[Dhaka Tribune] The Sick Man of Europe Turkey ...the only place on the face of the earth that misses the Ottoman Empire.... turned a historic corner this month, as approximately 51.4% of over 58 million voters marked "yes" for the charter amendment which transforms the parliamentary governmental structure into an executive one, giving the president expansive powers.
In a televised statement, President Erdogan thanked the voters, looking confident in his newfound transformative role. He remarked that a deep and significant change has taken place, and that a new era has started.
The former mayor of Istanbul has risen through the ranks of political power to become the most powerful president in Turkey’s history.
The referendum enables the president to rule uncontested after the 2019 elections, have two terms, and appoint bigwigs, judges, plus the cabinet, with minimal oversight from a weakened parliament without a prime minister.
What caused this radical turn of events in a land that held parliamentary democracy since 1920s?
Terror-tremors
Turkey is still reeling from the terrorist attacks, and a strongman rule has gained favourability.
Upon landing at Ataturk Airport, one sees a memorial dedicated to the 45 people killed by a terrorist attack last June. The IS terrorists’ gunfire and suicide kaboom inside the airport injured over 200.
Multiple kabooms have taken place across the nation, some by IS and others by Kurdish hard boys. Moreover, the attempted military coup from the middle of last year left 290 fatalities, and reminded the citizenry of instability in their republic.
Travelling across Istanbul, one gets a sense of vibrancy that has not been diminished by the referendum. It’s the commercial hub of the nation after all, people are coming, people are selling, it’s a marketplace of all commodities, big and small.
A divided Turkey
To gain a perspective from the field, I talked to a Turkish carpet-seller near Blue Mosque, who lamented how IS attacks have scarred the nation. Another mentioned that gaining access to the European Union ...the successor to the Holy Roman Empire, only without the Hapsburgs and the nifty uniforms and the dancing... remains a pipe-dream, as 80% of the EU members do not want Turkey in their organization.
I spoke to a gentleman inside a bookstore in Taksim Square, the heartland of Istanbul. He mentioned that the "yes" vote is a regressive step. Having studied in the US, he knows that a presidential system of governance works in America, with its checks and balances, but that is not the case in Turkey. The institutions are not formed for an effective counterbalance to expansive presidential powers.
A Kurdish restauranteur in the Sultan Ahmet tourist district remarked that he cannot be happy with the "yes" vote, as politicians are prone to corruption. Although he is not particularly satisfied with the current parliamentary system, giving the president more powers is not the solution.
Posted by: Fred ||
04/30/2017 00:00 ||
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#1
A Kurdish restaurateur in the Sultan Ahmet tourist district remarked
Any bets on how many Kurdish restaurateurs where going to be in the Sultan Ahmet tourist district this time next week?
#2
Note that people only give the media opinions anonymously.
About the same level of intimidation found on many a college campus.
Also, there is a lot of doubt as to whether the referendum actually got 50% of the vote.
Posted by: lord garth ||
04/30/2017 10:34 Comments ||
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#3
I dunno. Judging by the actions of our own Congress this might not be a bad idea. They put no brakes on Obama but they've resisted Trump at every turn. They take money from lobbyists to pass laws that are not in the interests of the people who elected them and they never do what the people who elected them want. What good are they?
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/30/2017 15:03 Comments ||
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Byzantine maneuverings in the Palestinian territories after President Trump moved another Overton Window.
[IsraelTimes] Why has the PA president chosen this moment to stop funding Gazoo’s electricity, and why is he keeping the lid on West Bank anger? Because Washington beckons.
If anyone doubted the sincerity of Paleostinian Authority President the ineffectual Mahmoud Abbas ... a graduate of the prestigious unaccredited Patrice Lumumba University in Moscow with a doctorate in Holocaust Denial... intended "disengagement" from the Hamas, a contraction of the Arabic words for "frothing at the mouth",-run Gazoo Strip, the PA’s official announcement on Thursday made clear that the rais
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The lie we were told as kids was this: The end of American liberty would come at the hands of the political right.
Conservatives would take away our right to speak our minds, and use the power of government to silence dissent. The right would intimidate our teachers and professors, and coerce the young.
And then, with the universities in thrall, with control of the apparatus of the state (and the education bureaucracy), the right would have dominion over a once-free people.
Some of us were taught this in school. Others, who couldn't be bothered to read books, were fed a cartoon version of the diabolical conservative in endless movies and TV shows. The most entertaining of these were science fiction, sometimes with vague references to men in brown shirts and black boots goose-stepping in some future time.
Women would become handmaids, subjugated and turned into breeders. And men would be broken as well. The more lurid fantasies offered armies of Luddites in hooded robes, hunting down subversives for the greater good.
