Turkey's government survived a coup this week. It didn't seem to be a very well-organized coup, since they broke the number-one rule of coups: be successful or else. Having been unable to remove President Erdogan from power, he immediately started punishing anyone involved.
I'm not a big fan of the military seizing power, but that had me a little worried. Erdogan has shown that he has few scruples when there's a chance to get ahead. He angered western powers last year when the Turkish army used the fight against ISIS as a cover to attack Kurds, even though the Kurds are attacking ISIS. So when news came out that thousands were being arrested following the coup attempt, it was easy to be suspicious, especially when a lot of the first people arrested were judges, which seemed odd following a military action. And in the days since, the crackdown has gotten bigger and bigger, involving people in more and more disconnected occupations, like journalists and teachers.
People were already worrying that Erdogan was trying to become a dictator, now it looks like he's just made a huge leap towards that goal. It's hard to believe that Turkey was on the doorstep of joining the European Union only a few years ago, and were modernizing laws to fit in. One thing they did was eliminate the death penalty, a move they are now planing on reversing. That essentially sends the message that Erdogan and Turkey would rather have their strongman-cult-of-personality relationship than be in Europe. It's easy to see how that's going to start a vicious circle, in which Turkey's decent into dictatorship fuels the fear-mongering about Muslims in Europe, which will lead to resentment in Turkey, and give the government more license to do things that piss-off Europe.
So too bad for Turkey. They had a pretty good run for a hundred years there. The other country that seems to be imploding is Venezuela. Their economy has been in trouble for a while, but the crashing price of oil has caused an economic disaster. Not only are many people facing economic hardship, but basic structures of society are starting to fail: Electricity is being shut off periodically, and hospitals are running out of supplies.
Of course, Venezuela has already had its popular leader who fancied himself a dictator, Hugo Chavez. He never quite made it to absolute control. He also died three years ago, but his leadership is still being felt. While his policies were nice to the poor, they were often poorly thought out. The big hint that something was wrong came a few years ago when news came out that Venezuela was importing coffee. If you know your geography, you know that Venezuela is right next to Colombia, and thus should have no trouble growing lots of coffee. But when Chavez fixed the price of coffee, farmers couldn't make money off it, and looked for other crops.
This is a good example of the effect of a government's competence. We think of a dictator as damaging his country through abuse. That's a big problem, but they can also hurt through disorganization. Take Zimbabwe's Robert Mugabe, and North Korea's Kims. They've done lots of harm to citizens branded political enemies. But they've arguably caused more human misery through their mismanagement of the economy. Zimbabwe suffered through hyperinflation, and North Korea is the only industrialized society to have a famine.
It's not clear how Venezuela is going to get out of this, either. The government is trying to fix things to help their citizens, but the nation itself is close to defaulting on their debt. As with many countries with oil, they've come to rely too much on the wealth that comes from the resource: the drop in price erases a large section of the economy overnight.
Both Turkey and Venezuela looked to be part of the wave of rapidly-industrializing economic success stories, but now they've lost their way severely. It illustrates just how fragile our societies can be. They rely on a lot of checks and balances, agreements, and collective will to keep them going. Though most countries have been quite resilient, pushing them too far can send them careening into disaster. It's something to think about at a time when so many people have decided that our circumstances are bad enough that we must make radical changes.
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