Even conservative, Islam-loving Turks are calling Erdogan a dictator:
Yesterday, a media company critical of the Turkish government broadcast its own demise. Viewers watched in disbelief as plain-clothed police stormed the control room of Bugün TV, while besieged journalists provided a tense, Titanic-like commentary of the mother ship going down: “The police are coming … They’re here …They have no injunction … And we’re going dark.” Footage of the raid froze on a blurred, split-screen image of swarming police and a huddled group of anchors. Channel: off-air.
When I headed out to join the protests outside the Koza Ipek offices, I expected to find the leftwing enthusiasts who characterised the 2013 Gezi Park protests, and who have periodically gathered to protest about government oppression since then. Instead, I found a crowd that resembled attendees at an open-air mosque, split neatly between dark-clothed men and colourful headscarf-wearing women on either side of the road.
If anything, the women shouted louder, brandishing copies of Koza Ipek-owned newspapers and posters which read: “We Will Not Be Silenced” and “The Last of the Dictators”. I talked to an elderly woman who had travelled from a suburb more than 30km away to show her support. “We had to come,” she said. “This cannot happen.” In breaks during the chanting, she read from a pocket-sized Qur’an.
This surreal event has a complex backstory, but it essentially shows – in forensic, immortalised detail – the latest step in a crackdown on the media in Turkey ahead of snap elections on Sunday.
But if yesterday’s raid tells us anything, it is that checks and balances are urgently needed in Turkey’s government. Let’s hope there are enough opposition channels left to cover what happens when the polling stations close this Sunday – and what unfolds afterwards.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfre ... -crackdown