But the lie is obvious now, isn't it?
Because it is not conservatives who coerced today's young people or made them afraid of ideas that challenge them. Conservatives did not shame people into silence, or send thugs out on college campuses to beat down those who wanted to speak.
#4
If you listen closely, you can hear a sound of rivets popping as the seams of the ship of state slowly are opened by the sedition that is the left in all its guises...
[Foreign Policy] That the military needs intelligent officers is not a particularly controversial statement. Underpinning that argument, however, is the assumption that the military normally recruits, recognizes, and retains its intellectual capital. Two recent studies cast some doubt on this.
In his excellent new book, defense expert Eliot Cohen argues for the necessity of maintaining premier military capability. As part of that military capability, Cohen notes that the military "need[s] ... professional officers with both operational and intellectual training as well as access to classified material and recent operational experience, to contribute to high-order thought about the nature of war." Aside from noting that "by and large [the military] does not produce its own intellectual capital," Cohen does not dwell on the issue. The situation may be far grimmer than Cohen states. More than merely not developing high-end intellectual ability, recent evidence shows that the military fails to recruit intellectual capability to the same degree as in by-gone generations and discriminates against the intellectual capital it does possess in promotions and selections.
In Joint Force Quarterly, Matthew F. Cancian showed the long-term trend in intelligence among Marine officers. Comparing the absolute scores on the General Classification Test (GCT), new Marine officers started a long-term downward trend in intellectual capability starting around 1980. Of concern, "two-thirds of the new officers commissioned in 2014 would be in the bottom one-third of the class of 1980; 41 percent of new officers in 2014 would not have qualified to be officers by the standards held at the time of World War II." Though data for the other services is not available, Cancian suspects that a similar trend has occurred in them as well.
Ubiquitous college attendance likely contributed to the decline in officer intelligence, according to Cancian. Each service requires a four-year degree as a baseline requirement for commissioning; the pool of potential candidates expanded dramatically in the decades since 1980. No longer must one be of unusually high intelligence to graduate from college, nor does college graduation indicate high intelligence.
Cancian identified an additional dangerous trend. While average intelligence declined for new Marine Corps officers, elite intelligence levels also declined. "In 1980, there were 14 Marine officers entering who scored above 155 (on a test with a maximum score of 160). In 2004, the year of incoming officers who are now recently promoted majors, there were only two lieutenants who scored above 155. In 2014, there were none." The Marine Corps may not have the intellectual capital it needs for the future.
Social trends likely played a role. Social scientist Charles Murray, commenting about the larger society, speculated that many more industries require high intelligence today than over preceding decades. There are a whole host of opportunities to use high intelligence that did not exist even a few decades ago. The military might have been a great option for those with high intelligence in 1980, but those same people have many more options today.
The military does not recruit as much intellectual capital in its officer corps as it once did. Work by Everett S.P. Spain, now a colonel on the United States Military Academy faculty and once a graduate student at Harvard Business School, shows that the promotion and selection system is systematically biased against those with high cognitive abilities. Joining with J.D. Mohundro and Bernard B. Banks in Parameters, Spain showed that the Army is much more likely to select low cognitive ability officers over their high cognitive ability peers. "[O]fficers with one-standard-deviation higher cognitive abilities had 29 percent, 18 percent, and 32 percent lower odds, respectively, of being selected early to major, early to lieutenant colonel, and for battalion command than their one-standard deviation lower cognitive-ability peers."
Looked at as a whole, Cancian and Spain show a military both declining in average intelligence and biased against it. If true, the military would be ill-positioned to produce the strategic leaders it needs to navigate the complex world of the present and future.
Confirming or denying this hypothesis would certainly be a challenge. For one, separating intelligence from motivation is difficult. Standardized tests are predictable, allowing motivated students to prepare for the exam. Likewise, college GPA would be a troublesome metric, as schools vary widely in quality and grading criteria. While the services likely have some useful data, even accessing it would likely be a challenge. Where the Army keeps a copy of my ACT scores -- required for ROTC a long time ago -- could be anyone’s guess. While many mid-career officers have taken the GRE, that population likely only reflects individuals interested in graduate education. A comprehensive inventory of intellectual capital, particularly measured to allow year-over-year comparison, would be resource intensive. Others far more experienced than I have found it necessary, though in the intervening years we are no closer to doing so. More esoteric components of intellect, such as critical thinking and curiosity, defy easy measurement.
Some may wonder how the military could be declining in average intelligence, especially in its officer corps, when a large percentage of mid-career and senior officers now possess advanced degrees. Much of the increase in graduate education can be accounted for through degree-granting service schools such as the Air War College or Army War College. The rise of schools that grant college credit for military experience or training also plays a role. Meanwhile, the percentage of new brigadier generals who earned a degree through a civilian graduate school declined over the last two decades.
