Shuffling problems

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Turkey is like a cat with nine lives. Anywhere in the world, any one of the major events this country lived through during last year would have taken down governments, kill the prospects of key bureaucrats and change the political climate.

Take the Gezi Park uprising against the authoritarian leadership style of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. So many citizens were killed, wounded and left without an eye because of the excessive and indeed horrendous use of force by police. Though the same policemen were banished to other places as part of the campaign to demonize the Fethullah Gülen Islamist brotherhood, during those days Erdoğan was proudly congratulating policemen of being “heroically successful” against the demonstrators.

Who is a hero and who is a demon has long been confused in this land, very much like George Orwell’s black comedy “1984.” Today’s allies might become tomorrow’s demons, depending on what the absolute ruler decides while cities were converted into some sort of a glasshouse in which the Big Brother is watching us through cameras installed everywhere.

The “Press for Freedom” project – of which I am the coordinator – of the Association of Journalists just released a report documenting day by day how Turkey has curtailed freedom of expression, and thus media freedom, in this country during the local polls period. While we might get accustomed to separate violations, when put together in a report, the desperate situation of Turkey and how serious the freedom of expression record of this government becomes all the more painfully clear. It was so unfortunate that because of the “empire of fear”...

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