Erdoğan has been under intense scrutiny from world leaders for his highly authoritarian and reactionary response to a failed July 2016 military coup. Erdoğan’s strong-armed measures have resulted in over 130,000 public sector firings and arrests, the imprisonment of the political opposition and the suppression of the press. While voices from around the European Union were calling for careful consideration of what could be the sunset of the Turkish democracy established under Kemal Attaturk nearly 100 years earlier, the Executive branch was on the phone with President Edroğan, congratulating him on his victory.

The referendum is a sweeping restructure of about 20 items in the Turkish constitution. Many of them, upon first reading seem innocuous;

• Military courts are broadly abolished
• Military seats on the high court are abolished, leaving the same number of seats appointed by the parliament, while two seats are filled by executive appointment (four fifths of the court still executive appointed)
• Compulsory military service is abolished
• Political candidates may now be younger, and
• The president may now appoint vice presidents

This last item might leave one with questions. Why has the president not had that power in the past? Why does he need it now? Why would one need multiple vice presidents? The answer, in all cases, is rooted in the new, massive consolidation of executive power in the president. For example, further amendments will

• Terminate the parliamentary system, eliminating the seat of prime minister, moving his function as head of government to the president.
  • Here we should note that as it stood until Sunday, the president was a non-partisan head of state. Party affiliation was not allowed, and the president was effectively, on election, an a-political actor.
• The president will now retain party affiliation.
• The president may dissolve the entire parliament on command and call for new elections
• The president, following special parliamentary procedure, may serve a third term
• Vetoes by the president, instead of requiring only a simple quorum majority, will require a simple absolute majority
• The parliament is now restricted to written auditing of ministers and vice presidents, instead of both written and verbal inquiry, and the president may not be questioned by any parliamentary auditors.
• The president may abolish and establish ministries, and appoint ministers and other senior officials, without review from the judiciary or legislative branches.

Officials in Erdoğan’s government hoped, and indeed expected, to garner at least 60 percent of the vote. Instead, it slipped by at a slim range of 51.3 to 48.7 majority. In addition to a strong public division which has, following this election, been quantified, there have also been serious accusations of various forms of voting manipulation on the part of the sitting government. There have been thousands of reports of fraud to the nation’s election commission, and there are many who argue that the approval of the referendum would not have come had the president not been using his intense authoritarian behavior to influence not only general political dissidents, but voters at large.

It is worth noting that, because of rebel activity in areas of the country populated largely by Kurdish people, large numbers of displaced Kurds, who were broadly expected to vote down the referendum, were unable to vote, because they no longer have official addresses.

This is the victory which our president has lauded. He is, as of yet, the first and only western leader to do so.

In fairness, our nation has legitimate military interest in maintaining Turkey as an ally against ISIS, but we cannot lose sight of the irrationality of fighting repressive regimes in one region by supporting and praising them in another. If the bulk of Western Europe can call a spade a spade, so can the president of the United States. True, many of us would have difficulty fathoming the speech craft necessary to smoothly avoid mentioning this kind of political event when in conversation with its beneficiary. It is, however, commonplace for the common man to be unable to fathom basic capacities which are, nonetheless, absolutely crucial to being the most powerful human on the planet.

We may be wont to overzealously decry the imminence of the next western dictatorships in Germany, France or the US – the United States are in a difficult pass, but this is not pre-war Europe.  And yet, it is still vital that we as citizens – as democrats in the ancient sense – remember that the best place to slit the throat of a democracy is in the ballot booth. And so we are not wrong in questioning why our president is the first leader in the western world to praise this kind of power grab.

We will, for at least the next several years, continue to watch Donald Trump, to scruple and debate, to scrutinize his actions as president. We will continue, then, to hear him insist that his interest is the nation’s interest, the interest of the security and prosperity of the people. Less likely, however, is it that we will hear him ground his actions in the defense of a diverse, just and balanced democracy.

This is a time to be on edge. This is a time to keep eyes open. This is a time to steel oneself, and not allow one’s leaders to charm with their speech, the way they are all too willing to charm the likes of Recep Tyyip Erdoğan.

The name of the game is vigilance.

