As Trump wages war on the media, the echoes of Erdogan grow louder
By Ishaan Tharoor at the Washington Post
https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/worldviews/wp/2017/07/03/as-trump-wages-war-on-the-media-the-echoes-of-erdogan-grow-louder/
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The stakes in Turkey are, of course, profoundly greater. Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan withstood a violent coup attempt a year ago, which prompted his government to embark on a vast purge of state institutions and civil society. More than 100 journalists have been thrown into prison or forced into exile. Dozens of media outlets have been closed or taken over by state authorities. Newspapers that were once titans of the establishment have seen their editors criminalized and offices raided.
But there are some important similarities to bear in mind. Both Erdogan and Trump channel a kind of majoritarian nationalism anchored in grievance at cosmopolitan elites. And both paint their critics as threats to the nation. Over the weekend, Erdogan labeled a peaceful opposition protest march from Ankara to Istanbul as the work of “terrorist” sympathizers.
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“It is that, given enough time, any democratic system is vulnerable to assaults from a determined, dictatorial leader,” wrote Rachman earlier this year. “Mr. Erdogan became prime minister in 2003 and, over time, utterly changed his country. As one Turkish intellectual put it to me ... ‘Things that I would once have thought impossible are now happening on a daily basis.’”
“Trump is not yet going nearly as far as Erdogan, who jails journalists, but the preliminary logic is the same — an attempt to undermine the credibility of those who hold power to account,” wrote Brian Klaas, a fellow at the London School of Economics and author of a recent book on the erosion of democracies, in January.
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