Turkish President Visits UK To Remind Everyone He Still Wants To Punish Critical Speech

from the UK-speech-laws-really-don't-need-to-be-any-worse dept

I'm not sure why any nation with at least a passing respect for civil liberties would continue treating Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan as a world leader worth discussing ideas with. Erdogan rolled into the United States with his entourage of thugs and thought he could have critics beaten and unfriendly journalists tossed from press conferences. He continually petitions other countries to punish their own citizens for insulting him.

Back at home, Erdogan is jailing journalists by the hundreds, claiming they're terrorists. A failed coup set off the latest wave of censorial thuggery, with Erdogan bolstering his terrorist claims by pointing to criminal acts like… robbing ATMs. A massive backlog of "insulting the president" cases sit in the country's court system -- a system that's certainly aware it's not supposed to act as a check against executive power.

And yet, world leaders continue to act as though Erdogan is an equal, rather than an overachieving street thug with an amazingly fragile ego. UK Prime Minister Theresa May, hoping to strike a trade deal with Turkey, invited Erdogan to not only discuss a possible deal, but speak publicly.

May tried to keep Erdogan from being Erdogan…

May said that while it was right that those who sought to overthrow a democratically elected government were brought to justice, “it is also important that in the defence of democracy… Turkey does not lose sight of the values it is seeking to defend”.

May added: “That is why today I have underlined to President Erdoğan that we want to see democratic values and international human rights obligations upheld.”

But Erdogan was always going to be Erdogan:

At a press conference in Downing Street alongside May, Erdoğan made no reference to May’s remarks about human rights, but instead urged her to do more to extradite Turkish exiles from the Gulenist or Kurdish movements, saying that if she did not act act against terrorists, it would come back to bite her.

And went on to make it clear that by "terrorists," he also meant journalists who may or may not have been caught engaging in burglary, but otherwise can be assumed to be political targets jailed to ensure silence.

You can't keep treating an overgrown child like an adult. No one should be doing business with Turkey until it cleans up its civil rights violation record. And that's not going to happen as long as Erdogan is president. Gently nudging him towards not being a completely evil asshole obviously doesn't work. All it does is make the government's hosting his off-the-cuff remarks on censorship and jailing journalists look like enablers of oppression.

Filed Under: criticism, free speech, golum, insults, journalism, recep tayyip erdogan, theresa may, turkey