Photo courtesy of CNN.

Such a situation of contradictory leadership sounds downright absurd. The director would certainly be fired immediately, or at least coerced into towing the line. After all, it’s the college president and the board who are in charge of the whole shebang. Don’t they get to make the final decisions without fear of being overturned by those below?

It sounds like the plot for yet another Netflix series, but it’s exactly what is happening right now in the Trump Administration. Among Trump’s campaign promises, those relating to national security and foreign policy are arguably the most dangerous.

Yet here we have Trump’s enthusiastically-appointed Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis going on a world tour shortly after he enters office to assure world leaders that almost nothing Trump said about international relations will come true. We won’t be working with Russia on military operations; the United States won’t turn the defense of South Korea or Japan into conditional business transactions; Iraq isn’t and never was about oil; NATO is an indispensable alliance with kinks to work out; and Putin totally interfered with the election. Mattis also appears not to have backed off a two-state solution for the Israel-Palestine conflict, claiming Israeli settlements will create “apartheid,” and somehow convinced Trump not to bring back torture, which Mattis and many others in the military community agree doesn’t work.

And Mattis isn’t the only one. When Trump said that mass deportations were going to be a “military operation,” Secretary of Homeland Security John F. Kelly contradicted him the same day in Mexico City. And it wasn’t like Sean Spicer’s half-baked military “as an adjective” response: Kelly, a retired Marine Corps general, not only assured his audience that the military would not be used to enforce immigration laws but that “there will be no—repeat, no—mass deportations.”

US Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley boldly asserted that anyone who doesn’t think the US supports a two-state solution is in “error” after Trump’s vague and idiotic comment that he would be “satisfied with whatever makes both parties happy.” Trump is apparently unaware of what’s actually happening in Israel, despite the fact that he gave the usual cop-out claim that he’s “looked at it.”

This duality in Trump’s executive shouldn’t come as a surprise. Intentional or not, it was by his design: he picked these people. This isn’t Sally Yates, the Attorney General who Trump didn’t have a choice in dealing with and quickly fired. His cabinet picks repeatedly contradicted him during confirmation hearings, many of them expressing the same views they’ve held publicly for a long time. Trump doesn’t like getting contradicted, and his fascist-style rhetoric has assured Americans that anything he wants to do will be done, democracy be damned.

So, what’s going on? Trump’s foreign policy apparatus will either continue contradicting their boss or erupt into civil war. They aren’t going to toe the line: both Mattis and Kelly are outspoken retired Marine Corps generals who will stop at nothing to defend the Constitution and their view of the American way of life, despite the idea that Trump likely saw them as obedient robots. Trump’s new National Security Advisor Lieutenant General McMaster, an intellectual with reputation of speaking his mind and questioning his civilian bosses, will have a guaranteed seat on the National Security Council. With views that stand in contrast to the Trump Administration, he’s sure to fight with the President and his right hand man, Steve Bannon, who also holds a seat on the National Security Council.

But is this dissociative chaos that bad of a thing? Of course, from a idealist’s standpoint, it erodes the prestige and respect of the office of the President. The Executive Branch, especially its military, has enjoyed high levels of trust from the American public while Congress has notoriously faltered, but with its current image, that trust may erode. It also begs the question that we’ve been asking for a long time: which Trump do we trust? It was difficult enough sorting through the multitude of contradictory statements that Trump made and continues to make; now we have to deal with his representatives—many of them trustworthy, competent, consistent individuals—adding more contradictions to the pile. But it seems that while Trump is tweeting or speaking off the cuff, his surrogates are making official statements either in the form of press releases or face-to-face statements.

On the surface, it looks like Nixon’s “madman theory,” where “madman” Nixon kept foreign powers guessing while his competent representatives did the actual negotiating and policymaking, which gave them autonomy to get the job done. Intentional or not, this is happening to a certain degree, but comparing Trump to Nixon is absurd. Nixon may have been a powerful president who fought with the media and made outrageous statements, but, unlike Trump, Nixon was a competent politician who knew what he was doing. Trump has repeatedly demonstrated that he doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Just because the means are different doesn’t mean the end isn’t the same: Trump’s secretaries seem to be preventing the worst of Trump’s foreign policy from happening.

