Astral Codex Ten

Parliament

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Parliament

Article

Parliament is a recurring organization in the Astral Codex Ten archive, appearing 2 times across 2 issues between March 18, 2021 and January 27, 2022. The archive places it in contexts such as ""the remaining seats would be distributed among the larger winners. Something like this happened in 2002 - even though Erdogan got only 33% of the vote, he ended up with 67% of the seats in Parliament.""; “premiums set annually by the government (and discussed in parliament)“. It most often appears alongside China, EU, France.

Metadata

  • Category: Organizations
  • Mention count: 2
  • Issue count: 2
  • First seen: March 18, 2021
  • Last seen: January 27, 2022

Appears In

Source Context

Recovered passages from the original issue text. When the raw archive preserved outbound links inside the source passage, they are listed directly under the quote.

Book Review: The New Sultan
March 18, 2021 · Original source
Erdogan's classmates were a lot like him - the sons of religious families who had made a calculated choice to raise their kids Muslim even if it meant torpedoing their career prospects. This was the age of Necmettin Erbakan, a Muslim politician who wanted to overturn Turkey's state-sponsored discrimination against observant Muslims, and the Imam Hatip kids were big fans. Young Erdogan decided that supporting Erbakan's crusade was his life's work, so with a year to go before graduating, he transferred to secular public school in order to get a degree that would allow him to participate in normal society and take a job in Erbakan's party. He rose through the ranks, and his efforts paid off - in the mid-1970s, Erbakan made it to Parliament, a major achievement for an openly Islamist politician. In 1980, the military decided they had seen enough, held a coup and arrested 650,000 (!) supporters of the old government, including Erbakan. After killing and torturing a few thousand people who resisted, the military declared that Islamic parties were extra-illegal and Erbakan was personally banned from politics for ten years. They also wrote a new constitution saying no party could enter Parliament without 10% of the vote, widely considered too high a bar for Islamists or other fringe parties to meet. Erdogan was pretty devastated, and retired from politics for a while, briefly finding work as a confectioner and a semi-professional soccer player.
After one of its coups, the military made a law that only parties with at least 10% of votes could get seats in Parliament - the better to keep out small parties that the military might not be able to control. One unexpected consequence was to translate small victories into large victories, and large victories into colossal ones - many small parties would simply not make it to Parliament, and the remaining seats would be distributed among the larger winners. Something like this happened in 2002 - even though Erdogan got only 33% of the vote, he ended up with 67% of the seats in Parliament.
"What would a real center-right liberal do?" Erdogan asked himself again, and talked to Brussels about accelerating Turkey's EU bid. The EU said that Turkey needed to reduce the military's role in civilian government and maybe put some measures in place to have fewer coups. "All according to plan", Erdogan presumably muttered, rubbing his hands together gleefully, and proposed measures to limit the power of the Turkish Armed Forces. The military wasn't thrilled about this. But Erdogan had a 2/3 majority in Parliament, and was riding a wave of popular adulation after causing an unprecedented massive economic boom, and everyone in Turkey really wanted to join the EU and would never forgive the military for holding it up, and Erdogan seemed like such a good center-rightist liberal who had learned his lesson about the whole Islamism thing. The military grudgingly agreed to let their power be curtailed.
Highlights From The Comments On Health Care Systems
January 27, 2022 · Original source
Dutchman here. It might be good to know that the *only* thing for which there is a meaningful market is additional insurance. The basic insurance is completely regulated, with premiums set annually by the government (and discussed in parliament) and regulated deductibles (basically around €350,- per year but you can get a slight discount on your premium if you max out at around 800).