Turkish GSM networks currently play a message of the President on any phone call
Right know when you make a phone call using your mobile phone, before ringing starts citizens are forced to listen to 10 seconds voice recording of the president Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
Here is a demonstration: https://twitter.com/sendika_org/status/886343590208835584
Here is a Twitter search that will provide you with many more videos showcasing the issue: https://twitter.com/search?f=videos&vertical=default&q=erdoğan%20telefon&src=tyah
Here is a report by BBC(Turkish edition): https://twitter.com/bbcturkce/status/886351634888085505
The message is about the anniversary of the unsuccessful coup attempt believed to be orchestrated by Gulenists(previous allies of the president, currently branded as Terrorists ) that took place on 15.06.2016, claiming the lives of more than 200 civilians and led to uncontested power grab by the President.
Right now Turkey is one of the most hostile countries for the journalists. Wikipedia is banned since a while.
198 comments
[ 4.4 ms ] story [ 217 ms ] thread112 is a part of the GSM standard and all GSM-compatible telephone handsets are able to dial 112 even when locked or, in some countries, with no SIM card present. It is also the common emergency number in India and in nearly all member states of the European Union as well as several other countries of Europe and the world.
You can dial it in the US too..
That's lame.
I wrote the political information to give a context. The information is factually correct, it's not my interpretation except defining the message as a propaganda message.
I'll dismiss your report as it comes from an account created 20min ago and you don't provide any evidence.
But I hope that they came to senses and stopped playing the message, at least for the emergency calls.
The age of your account combined with the factually wrong information that you provide indicates that you are spammer at best, govt. propaganda worker at worst.
I'm really sorry that the Turkish population is so divided and I am sorry for what Gulenists did to this country, it's just sad.
Did they need to involve their network infra suppliers? For Turkcell that's fully outsourced to Ericsson; network hardware, services implementation, ops, etc etc; pretty much everything below the customer service/marketing level:
https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2016/11/turkcell-...
Which means that maybe someone at Ericsson in Sweden ended up implementing this crazy thing some time the past week or so. :/
... makes me think about that mandatory engineering ethics class a long time ago.
I would guess that the same technology was used.
As for the ethical implication there's none. This exact functionality would be extremely helpful in case of an actual emergency.
A company that was founded by the government, even now partially owned by the government.
Maybe they did not play ball because of the Qatar crisis?
Turkey is not the only country like this, by the way. In Russia, the government similarly enjoys majority popular support, even though elections aren't even free at this point (numerous fraud issues). Many would say that Hungary and Poland are on their way to this same place.
I would argue that such a system is still democratic, insofar the government does reflect the desires of the majority of the electorate. It is no longer a liberal democracy, however, with checks and balances to prevent abuses and to allow the electorate to (in theory) make informed decisions. Perhaps "authoritarian democracy" would be an appropriate term.
However, I don't think that any of this does make a country a non democracy, as long as you are not having a hard time making the cross on the opposition.
You can maybe call the level of democracy lower, the less information you have, which includes things like history, or public education of how the democratic systems work, or low level of transparency or scary things like secret laws, interpretations of laws, etc.
I don't think authoritarian democracy makes sense. It's a democracy that has an authoritarian party ruling, but the system behind it currently isn't exactly authoritarian itself.
That difference is important I think, because without well defined words and phrases everyone will use that phrase against critics as well making these terms very hard to use.
I am sorry for using the US as an example here. It isn't meant to be a "what about", but I chose it as a country that most readers here likely know enough about when it comes to politics. So I chose it to have a hopefully good example. Similar problematic areas for democracies exist around the globe, probably in every democratic country. I think one can always work on developing democracies through increasing transparency, education and information.
EDIT: Oh and it's certainly also not meant to defend what is going on in Turkey. Authoritarian parties are likely to reduce the transparency, education and information and also likely to transform it into an authoritarian system.
"... congratulation for our Democracy and our national day, we want compassion for our mythers from God. I want health and prosperity for our ...[I couldn't understand this part]"
This basically kind of congratulation/propaganda message.
p.s. My Turkish is not reliable.
