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Culture War Roundup for the week of May 15, 2023

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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.