Dark Clouds of Autocracy with a Storm of Imprisonments

Turkey is weathering a very different storm recently. Despite the many coup d’états that the country experienced since the establishment of Turkish Republic the public caught unprepared against this new version of autocracy. They would have never guessed that the very front runners of democracy that they have been supporting for more than decade could form such a dictatorship in no time.

Erdogan regime in Turkey is threatening not only the democracy but the basic human rights in the entire country. The freedom of press or expression is under attack on a daily basis. Editor-in-Chief of Zaman daily, one of the many victims of Erdogan regime’s witch hunt against the media, wrote an op-ed on Washington Post today on this very issue. After 80 hours of detention, says Dumanli, he just learned that the only evidence against him was two columns and a news report. He was not the only one that was detained on baseless terrorism charges. The chairman of Samanyolu Broadcasting Group has been also arrested due to the scenario of a TV series they aired five years ago. Some say they were actually arrested just because they were affiliated with the Hizmet Movement and Erdogan is doing everything to annihilate that is remotely related to Hizmet. But that is just partially true, as Erdogan’s witch hunt does not stop with the Hizmet affiliated media. His partisan henchmen go after any independent voice that criticizes the Erdogan regime. Last week two other famous journalists, Sedef Kabas and Mehmet Baransu, were detained over tweets. A week before that a 16 year old boy was arrested during the protests on the anniversary of graft stings just because he read out loud a statement pointing out the corruption.

Like many other elected autocrats Erdogan controls not only the parliament or the cabinet, but also most of the media and law enforcement or judicial posts. Following the two sweeping graft stings last year, Erdogan regime emptied the bureaucracy of independent minded civil servants, and replaced the prosecutors and police officers who had launched the investigations. He then took steps to redesign the judiciary and the police to his liking. The parliament under his control also enacted many bills that contradict with very basic universal rights. The Supreme Court Justices released a statement recently due to the pressure on the courts, and turned over some of the bills signed off by Erdogan. The top court reports that they have been inundated with cases of individual complaints about violations of human rights.

With every step of Erdogan Turkey is falling down to the bottom of the autocracy den. Tom Friedman of New York Times describes the latest status as, “Turkey’s increasingly tyrannical president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been arresting domestic opponents, is looking like Vladimir Putin Jr.” Actually, Erdogan could be ahead of Putin now with his war against the independent media. He gave signs of more arrests with his latest speeches. So it will be no surprise that more journalists are incarcerated within the next coming months just because they criticized the Erdogan regime. After all, the notorious “reasonable doubt” bill is still out there. That is correct: as opposed to many modern legal systems, in today’s Turkey, a reasonable doubt is good enough for anyone to be detained and even charged for high treason. It looks like this winter the de facto weather forecast for Turkey will continue to be dark clouds of autocracy with high chances of confinements.