Yes, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was duly elected to office in Turkey’s first-ever direct presidential vote in 2014.
And yes, those elections were deemed fair and open.
But democracy is not just about elections.
It is also about allowing the expression of dissent and freedom of ideas.
It is about a respect for the rule of law.
And it is about providing for a separation of powers between the executive, legislative and judicial branches of government.
Even before the failed July 15 coup against him and his ruling Development and Justice Party (AKP), Erdoğan had already bent over backwards to stifle freedom of expression, locking up over 30 Turkish journalists for having spoken to opposition leaders.
He also raided the Istanbul offices of Turkey’s largest independent newspaper, Zaman, last March and replaced its entire editorial staff with a gang of government thugs in charge of overseeing its editorial content.
And when the country’s more tempered prime minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, expressed his disapproval of the strongman’s usurping of his powers and those of the legislator in May, Erdoğan simply demanded Davutoğlu’s resignation and went ahead and rewrote the presidential constitutional powers to his own liking.
Now, since the stifled putsch, Erdoğan has pulled out all the stops in his witch-hunt to purge his country of any semblance of dissent and erode basic human rights even further, imprisoning tens of thousands of military brass, foot soldiers, judges, bureaucrats, journalists, teachers, intellectuals and just about anyone else he might imagine to have anything mean to say about him.
Evoking special powers because of the state of emergency, Erdoğan proceeded to close down television channels, radio stations, news agencies and newspapers across the country, rounding up still more reporters and editors to throw into jail.
He has set his sights on Muhammed Fetullah Gülen, a former ally and cleric living in self-imposed exile in Pennsylvania, who Erdoğan has demanded be turned over by the United States for prosecution.
And since the United States has so far refused to comply with his demand, Erdoğan has lashed out at anyone and anything even vaguely connected to Gülen (who incidentally condemned the attempted coup and claims to have had nothing to do with it).
Since July, Turkish authorities have closed 4,262 companies and institutions with links to Gülen and arrested more than 40,000 people on grounds that they are Gülen associates.
International rights organizations have already issued numerous reports showing how Erdoğan is exploiting the coup attempt as a pretext to root out domestic opposition.
Erdoğan has eroded the last bastions of democracy through the suffocation of anyone who stands in opposition to his all-encompassing authority.
He has cloaked his autocratic dictatorship in the guise of the democratic process he used to maneuver his way into power.
Turkish democracy, with its fundamental values of pluralism and freedom of expression, is now in serious peril of extinction.
But no matter how many thousands of people Erdoğan may imprison, he cannot completely extinguish the voice of the people, nor the simmering discontent that lies just below the nation’s political surface.
And it is that discontent that might just lead to another, possibly more successful, coup against the tyrant.
Thérèse Margolis can be reached at [email protected].
