OP-ED

by Candice Malcolm

The Rebel
July 18, 2016

Turkey is our NATO ally, but the country has been involved in many nefarious and unscrupulous activities, including the bombing of Kurds in Kurdistan and the shooting down of Russian jets near its airspace. And, it's believed, buying oil from ISIS, giving a lifeline and revenue source to the army of terror in Iraq and Syria.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan governs with a heavy fist. His Islamist party was democratically elected, largely because he routinely arrests journalists critical of him, shuts down entire media outlets and intimidates or arrests his political opponents.

Erdogan is sliding down the path to tyranny. He governs like an Islamist, instituting reforms that curb civil liberties and destroy economic freedoms.

He’s turning Turkey into a Sunni version of Iran.

Watch as I review the history that took Turkey from a beacon of hope and prosperity in the Middle East to what on Friday evening looked like just another war-torn hell hole.

The military is the custodian of secularism in Turkey doing its job according to the constitution, but the poorly organized and badly executed coup failed to protect Turkey this time. It failed to seize control to stop Turkey from digressing further towards being another backwards Muslim state ruled by theocratic Islamist thugs.

If anything, the failed coup merely empowered Erdogan to go further down that path.

We saw a glimmer of hope for pluralism and secularism in Turkey but now the military has given a despotic strongman an excuse to arrest and execute his enemies and likely even change Turkey’s constitution to remove any notion of secularism.

I predict he will and will boost his own power to enable his government to impose strict sharia in Turkey.

We’re witnessing the end of constitutional secularism in Turkey and now we have to decide whether we want an Islamist autocracy in NATO as our supposed partner and ally.

Image: The Rebel