The growing arrogance of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan became more blatant this week as police arrested 27 people, including journalists, in raids on media outlets that have been critical of his government and maintained close ties with Erdogan’s former ally, US-based Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen. The editorial board of the Zamen newspaper has issued a statement saying that the attacks were an extremely sad day for Turkish democracy and freedom of the press, as their editor-in-chief was “detained on unfounded allegations”.
The date of the raids is exactly a year after Gulen blew the lid off a corruption scandal that almost toppled Erdogan from his pre-eminent position in Turkish politics. Although Erdogan staged a remarkable comeback by sacking thousands of police officers and prosecutors to halt the action against his supporters, as he declared “war” on what he called a “parallel state” of Gulen’s followers, who Erdogan claimed were plotting a coup.
Erdogan served as many terms as prime minister as he was allowed, after which he controversially moved to be elected as president, where he worked with his compliant prime minister to tweak the conventions to give himself more direct rule as president than what constitutional practice intended. He remains a highly popular politician who is able to win elections and gain repeated mandates for his Islamist party, but the increasingly obvious danger is that his extended period at the top of Turkish politics will lead him to disdain the conventions of treating any opposition with respect as he promulgates his own version of more authoritarian rule.
