Fellows in the Media: Murat Somer in Der Spiegel on Recent Turkish Protests
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is trying to transform Turkey from “an open autocracy into a closed one”, our Global Forum Fellow Murat Somer told German magazine der Spiegel commenting on the recent political developments in Turkey.
The article focuses on the protests that started after the imprisonment of Istanbul’s mayor Ekrem Imamoglu. According to the newspaper, while Erdogan has been turning Turkey into an increasingly autocratic state, this imprisonment is now a new level: until now, elections in Turkey were considered free, although not fair. Now Erdogan is undermining this basic principle of democracy: he wants to choose his opponents himself, the article writes.
Murat Somer is quoted as describing this process as “a kind of regime change”. Erdogan is trying to transform the country from “an open autocracy into a closed one”, he says. He drew a comparison with Belarus, where dictator Alexander Lukashenko decides who is allowed to challenge him.
Read the article here (in German).