Some hopeful signs are emerging. Some of the "Force of the Future" initiatives recognized the role that challenging graduate education can play in intellectual development. The Army even sponsored officers to attend elite social science doctoral programs to assist in the development of strategic planners. The military may yet, as Cohen recommends, develop some of its intellectual capital. It remains to be seen if officers who participate in these types of programs will be punished by future promotion and selection boards, as Spain’s research suggests.
One must be careful not to fetishize intelligence at the expense of other traits, nor confuse graduate education with intellectual ability. Many variables go into developing future leaders within the military, and it is yet unclear whether intelligence is even among the most important. Charles Koch, describing his talent recruitment strategy for his various businesses, noted that he prioritizes values over absolute intelligence, which is why there are more Wichita State graduates at Koch Industries than Ivy League-educated individuals. The military, as a values-centric organization, may be in a similar situation. All things being equal, it is better to have intelligent leaders in the military. All things are never equal.
Recruiting, developing, and retaining intellectual capital within the military is a national security issue. The world is complex, and the military will need smart, educated leaders who can assist policy makers in navigating such an environment. Unfortunately, some research strongly suggests that the military has barriers to both recruiting the intellectual capital that it needs and rewarding that which it does have. Studying the problem -- and owning up to it if it truly exists -- would be a necessary first step.
Private Joker is silly and he's ignorant but he's got guts, and guts is enough.
Maybe not an intelligent contribution to the discussion but I couldn't help it. There are so many things in that movie that keep coming back to me.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/30/2017 15:19 Comments ||
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#7
Skidmark's comment may get closer to the mark. IMHO there were a whole bunch of things that started going wrong in this country in 1963. Maybe it started earlier but '63 was bad.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
04/30/2017 15:23 Comments ||
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#8
I used to teach at a Community College. The problems most assuredly begin before HS graduation, and they are systemic.
#9
I've been told no person graduates from Harvard with a C average. They claim to have the best qualified for anything after graduation. Someone here may know know truth of this. So all graduate with highest marks. In my opinion that is why Obama went there most likely to get his right of passage.
#10
No longer must one be of unusually high intelligence to graduate from college, nor does college graduation indicate high intelligence.
It never did. In the old days college attendance and graduation went to those whose parents had money and whose environment encouraged the skills and knowledge acquisition necessary to enjoy a four year visit in the academic environment. The occasional scholarship student generally had the environment without parental money. But in the old days it was understood that there were plenty of intelligent people who had neither the means nor the interest in a college education -- the Yankee inventor being only one example -- and many jobs that require an expensive college degree were considered skills best learnt on the job, like bookkeeping.
Nowadays it is assumed that smart people go to college and dumb people don't, which means a lot of reasonably intelligent people borrow and spend a great deal of money to learn how to do things that do not interest them, and often will not earn them enough money to make the work of learning worthwhile. Mr. Daughter #2, who is quite bright, good-hearted, and hard working, ended up with an accounting degree that way, and since he has no idea what he really wants to be -- other than gainfully employed by an appreciative employer and married to trailing daughter #2 -- he works very hard and progresses in a career that brings him no pleasure other than knowing he gave more than fair value for his paycheck.
#11
So wrt paragraphs 5 and 6: If you were inclined to serve your country, but weren't convinced that the nation's leadership was going to use the armed forces in intelligent ways, you might be disinclined to risk your life for no purpose. There are, as the article says, many other ways for a person with elite intelligence to contribute.
If that were a factor, you'd expect to see a little blip up after 9/11, in among the declines. Do the statistics allow such an observation?
Posted by: james ||
04/30/2017 17:56 Comments ||
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#12
Well, I went from a steel mill laborer to a professional student in about 3 months. I worked two minimum wage jobs ($2.25/hr) 6 days/wk and slept 4 hrs/night in 1 stall of a garage I rented for 4 yrs to get my 3.65 CS degree, with no loan or scholarship. I scraped pizza plates at night for eats.
It wasn't Harvard, it was amazing.
#13
Ah, the (non-existent) golden years/good old days. I remember ROTC and the order of merit list, circa 1972. Racked up my knee in summer camp. Sent me home to repeat the next year. Got the camp average for my OML comp which was 50 percent of the total score. A quarter was one's grade in ROTC and the other quarter was one's academic grades. Ended up 10th in a class of over 70 cadets. That tell you something about the 'recent' decline?
Not to mention 'intelligence' scores have since been fiddled with and altered to remove 'bias'* which throws the whole computation and comparison game out.
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
[Dhaka Tribune] 
