Dani Rodrik has been right all along

For a few years now Dani Rodrik has been tweeting about how second-rate, illegitimate, and undemocratic the current Turkish regime is.  He never convinced me, not because I held firmly to some opposing perspective, but simply because I don’t follow Turkish politics closely enough for claims of any kind to have had traction on my views.

It now seems he has been quite clearly correct all along.  The Turkish state has behaved very badly in response to recent protests and shown how deeply it is infected by many of the characteristics of autocratic and authoritarian regimes.  The treatment of children, doctors, foreign and domestic journalists, the use of chemicals in the water cannon, the indiscriminate use of the riot police, and the generalized paranoid suspicion of the Turkish population — among other factors — all point in this direction.  Democracy is about more than just elections.

Here is a short update on recent events.  Here is a short piece on the not very impressive response of the Turkish media.

For some coverage of what is going on you can follow @memmetsimsek or Rodrik himself.  Michael Clemens has connections to Turkey and he is also a useful source.

If nothing else, it can be forecast that the variance of possible outcomes for Turkey has gone up.