Turkey: Erdogan’s terrifying “witch-hunt”
On the night of 15 July, as F-16 jets roared over Istanbul and bombs fell on Ankara, even President Erdogan’s opponents rallied behind him, said The Times. Democracy was in peril, and Turks of all persuasions risked their lives to preserve it. But the terrible irony is that the president seems now to be using the failed putsch – which he insists was orchestrated by the Us-based cleric Fethullah Gülen – as an excuse to destroy that democracy, and establish a monopoly on power, said Patrick Cockburn in The Independent. In the name of ridding the state of the “virus” of Gülenist infiltration, more than 60,000 soldiers, teachers, judges and other officials have been arrested, sacked or suspended; 19 unions, 15 universities and 1,043 schools with Gülenist links have been closed; a state of emergency, allowing Erdogan to rule by decree, has been declared, and the European Convention on Human Rights suspended.
A dark “cloud of fear” hangs over Turkey, said Can Dündar in The Guardian. First, during the coup, we saw soldiers being lynched by mobs shouting “Allahu Akbar” and demanding executions. Then Erdogan embarked on a round-up so extensive, it has been compared to Chairman Mao’s Cultural Revolution. There have been reports of suspected plotters being beaten and tortured. The public has been urged to inform on suspected coup supporters; news portals have been closed; journalists have been detained. “It is the biggest witch-hunt in the history of the republic.” Fine, the military coup failed – but who now will stop Erdogan, who has already eroded so many rights, turning Turkey into a police state?
If Erdogan does not exercise restraint, he risks doing untold damage to his country, said The Economist. Tourists have already stopped visiting; next, foreign investors and lenders will withdraw. But this is by no means just a domestic crisis, said Soner Cagaptay in The Observer. If Erdogan makes good on his promise to restore the death penalty, the EU will surely have to suspend accession talks, and the deal it struck with Ankara to limit the flow of refugees into Europe – and in response, Erdogan may walk away from the EU. Relations with Washington are similarly fraught: many Turks are convinced that the Americans conspired in the coup plot, and Ankara has warned the US (which uses an air force base at Incirlik in southern Turkey for raids on Isis in Syria and Iraq) of dire consequences if it does not extradite Gülen. There is a very real risk that if these tensions are not resolved, Turkey – which has the second biggest army in Nato – will cut its Western alliances, and turn to Russia instead.