polls very strong in Kurdish regions, successfully rivaling the Kurdish independence movement especially among the more religious Kurds.

Turkish Presidential

As usual, any news from turkey is bad news, whether it's earthquakes, NATO, Syria, Kurds, political unrest, bad election results, and so on . It's currency keeps falling against the dollar, it stock market keeps falling too. Same as from 2013-2021. Same shit as always.

It goes to show how whatever problems the US has, are worse elsewhere. America's political problems does not cause its stock market to fall or currency to crash, unlike in Tukey , Brazil, or elsewhere. It's like this with most countries...nothing but bad news that makes America's problems seem quaint by comparison.

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.

2022 was an outlier, which is why I said 2010-2021. since 2013 it seems all downhill...it's just all bad it seems: coup, sectarian violence, hyperinflation , etc. Turkey needs two things: significant capital inflows and high tech industry.

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.

Mass deportations to their home countries will have tremendous support from EU. There will be some pearl clutching and a couple of true believers may even be sincere. But there will be serious silent support.

Anyway I hope for secularists to win. I don't think that Turkey can endure couple of more years of Erdogan's policy.

OTOH a botched attempt to get the refugees out might result to them pouring to Europe instead and cause EU to crap its collective pants.

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.

Are there any Gulenists left in Turkish politics? Last time I was paying attention (IIRC around 2012), it sounded like the key battle-lines were Erdogan vs. the Gulenists with the Kemalists basically out of contention, but it sounds like Kılıçdaroğlu is a Kemalist straight out of central casting.

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.