The Hürriyet Daily News ("Leading news source for Turkey and the region") reported that an overwhelming majority of young people demonstrating against the government in Gezi Park in Taksim Square in Istanbul are "libertarian."
Their article, " Protesters are young, libertarian and furious at Turkish PM, says survey " published on June 5, 2013, made the following claims.
"A majority of the protesters defined themselves as libertarian and did not vote for the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), according to the survey. A majority of the protesters who completed the survey, 81.2 percent, defined themselves as 'libertarian.'"
The problem is "libertarian" means different things to different people in different places at different times. Here's Noam Chomsky from 1990 :
"Libertarian in the United States has a meaning which is almost the opposite of what it has in the rest of the world traditionally. Here, libertarian means ultra right-wing capitalist. In the European tradition, libertarian meant socialist."
The vast majority of participants in the Modern American Libertarian Movement today, as chronicled in Brian Doherty's Radicals for Capitalism , would totally reject both the "ultra right-wing" label as well as the corporatist definition of "capitalist."
On June 11 Students for Liberty also reported "a majority of the protesters identify as libertarian. But just how libertarian are these protests? What exactly is going on? We reached out to our friends at European Students For Liberty and discovered a liberty oriented student organization, 3H , that became involved in the protests shortly after they began."
Libertarian News Examiner reached out to Libertarian International Organization (LIO) with questions about European style libertarianism but got some vague and bewildering responses, such as "Socialist libertarianism is specifically integrated," and "The Turks we know are at work on Liberalism/libertarian directions."
When asked where socialism and the zero aggression principle (ZAP) fit into European Libertarianism the response was "Libertarianism transcends all these things."
Turning elsewhere for more articulate answers self-identified Left Libertarian Tom "Kn@pster" Knapp at Rational Review first explained the similarities and differences between left, right and European libertarians – many left and Euro libertarians " think that the natural outcome of a free society would be largely socialistic" while the right assumes anarcho-capitalism – he then stated unequivocally, "In my opinion, if it conflicts with the ZAP, it's not libertarian."
And, as it turns out, LIO's own website says much the same: "Libertarianism [admits] all forms of economic organization so long as voluntary."
Amen.
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