Turkey Falls Under Boot of Dictatorship…(Our Future!?)
Finian Cunningham
SputnikNews.com
05.03.2016
With the violent police seizure of Turkey’s biggest independent newspaper this weekend, the country has finally crossed the line to become a fully-fledged dictatorship.
For many months now, the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been cracking down on media as part of a wider move towards an increasingly authoritarian regime under his ruling Justice and Development Party.
Brutal, chaotic scenes at the offices of Zaman newspaper in Istanbul and its related publications this weekend prove beyond doubt that Erdogan’s regime has now openly embraced dictatorship. This in a country which has a long history of military coups and genocidal authoritarianism.
Recent years of seeming parliamentary democracy are now shown to be a sham. Turkey is reverting to the form of strong-arm despotism under Erdogan and his flunkey prime minister Ahmet Davutoglu.
The media group which owns Zaman, Feza Media, has been accused of “consorting with terrorists” connected to Kurdish separatists. A Turkish court then ordered at the end of last week that the newspaper be taken into administration under editors appointed by the government.
The charges are flagrantly trumped-up, of course. Zaman and its English-language daily, Today’s Zaman, are “guilty” of nothing other than providing critical reports and analysis of Erdogan’s government, especially over its reprehensible role in Syria’s conflict since 2011.
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