Politics again! However, Erdogan is at work, so I feel the urge to comment on it even when NIPS rebuttals are pressing. As a reaction to my last post that was (marginally) about Erdogan, Xian already sent me news that the turkish president called birth control unislamic and that mothers have to ensure the continued growth of Turkeys population. This already reminded me strongly of Hitlers Mutterkreuz, basically a prize the Nazis gave to german women that where particularly successful in procreation.

Now the military coup reported by Turkey strongly reminds me of the Reichstagsbrand. Basically, Nazis used the fact that the parliament building was lit on fire and blamed their political opponents for the crime, starting to remove them from all important positions and parliament itself by claiming the communists where planning a coup. The parallels to Erdogans way of proceeding are striking, and like in the Nazi case, the sheer speed with which possibly opposing forces in all parts of society are losing their positions is at least dodgy. Hitler called the fire a sign from God, Erdogan the coup a gift from Allah. What can you say? History doesn’t repeat itself, but it rhymes. Erdogan will continue to follow the script Hitler gave him, and the Turkish version of the 1933 enabling act has already been planned. Now while I completely understood Merkels way of proceeding in the refugee crisis, I think a test of maybe even bigger scope is coming her way: while she was collaborating with Erdogan to get rid of the refugee stream, will she be able to avoid the mistakes that where made in handling Nazi Germany? In particular, will she be able to leave the path of an appeasement policy?

Another statistician has more thoughts.