Turkey Slowly but Surely Becoming a Dictatorship
June 24th may well be remembered as the day that Turkey became a dictatorship. Turkey will hold elections on that date and Recep Tayyip Erdogan has incrementally implemented policies that will ensure his victory to the new position of “Executive President”, giving him powers not seen in Turkey since Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey. And with those new powers Erdogen will continue to undermine Turkey's democracy to ensure he remains in power. Yes, there will still be elections under the constitution, but much like in Russia or Egypt, elections without much suspense.
The Guardian: Worried politicians in Paris, Berlin, London and Washington no longer see a reliable friend and ally in Ankara. They see an autocratic figure exploiting nationalist and neo-Islamist sentiment, xenophobia and Europhobia, and feelings of public insecurity brought on by next door’s Syrian crisis, to justify egregious human rights abuses, institutional vandalism and anti-EU, anti-western policies
The Guardian's excellent piece on the upcoming election and its consequences is here.
