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posted by janrinok on Thursday January 19 2017, @05:24PM   Printer-friendly
from the making-it-all-look-nice dept.

Turkey's ruling party is passing constitutional reforms to consolidate power:

Turkey's parliament approved the first seven articles in a second round of voting overnight on a constitutional bill that will extend President Tayyip Erdogan's powers, keeping the reform on course for a spring referendum.

The two largest opposition parties in parliament say the 18-article bill, which could enable Erdogan to rule until 2029, will fuel authoritarianism in the NATO member and European Union candidate country. The ruling AK Party, backed by the nationalist MHP, says it will bring the strong executive leadership needed to prevent a return to the fragile coalition governments of the past.

The seven articles approved overnight include increasing the number of MPs to 600 from 550, lowering the minimum age to be a lawmaker to 18 from 25, and holding parliamentary and presidential elections together every five years.

Also at CNN, Time, Al Jazeera, and The Guardian. You might also be interested in this take from the Daily Sabah.


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  • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:32PM

    by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:32PM (#456245)

    Citation needed to the secession vote. This is the first I've heard of that. We'll see if it succeeds. (Seriously, if you want to be taken seriously in discussions of secession, you need to learn to use the correct word and spell it right.)

    Anyway, personally I think the idea of California seceding by itself is a bad idea. It'd made more sense if they convinced some neighboring states to join in, namely Oregon and Washington for starters, but potentially including the entire western US. California may be big and all, but the PacNW also has a strong tech economy and is closely linked to it, and the other states also have a lot of economic links to it, plus they have lots of natural resources. CA would do better with more unity with its neighbors.

    The way I see it, if Americans could look past the rural vs. urban divide for a second, they'll find there's another big divide, which is east vs. west. There's a huge difference between conservatives in South Carolina vs. those in Arizona, for instance.

    In fact, I frequently wonder how things in the US would be different if the South were kicked out of the union. That alone would probably alleviate many of the internal pressures we have. The South has been a drag on the US for its entire history, and really should never have been allowed back into the union as full-fledged states with full voting rights; at best, they should have been maintained as territories with appointed governorships, and treated like an occupied nation indefinitely.

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  • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:56PM

    by edIII (791) on Thursday January 19 2017, @09:56PM (#456254)

    Yeah, Yeah, speech to text bit me again. Thanks for pointing that out ;P

    I'm having a hard time finding a citation, but I know that it was handed to the Attorney General for CA and that at some point it received the number of signatures required. AFIAK, the next time we will be voting it will be on the ballots.

    --
    Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
    • (Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:32PM

      by Grishnakh (2831) on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:32PM (#456267)

      How far can they possibly get with that? The Civil War established that states don't have the right to secede. It would be a purely symbolic effort.

      • (Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:42PM

        by edIII (791) on Thursday January 19 2017, @10:42PM (#456272)

        It would be a purely symbolic effort.

        Depends on the number of people that vote for it. If it actually went through, then yeah legally the most likely outcome is state legislators informing us that it can't be done.

        That being said, the real power is simply in that many people voted to leave. I think that would get people's attention, or at least a chance of it.

        Should a majority vote for it and be denied? That's how you foment open revolution where change comes at the barrel of a gun.

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        Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
  • (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:17PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 19 2017, @11:17PM (#456287)

    In order for California to secede from the Union, a whole lot of businesses would suddenly have to deal with customs from Cali to adjoining states (or elsewhere in the US.)

    Just as an example, Intel has major hubs in Oregon and Arizona (latter doing chip fabrication plus R&D), while a majority of software development and early product R&D is done in california (that not done in Israel, Arizona, or Oregon, or lot of other places I probably don't know about.)

    Point being, since Intel's headquarters is nominally located in California, while their corporate charter is Delaware based, there would be major issues (both security and economic) if Intel's corporate hub for the West Coast and the world were to suddenly be out of the US.

    If you figure in Tesla and a lot of other companies and how all states EAST of the seaboard are pretty heavily conservative PLUS support infrastructure for the West Coast tech/manufacturing industry, you will quickly realize a Calexit would be a larger clusterfuck than a Brexit, given that the latter at least is geographically distinct enough to not have a huge amount of 'same day' product handling from out of state. California does, as evidenced by the Reno warehouse scene, used as a supply hub for products going to most of the west coast.