But worth mentioning that Azeri is a Turkic language, and probably the closest major relative to Turkish.
It may sound benign but the actors and they way the coup attempt happened are disputed and close to half of the population does not subscribe to the official accounts. The main opposition leader claims that the coup attempt happened under supervision of the president himself and was used as a tool to grab total control of the state.
On the other hand, considering the effectiveness of the government dealing with it and speed of how everything happened after the coup was struck down (and yes, I'm biased due to lack of proper reporting like everyone everywhere) it sure smells like a well orchestrated coup, only not from the people who are currently being prosecuted but from those prosecuting.
I'm going to do a Godwin here and get Martinus van der Lubbe involved. You can figure out the rest.
Source: https://au.news.yahoo.com/world/a/36394050/mr-president-erdo...
I guess and hope in a couple of years - things will be normalized.
(HN: If he is, maybe he shouldn't be downvoted so hard… aren't you at least curious to hear from laypersons there without punishing them for not seeing things the way we do? Hear, converse, leave with greater understanding)
/s
I believe he's right, the Queen's message is similar.
Thus the analogy breaks twofold. First, while the radio works as expected under these conditions, the telephone does not. Secondly, opting out means to take some action without affecting anything else than what you are opting out from. If you consider opting out in this context, it's clear that waiting can not be considered to be an action we take, and thus can't be considered a way of opting out, our waiting in line could be considered to be "opting out of standing in line", an obvious contradiction.
You are so convinced of your moral high ground that you do not even notice the similarities.
Pot calling the kettle black and so.
Nobody(except you) deems it concerning that the TV is 'hijacked' once a year, and your concerns can be dismissed because they are motivated out of defending Turkish actions.
And what was the last time that the UK voted to be a monarchy? Because Turkey voting recently makes it arguably more democratic.
Why is your elected president hijacking the telephone network worse than your unelected queen hijacking your tv network?
Also, if you switch over to Channel 4, you can watch an alternative speech. A few years ago, they had the President of Iran on simultaneously.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_Christmas_message
Currently, a little bit more of the half of the population supports Erdogan and the other half hates him. Though admittedly the anti-Erdigan half did not support the coup as it is believed to be orchestrated by another islamist, but still...
So, just like most politicians?
My point was that the British public would not be happy if the Queen used her time on TV to push the agenda of the half of the nation - like openly supporting or opposing Brexit using channels that are not available to the opposition.
Of course they do. After all they are indoctrinated in its favor from an early age.
I don't see what rational people, starting from first principles, would agree to a bunch of do-nothings sitting in a palace, aristocrats owning huge plots of land that just got handed down to them, that aristocratic class having huge say in politics, networking their kids everywhere, etc.
(As for the "it's good for tourism" argument, you can have your palaces and castles made into tourist places even after you have thrown out your royals. The Palace of Versailles makes millions in tourist fees every year for example.)
You could argue that for almost anything that we have in society (Religion and the State being the two most obvious ones). And yet, it intellectually doesn't phase people the slightest. "So what if we're taught that government is good and benevolent since a tender age". This is precisely because most of society does not function using first-principles. If they did, we'd be in a completely different world right now.
Is that supposed to be an argument in favor of royalty? At best, it's about how other things people think OK and are used to from a young age are also messed up. One could use that line of logic to excuse all kind of societal issues at their time -- segregation, racism and sexism for example.
And yet, society evolved beyond those, from self principles like equality.
So? The US also wanted to do the same (build a society based on "certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness"). The French too during their revolution. As did countless other revolutions besides the "commies".
Didn't end that bad for most of them, in fact that's how the modern world was build.
Would you rather we still had Kings and Pharaohs lest "some people turn to be more equal than others"?
While the Queen's approval is theoretically required for legislation and various other bits of constitutional machinery, in practice it is always granted.
The objections to the Queen's role in the power structure are theoretical; nobody can point to specific bad actions as justification for changing the system.
