Turkey’s relentless attack on the press

IT SHOULD come as no surprise that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey would praise Donald Trump for refusing to talk to a CNN reporter at a news conference.

For years, Erdogan has been crushing independent voices as part of a broader effort to assert authoritarian control. Earlier this month, the Turkish police arrested the top legal adviser and a former chief executive of Dogan Holding, a conglomerate that owns the newspaper Hurriyet and CNN Turk. This followed the deten- tion in mid-December of another company executive, Barbaros Muratoglu, reportedly accused of “aiding a terror group”, namely the organisation of Muslim cleric Fethullah Gulen, who has lived in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania since 1999. Erdogan has charged Gulen with masterminding an aborted coup in July.

Although the attempted overthrow was a legitimate threat, Erdogan has exploited the episode. He has declared a state of emergency that expands his executive powers, jailed thousands of soldiers, seized hundreds of companies and purged thousands more public officials, police officers, teachers, judges and prosecutors.

His crackdown on the press has accelerated – 120 journalists have been jailed since the coup attempt and Turkey has surpassed China as the world’s main jailer of journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists.

The family that owns Dogan Holding has long been influential in Turkey’s secular establishment and ran afoul of Erdogan’s Islamist-based AKP Party in 2009. With the company targeted again, the newspaper Hurriyet is widely seen as pulling punches to appease Erdogan by firing journalists and quashing even mildly critical news stories.

There is little doubt Gulen has tried to cause mischief in Turkey by calling attention to corruption and Erdogan’s efforts to sap democracy. But Erdogan has not provided the evidence needed to extradite Gulen. He undoubtedly believes Trump may be more amenable to this demand.