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Recep Tayyip Erdogan -- a devout Muslim, gifted populist, modernizer and father of the country's economic miracle -- is in danger of becoming an autocrat, one who is dragging his own nation into civil war and stoking external conflicts. First, he wanted to overthrow the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, then he ignored the Islamic State (IS) for far too long. And now he's fighting the Kurds, the West's only partner in its battle against the Islamic extremists. Erdogan is reinstating old battle fronts and stirring mistrust and nationalism. He is imprisoning journalists and his critics. And his soldiers are cordoning off and firing on entire Kurdish cities.
Erdogan used to have ambitious goals. He wanted to solve the Kurdish conflict and boost the economy. He wanted to modernize his country and align it more toward Europe. And he wasn't entirely unsuccessful.
Until very recently, Turkey, a NATO member, was regarded as democracy's only hope in the Islamic world. The country served as a mediator between East and West, and was on track to become a candidate for EU accession. But today's Turkey is quite the opposite: It is a country at risk of falling into a collective insanity, driven there by fanaticism, excessive nationalism and bizarre conspiracy theories.
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Read the whole article » | Hasnain Kazim, Maximilian Popp and Samiha Shafy | Translated from the German by Chris Cottrell | Thursday, September 24, 2015