The objections to Erdogan are much more practical and involve suppression of opposition and journalists.
How open is this issue for discussion? Is it acceptable for e.g. a BBC journalist to promote on camera the dismantling of royalty, if that's what they think should be done?
>A modern constitutional monarchy is a structure agreed to by the people.
Agreed when? The MPs are voted for every few years. Even the constitution can be amended and changed, for countries that have one.
Does the UK hold a referendum on the issue of keeping or abolishing royalty, at least once every generation?
It's 100% luck.
"Luck" has nothing to do with it.
Expect West to kick out Turkey from NATO or Turkey to leave NATO soon since the islamists see west as evil.
Which part of aytekin (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14780685) 's message reminds you of the US? Whatever else one may say of the current state of US politics, this:
> the other half of the population took over the country and started applying middle eastern and Islamic ideals instead. … the islamists see west as evil.
doesn't sound like it. (To be fair, I didn't quote:
> They believe in secularity and many other Western ideals.
and
> they have so much ambition and hatred in them.
(different 'they'), which maybe fit some groups, according to your leanings.)
For me, it was the notion of those in villages / rural areas having increasing interest in power, as they feel increasingly abandoned & their values ignored. It reminded me of the US Midwest becoming more interested in politics, leading to Trump's win over Clinton:
“You saw turnout spike in more rural counties,” Alexander said. “If you take a look at a lot of the larger cities you did see depressed turnout there. [1]
Microsoft made a similar observation when announcing their rural high speed wireless internet intiative:
"That message was underscored in last year's presidential election, when rural voters expressed dissatisfaction and anger over being left out of economic and technological growth, Microsoft President and Chief Legal Officer Brad Smith said. "It's fair to say the election raised our level of consciousness, as it did for a great many people in the country."" [2]
[1] http://www.pbs.org/newshour/updates/voter-turnout-2016-elect...
[2] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-11/microsoft...
The analogies are there.
I don't think so. Unfortunately, ethics often play a less than significant role in international affairs like this. Just look at the dealings the Western world and the US in particular have with a backwards, medieval state like Saudi-Arabia that more or less openly supports Islamic extremism.
Turkey is a strategically important region, not least because with Bosphorus it guards access to the Black Sea. From a geopolitical point of view the "West" couldn't possibly want Turkey to align with another bloc or another powerful country.
Make no mistake though, the Western world doesn't prop up the Saudi government out of moral reasons. They do this because of Saudi-Arabia's significance to the oil economy. The House of Saud in exchange complies with the economic - and to some extent - political demands of the Western world.
Both Greece and Portugal have been dictatorships and NATO members at the same time.
Funny enough, EU agreed as part of the refugee deal, but didn't pay the money promised.
Now that this has all failed, and Turkey is aligning with Russia geo-politically, this does need to be taken into consideration when talking about propaganda and what really is happening.
So broadly speaking, NO.
Instead, some influential EU leaders basically said "It's never going to happen", sometimes under pressure from their countries' right wing. Not because Turkey was economically too far behind, or because of concerns with the rule of law, but simply because a sizeable portion of EU populations objected to non-christians becoming part of the EU.
Nobody knows what could have been, and the current situation shows that turkish democracy was rather weak all along. But it's important to remember that Erdogan started out as a moderate, who sought nothing more than approval from the EU, and only turned to the dark side after repeatedly being humiliated. It's possibly one of largest mistakes made in recent history.
Cultural gap between eg members Sweden and Italy is probably bigger than between member Greece and Turkey?
Cuisine in western Turkey and Greece is basically the same, too.
For an Europeanist it's desperating to see how the UK (now to be gone) and Eastern European countries have always blocked policies of further integration.
If Turkey were in and with veto power, the EU would be able to do practically nothing, as the cultural and political differences are huge. The EU would probably be on the verge of breaking up now, or would have already broken up at the Greek crisis.
And the story of the "moderate" Erdogan turning an authoritarian dictator after being "humiliated" sounds extremely naive to me. The things he is doing are not the work of a humiliated moderate. They are the work of an authoritarian for whom the alleged humiliation was a very convenient excuse to stop pretending to be a moderate.