Such a system is incredibly risky: Trump could one day say too much and create a mess that not even Henry Kissinger in his prime would be able to clean up. And though his contradictory foreign policy seems to be working against him and working for global security, his emboldening of white nationalists, Nazis, misogynists and other deplorables who espouse un-American values will continue, regardless of how empty Trump’s words are. This, of course, ignores how devastating his domestic policies will be and whether or not he’ll have subordinate pushback there as well. Let me be clear: Trump’s foreign policy is not and will not be great, barring unforeseen changes. What seems to be clear is that, because of outspoken, autonomous executives like Mattis, Kelly, McMaster and Haley, along with Trump’s seemingly weak leadership, it won’t be nearly as bad as it initially seemed. These four years may not be a total foreign policy disaster, but we’ll have to wait and see whether this Jenga tower of an administration continues to be held together.

Photo courtesy of NBC News.

These constitutional rights have been exercised extensively as of late in the form of marches and protests across the country. The Women’s March saw a record number of people turn out to protest the new executive office and its proposed legislation; protests against the new immigration restrictions were organized and enacted incredibly quickly. As technology and communication improves, protests are growing larger and are being organized more quickly and efficiently than ever before–and law enforcement is paying attention.

As the number of protests rise, so do the numbers of arrests at protests. Last November, over 100 people were arrested for blocking a McDonald’s entrance at a “Fight for Fifteen” protest in Kansas City. Several activists who oppose the Dakota Access Pipeline have been arrested over the last several months.

At the recent Day Without Immigrants protest in Kansas City, three protesters were arrested. The first arrest of the day was for a protester blocking the street. The ticket issued to this person stated that his offense was that he had “no horn signalling device” and he “did fail to comply by not leaving the area after being told to do so, honking horn inciting a crowd to gather after being told not to use horn.”  All three people who were arrested were Latino, and one is a Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) recipient, who will now have to defend himself in court and risk losing his legal status.

Of course, protesters getting arrested is nothing new. During the Civil Rights Movement, peaceful protesters who complied with the law were arrested in record numbers. If anything, these arrests worked as publicity for the movement, and brought the protests to national attention.

As these protests and the resulting arrests become more prevalent, we have to wonder, what do our first amendment rights mean anymore? What does it mean that someone can be arrested for honking their horn to show solidarity at a public venue? What are the limits on our freedoms of speech, to petition, to assemble peaceably? Increasingly, it seems that rights are limited when powerful bodies disagree with the actions and rights being exercised.

These limits extend beyond arrests and legal action. In response to several allegations of racism and misconduct on its campus, University of Missouri students held several protests on its Columbia campus in the fall of 2015. At a protest in November, protesters forcibly prevented a member of the press from photographing their “tent city,” which was outdoors on public property, and which students had hailed as a Safe Space.

“We ask for no media in the parameters so the place where people live, fellowship, and sleep can be protected from twisted insincere narratives,” a Twitter account associated with the activists later stated.

In this scenario, the freedom of the press, a civil right guaranteed by the constitution, was restricted in a public place.

These students, of course, were under no obligation to speak to or cooperate with the press. Taxpayers do not pay their salary, and there were other opportunities for the press to cover the story. It was still, though, a limit imposed on a right in a public space.

However, the event did raise questions about the limits of freedom of the press and speech, especially as it applies to safe spaces. The story switched from coverage of these protests for racial equality to a debate about the first amendment.

The events I’ve described are obviously very different, and there are several nuances with both scenarios that I did not get into in this article. However, both deal with a limiting of first amendment rights on public property.

With the advance of smartphones and social media, we are now able to see how first amendment rights are being infringed upon and limited. It seems, especially in recent months, that any time someone with the ability to limit the first amendment rights of someone with whom they disagree, they will do so. Currently, many are questioning the effectiveness of our system of checks and balances, which means that citizens’ protest may be the last “check” at our disposal. It is certainly the one that individuals have the most control over. This being the case, we should all be aware and be very afraid when our freedoms are being limited, both by law enforcement and by other citizens.

Photo courtesy of FreedomWorks.