Erdogan 'Turned Turkey Into Totalitarian State'

The West needs to put an end to its close alliance with Turkey, according to Canadian columnist Doug Saunders.

Kurds are playing a key role in resolving the Syrian conflict, but they are being treated like enemies by the totalitarian rule of Turkey's president Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Saunders wrote in his piece for Globe and Mail.

According to the journalist, this month Turkish authorities crossed the line, shifting toward absolute totalitarianism, and the West now needs to sever ties with Erdogan's regime. Canada and its allies may rely on Turkey to a certain extent in the military campaign in northern Iraq and Syria. Also, the Middle East country, which has accepted 3 million refugees, plays a major role in restraining the flood of migrants into Europe. Nevertheless, Turkey has become "a really big problem", Saunders stressed.

Recently Turkish police and soldiers seized the headquarters of a traditionally anti-government Turkish newspaper Zaman, on the grounds that they were given this right by judges appointed by Erdogan. Soon after the siege, the newspaper, known for its independent coverage, has printed several positive articles featuring the Turkish President.

Saunders noted that the Zaman case is just a part of an unprecedented campaign of the Turkish government that annihilates or takes under control all forms of opposition. More than 1,800 people were arrested last year just for "insulting the president".

According to the official line, the arrests are being made in order to fight Islamist and Kurdish movements, while in fact Erdogan suppresses institutions of democratic and popular dissent in order to guarantee for himself absolute power.

The Canadian journalist asserted that Erdogan won the latest elections by whipping up fear of the Kurds who make up a fifth of the country's population and that clashes between Turks and Kurds were "entirely the creation" of the President himself.

And now Erdogan bombards his own citizens, Saunders argued. The city of Diyarbakir, with its mostly Kurdish population, has become the deadly place where regular police raids have nothing to do with the actual threat to security of the Turkish state.  

"Kurds in Syria and Iraq are our most important allies in Syria's civil war, and are key to finding a peaceful settlement to that conflict. By turning them into enemies strictly because they threatened his own grandiose political ambitions, Mr. Erdogan has destroyed the unified and open Turkey he earlier helped to create," Saunders concluded.

"And he has done so using the tools not just of authoritarianism but now, by silencing the media, of totalitarianism. It is time to stop treating Turkey as an ally, but as a country that has stepped beyond the pale."