For years, the Turkish regime touted itself to the world as a model of Islamic democracy and freedom. But it seems to have back-pedaled on these false claims after the truth broke out in the open. It was exposed as a sham. The regime’s true face is that of a dictatorial autocracy it charges others practice.
Figures in this regard undeniably hide nothing. They are the regime’s own. Data from the Turkish Ministry of Justice show that 2019 has seen more people under investigation for insulting President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, or his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Over 36,000 people and counting.
Yes, more than 36,000 Turkish citizens were charged last year under a law passed by Erdogan’s parliament that punishes anyone insulting the president with one to four years in prison. The punishment is stiffer if the insult is made in public.
Overall, official statistics indicate that since Erdogan’s reign began in 2014, 29,704 persons were tried for insulting the president or his party, of whom 9,554 were punished and 2,663 were jailed.
Just try to imagine such a large number of prisoners incarcerated in Turkish prisons just for offence against the President. And what about those accused of joining Fethullah Gulen’s organization? Thousands of Turkish people are accused of this every month. People are arrested, fired, and many of them end up on the streets.
The status of freedom and democracy in Turkey no longer passes unnoticed in the eyes of observers. Things are going from bad to worse in this country on the level of freedoms as well as in the economy, politics, the media and all sectors of Turkish society.
Citizens are repressed by Erdogan’s regime and pay a heavy price for his adventures and interventions abroad. The man caused the Turkish lira to plummet to record levels never before reached.
In terms of freedoms, UN reports note that Turkey last year further declined in the index of freedoms. It now ranks as the second most degraded country in the world in the last 10 years. That is reported in the annual assessment of fundamental freedoms conducted in 2020 by Freedom House.
According to the report, Turkey has dropped 31 points in 10 years, marking the second largest decline in freedoms after Burundi. The latter dropped 32 points, the largest decline in the last decade.
The report ranked Turkey as a non-free country for the second year in a row. It joins 49 other countries out of the 195 rated. Turkey features on a list of non-free countries that also includes Libya, Somalia, North Korea, Turkmenistan, South Sudan, Eritrea and Syria.
Figures showing the number of victims of the Erdogan regime’s prosecution of those suspected of joining Gulen’s organization point to the proportions of the cataclysm that is shaking Turkish society.
More than 4,500 judges, about 15,000 students from military academies, some 34,000 police officers, 7,000 doctors and health ministry officials have been dismissed. About 15,000 employees of the Ministry of Justice, provincial administrators and religious leaders also lost their jobs. A total of 160,000 people from various state agencies will have been laid off as a result of the so-called putsch of 2016.
The figures are alarmingly telling of the Turkish regime’s callous tyranny. According to the Economic Intelligence Unit of the British Economist Group, the regime is classed as a hybrid system of both democracy and tyranny. Its report clearly condemns this authoritarian regime.
Indeed, a European Parliament delegation to Turkey said that “We perceive a worrying backliding in the area of rule of law” in the country. It referred to the dismissal of elected Kurdish mayors and their replacement by government-appointed trustees, without any evidence against them.
Interestingly, it is the media in Turkey that suffers the most. This is despite the fact that the Sultan funds, launches and sponsors media hostile to countries such as Egypt and others. Reporters Without Borders says that Turkey ranks 155th out of a total of 180 countries on the list of arrests. The Sultan has closed more than 170 media outlets. Some 165 journalists were arrested; half of the journalists detained worldwide are detained in Turkey.
The sultan’s most recent strike was the freedoms bill passed in July. For the ruling AKP, the law extends censorship of social networks to combat online “slander.”
It is common knowledge, though, that the law was passed after Erdogan’s demand to “regulate” social networks, following criticism from his daughter and son-in-law, and revelations of corruption on Twitter. Twitter’s 2019 transparency report says that in the first half of the year, Turkey topped the list of countries that called for the removal of social network content with well over 6,000 requests.
Women in Turkey are also in a bad place, contrary to what the terrorist organizations and propagandists suggest. We are talking here about women from ethnic minorities and activists of civil society and human rights. Reports indicate that 18,000 women have been detained without any legal basis since the failed coup in July 2016.
The scene is of arbitrariness in Sultan Erdogan’s Turkey. It which exports to the Arab world pretence of freedom and democracy. It which supports propaganda blowhards and mercenaries affiliated with extremist terrorist groups to sully the image of Arab countries and harm their relationship with their people. These spin doctors, however, speak from a state that can no longer hide its tyrannical and dictatorial image from the world.
