[Itse]

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

I know Turkey isn't an Arab country, but it had all of those civil institutions. A free and independent press. An independent judiciary. Good schools with academic freedom. Free and open elections.

True, but you have to keep in mind the order in which those started to crumble.

Civil institutions, such schools, the army leadership, the judiciary, the press, the democratic elections were under pressure from the theocratic forces for a long time until they finally started to crumble. It's only after those things started to be seriously weakened that the theocratic forces could really start take over the country.

This is also not some accident, the theocratics did all this on purpose and quite openly spoke about their need to do this in order to bring about the kind of Turkey they wanted. (In their own terminology of course, as they didn't see it as "weakening the civil society" of course.) Especially the Turkish far left have been trying to raise awareness of this for a long time, demanding that the west put pressure on Erdogan. They never did that in the fear that it would push Erdogan towards Putin, and in the end they're now seemingly losing both the democracy in Turkey and it's alliance.

Turkey is an important reminder that the civil society needs to be upheld and protected forever if you want to keep it. There will always be forces that want to limit civil liberties and civil rights, push their propaganda into schools, affect the judiciary system and weaken the democratic electorial system, and they will always want to do this for the purpose of bringing about the kind of society they want. And you can tell from what they are doing that the kind of society they want is not a free, liberal and democratic. If it was, a strong and healthy civil society would not be a problem for it.

There is no permanent win state. History does not end.

Originally Posted by CliffFletcher

And now Turks are saying they don't want those things to co-exist.

I've said this before and I've said it again. Erdogan could not get the things he wanted through elections. He just could not get the majority of the Turks on his side. So no, "the Turks" are not saying those things. I seriously doubt even most of Erdogans supporters would support his actions if they were presented in those terms in a hypothetical situation.

None of those factors apply to Turkey. And yet here we are.

There is no ultimate theory that explains everything. Every country ultimately has it's own unique story.