Dear Diary: notes to self about Turkey
Dear two or three passers-by who read this by accident.
Sad news came this morning from Turkey.
I'm not clear whether the failed coup in the name of human rights and democracy really was for human rights and democracy, or whether it was just a way of doing business, but the failure of the coup will be bad for human rights and democracy.
A tariff that is simply about trade will benefit neither side, even to those who only think about one country. The waves of diseise and hatred and ignorance and refugees will wash-up on the UK just as surely as the sweatshop T-shirts will under-cut UK-made T-shirts; the cost of military intervention and peace keeping and charitaable help will build-up just as bargain-hunters will sometimes save a few pounds in buying a new Primark T shirt when otherwise the bargains would only be second-hand.
The new Foreign Secretary started his career with a metaphor about stages, which is the sort of thing I hoped we would get-away from when leaving the EU; I wish he'd said something about tariffs for human rights. I don't know which of the new ministers will begin to set the pattern for tariff negotiations and whether the Foreign Office will have an influence, or whether the Department For Business will have its own foreign policy when it comes to trade talks, but I hope some system comes-up that prevents the likes of Turkey getting worse.
Dear two or three passers-by who read this by accident.
Sad news came this morning from Turkey.
I'm not clear whether the failed coup in the name of human rights and democracy really was for human rights and democracy, or whether it was just a way of doing business, but the failure of the coup will be bad for human rights and democracy.
[18.07.16] I wondered whether Faschist Erdoğan had organised the coup himself, which seems rational. Just recently I saw that someone who inspires democracy and human rights in Turkey - I forget his name - said the same thing. More recently still I see that the fascist who closed newspapers has now closed TV stations and suspended thousands of teachers, as well as rounding up thousands of judges and military. Don't ask me how I know, but I guess it's hard to round-up thousands of judges and suspend thousands of school teachers without a great deal of advance planning, so it looks more and more as though President Faschist Erdoğan really did plot a coup against himself in order to run a counter-coup. I also wonder: when he ordered troops to take a kurdish village and shoot all the people hiding in a couple of basements while some of them were on the phone to their MP, did he do that to help provoke a revolt in the military?This is relevant to every back bench MP in the UK, if they can lobby their colleagues who will set tariffs; a tariff system to promote human rights and democracy will exert a gentle pressure on each country to get better, rather than worse as a lot of the Turkish electorate want to do.
A tariff that is simply about trade will benefit neither side, even to those who only think about one country. The waves of diseise and hatred and ignorance and refugees will wash-up on the UK just as surely as the sweatshop T-shirts will under-cut UK-made T-shirts; the cost of military intervention and peace keeping and charitaable help will build-up just as bargain-hunters will sometimes save a few pounds in buying a new Primark T shirt when otherwise the bargains would only be second-hand.
The new Foreign Secretary started his career with a metaphor about stages, which is the sort of thing I hoped we would get-away from when leaving the EU; I wish he'd said something about tariffs for human rights. I don't know which of the new ministers will begin to set the pattern for tariff negotiations and whether the Foreign Office will have an influence, or whether the Department For Business will have its own foreign policy when it comes to trade talks, but I hope some system comes-up that prevents the likes of Turkey getting worse.
