It's been about two weeks since a portion of the Turkish military tried to overthrow their government. Part of me wanted for them to succeed, but I, like a great majority of Turkish political factions, knew that a military takeover would be even worse than the status quo. For a short while, I hoped that this attempted rebellion would wake President Recep Tayyip Erdogan up to the fact that he cannot rule with an iron fist forever. But he has used the incident as an excuse to become McCarthy's spiritual descendent, but without any pesky notions of limited government. Rather than hunting out so-called communists, Erdogan is hunting out so-called followers of the religious leader Fethullah Gulen, who fell out with Erdogan relatively recently.

I don't need to say why a country should not purge its military, judiciary, and educational systems, or why torture is wrong and useless. But Turkey does have reason to be wary. They did just have a coup, after all, and some of Gulen's followers have claimed positions in the government. Their motives are not entirely clear. But even if we assume that Gulenists aren't scapegoats and actually are running a major conspiracy, what caused them to resort to such measures? Democracies, which are inherently free societies, don't have these sorts of issues. Democracies don't need purges because when the opposition has a voice it doesn't need to resort to secretive power grabs, whether a coup or secret influence of the bureaucracy.

Let's take a step back. A decade ago, Erdogan was the Prime Minister of Turkey, a success story for democracy and progress in the Middle East. Initially Gulen supported the government, but found Erdogan's eventual abuses of power disquieting and went into self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania. Now Erdogan uses Gulen as a scapegoat. His purges focuse on the professions Gulen actually has encouraged his followers to infiltrate. Did Gulen organize the coup? I have no idea. I would guess not, but I do not have a nuanced enough understanding of modern Turkish history to properly answer that question.

I can say that Erdogan and Gulen remind me of two figures from the USSR's history: Trotsky and Stalin. Trotsky was exiled after falling out of favor with the increasingly authoritarian Stalin, after all. 'Trotskyist' became a smear word for enemies of the state, and came to imply fascist sympathies that were the antithesis of what Trotsky believed in. We see this pattern in the accusations of Gulenism against accused enemies of the Turkish state. Since Gulen is a somewhat mysterious figure, it is uncertain what exactly a Gulenist by the government's definition is, other than Turkey's enemy. Take hope in the fact that Gulen has not had an unfortunate encounter with alpine equipment.

Needless to say, democracies don't have the same problems as the Soviet Union. Political clashes don't end with fear and exile. Activists can rally supporters, get elected to office, and take their grievances to representatives. They have a way to influence the process and succeed when they convince enough people of their cause. The point is, you don't have to worry about a faction trying to overthrow the government from within since there are less radical means for change to occur.

As appealing as the use of force can be in the short term, it will ultimately cause more problems than it solves. It is a particularly effective ways to make enemies out of potential allies. Unfortunately, purges form cycles: they are caused by some form of paranoia, and that paranoia will only increase when a purge produces backlash. Turkey is a foreign country, and I know that I am looking at an incomplete picture of it. However, the least I can conclude is that if Turkey doesn't improve its human rights situation anytime soon, it will have much bigger problems down the road from now.