If you imagine a world where Turkey was in the EU, you might as well through in some mechanisms for more leverage on existing members?
It's spelled Romania.
And yet, by calling the same (typically toll-free) number, a call center's worth of support calls can be handled simultaneously.
Implementing this as ringbacks would not seem to be the only way.
Don't give them ideas please :-)
They will force you to believe what they believe and if you don't, they will flag you and also make you listen their leader no matter what you do to avoid their propaganda.
Even though I believe that the leaders of Gulenist group did the coup attempt and are terrorist, Erdogan gave this power to them and yet acts like he's not responsible from all these shit.
Has the government provided convincing evidence of this? I know Gülen was immediately accused despite not being in the country, but I don't know of any evidence of his audience being involved beyond Erdoğan not getting along with the guy, which automatically makes any opposition sympathetic to him.
If you want to read more about the subject, here is a nice write up by pro-Erdogan, liberal, non-islamist(yep, they still exist) Turkish jurnos: https://medium.com/@15thJulyCoup/who-was-behind-the-15th-jul...
I can see why someone might like the guy or think he's somehow good for the country, but it seems, to an outsider, that he's 100% incompatible with liberal values.
Turkey before Erdogan wasn't much different than today but with much less islamic sauce in the politics.
Basically Erdogan took a religious group and made them political and when they had the power, they used it against the government and Erdogan just got away with the accusations with "We were tricked by Gulenists, they're terrorist", nothing more.
Although Gulen still doesn't accept that they did the coup attempt, this was the only way for them to out and even this one was actually hopeless. They have a great hierarchic system so it's hard to keep track of the decision-maker and prove the case so there is no clear evidence, that's why I told "I believe". It's possible that Erdogan knew the coup attempt and yet wait for them (or even convince with third-party organizations) to do it so that we can declare them terrorist without a doubt and do whatever he wants with his followers' support.
your comparison is wrong btw.
Erdoğan was out to get the Gulenists as some of them did try to get rid of him by exposing his corruption earlier but that's a different thing from attempting a coup. (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/turkey/1065...)
There was a study or survey here in Belgium that those channels are the only way a lot of the Turkish community receives their news and information. What we have seen after the coup was an extremely uprising in violence and threats (last month even a murder) between pro erdogan supporters and non supporters. And from all EU countries I think they voted the most pro-Erdogan.
And while its too easy to make a correlation between the two, I personally do think this has some influence at least. Media is a very powerful tool.
At least two major mobile operators / ISPs are injecting JS into web traffic to display pop-up ads / Youtube videos on the lower right corner of every web page. The videos "commemorate" last year's events on July 15 in a language that is, to put it mildly, thorougly in line with Erdogan's ideology, and make a point of offering free data and phone credits throughout the 3-day commemorations being held.
Interestingly, I don't get the Erdogan's message on my cell. My friends tried calling me last night to hear the message, they don't hear it when they call me either. Could be related to me using my networks -paid- call ring tone customising app.
> https://security.googleblog.com/2013/01/enhancing-digital-ce...
> https://www.wired.com/2013/01/google-fraudulent-certificate/
In the past couple of weeks I noticed the a number of ISPs (for sure Turkcell for mobile and Türk Telekom for land lines) started injecting a wrong certificate, I guess to MITM the communication.
The certificate is of course wrong (it is both untrusted and the domain name is wrong) so the browser will notice this and block the access, but I'm surprised that I haven't seen any discussion about this online
His power comes from the wealth and investments of Western companies, so the people had it good in the past. But this is currently changing. Its 'just' a waiting game.
That's not true - though wished for.
But I guess, the BTK guy, went too far to put the 10sec celebration message of the president to celebrate the official national public holiday. Just FYI - on prepaid tariffs there's already some kind of ads by mobile operators.
I had thought it was inventive and evocative, but sort of unrealistic.
I was wrong. Yikes.