It looks as though Europe has given itself another dictator to deal with

The situation in Turkey is now far worse than anybody could have foreseen, and this just a week after the failed coup d’état.

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Though I do not concur with the widely touted notion that President Erdogan somehow incited or encouraged the failed attempt at deposing him so as to have justification for a widespread purge of his real and perceived enemies, he has used it for just that end. “He was prepared with lists and who to get rid of,” the conspiracy theorists say, “therefore he must have known about it in advance.” Not so – paranoid dictators always have lists of enemies of the state (we needn’t go far in time and place to work that out), and given the right setting, they will go wild with that.

The European Union’s latest threats that Turkey, a candidate country, will no longer be considered for membership unless it ceases immediately with widespread violations of human rights and punishment without due process, and the reintroduction of the death penalty, have had no effect. They seem, on the other hand, to have incited Erdogan to further acts of violence and intimidation against his own people. The EU Council of (Foreign) Ministers tells him to stop immediately or forget EU membership forever, and he goes on ever greater rampages. The message here is that he doesn’t care a jot for EU membership, that somewhere along the line he stopped trying to have Turkey join or that he never wanted Turkey to be part of the process in the first place, but for some reason thought it fit to pretend. Or perhaps, as he and his sons accumulated not millions but billions through corruption and trading in influence, the realisation dawned that, personally, they were far better off in a situation of ‘elected’ dictatorship, in full control of a country that is a democracy only in name, stuffing their private bank accounts like Pharaoh’s tomb (that’s something else that has echoes here in Malta, though of course on a much smaller scale because it’s a much smaller country, and it’s also in the European Union).

This past week it became quite clear that the European Union has lost its influence over Turkey and its power to get it to stay in line by using the carrot/stick of EU membership. While millions of educated and socially liberal Turkish people, who live mainly in the cities, despair at what is happening, Erdogan and his supporters are pretty much racing around with a pitchfork in one hand and the other raised in a reverse salute at Europe.

Those who said for years that Turkey’s EU membership is a pressing priority have not been proved wrong by this week’s events. On the contrary, they have been proved right. It’s one of those conundrums: had Turkey been in the European Union, none of this would have happened. Turkey would not now be descending into irreparable hell for its people. There would not now be the looming horror of a large country of 80 million people, on the doorstep of Europe and a member of NATO, run by somebody who shows all signs of having succumbed to the murderous paranoia which afflicts, in the end, all real or would-be dictators. But Turkey’s membership was always so contentious among the people of the European Union that the leaders of EU governments were in no particular haste to hurry the Turkish government along in changing its laws and its attitudes to make the country EUready. And now look at what’s happened.

Yesterday, it got worse, much worse. Erdogan personally ordered the closure of thousands – yes, the scale of it is difficult for us to imagine – of private schools, charities and other institutions. He was able to do this because the country is in a state of emergency which he himself has decreed. This gives him, literally, the powers of a dictator. The schools have been shut down because the clearly paranoid Erdogan suspects them of being loyal to the man he sees as his nemesis: Fethullah Gulen, who has lived quietly in the United States for several years. Erdogan says that Gulen was responsible for the coup against him. Gulen has said it is just so much madness.

Erdogan’s wide-ranging order yesterday also banned 19 trade unions, shut down 15 universities and 35 medical institutes. Technically, Parliament must approve the decree but that has been treated as a mere formality to be dispensed with: the government (Erdogan’s party) has the simple majority required for that.

Instead of speaking for calm and order, Erdogan has continued to encourage his supporters out onto the streets, which has added to the instability Turkey now faces and to the intimidation of ordinary people who are scared to make their critical views known. More rallies have been held over this weekend in major towns and cities. In Istanbul, people are allowed free travel on the metro to get to the rallies. While they are on the trains, videos play on the advertising and information screens, showing pictures of “martyrs” killed in the postcoup violence. Of course, these martyrs are Erdogan supporters.

And Turkey’s Minister for European Union Affairs, instead of resigning from his now impossible post, has instead tried his own hand at a spot of more rabble-rousing, saying publicly that European countries should have sent representatives to “demonstrate their solidarity with Turks” – by which he clearly meant the Turkish government.

There doesn’t seem to be any end in sight with this one. It looks as though the ‘West’ has got itself yet another dangerous dictator who can no longer be mollycoddled and so will have to be got rid of. I can’t see anybody trying to bell that particular cat any time soon, though. Perhaps they’ll let him run on for four decades while they suck up to him for money and contracts even as he destroys his country and turns the Turkish population into a sea of misery with a diaspora of millions of the most privileged – just as they did with Muammar Gaddafi.