BY taking arbitrary measures and showing authoritarian tendencies, Recep Tayyip Erdogan seems to be vindicating his critics at home and abroad. So far, 24 journalists, including the chief of a television network and the editor-in-chief of a newspaper, have been arrested on terrorism-related charges. Even though the court set free eight of them, including the editor, those still in custody include the television boss and others accused of trying to overthrow his regime in league with Fethullah Gulen, once Mr Erdogan’s friend and now his critic. Mr Gulen lives in self-exile in the US, but Mr Erdogan accuses him of planning his regime’s overthrow by setting up a “parallel state” through a network of cells in Turkey. It is obvious that the arrest warrant for Mr Gulen is largely symbolic and unlikely to evoke a response from the US, which, in any case, is unhappy with the Erdogan government’s policy on the so-called Islamic State. The European Union, which is unhappy with Mr Erdogan’s Syria policy, denounced the arrests as being incompatible with “European values”.

It is astonishing that a man of Mr Erdogan’s stature should exhibit such paranoia. He created a new party after easing out the late Necmettin Erbekan, won three general elections in a row, was prime minister thrice and is now, after amending the constitution, the president. He has some extraordinary achievements to his credit, including the spectacular growth of the economy and the marginalisation of the military’s role in politics. Yet Mr Gulen seems to have got on his nerves, with Turkish politics revolving round the Erdogan-Gulen rivalry. Hizmet, Mr Gulen’s powerful movement, has branches in over 150 countries and controls a chain of newspapers and television networks, which regularly target Mr Erdogan’s policies. Matters came to a head early this year when Mr Erdogan thought the Hizmet-linked media was using a corruption scandal to overthrow his government and accused Hizmet followers of hatching “a dirty plot” by creating “a state within a state”. Then he upped the ante by booking Hizmet supporters on terrorism-related charges. He has now defended his action, wondering whether the EU was “competent to make comments” on the raids and said he did not care whether or not Europe accepted Turkey as a member. The issue here is not Turkey’s EU membership but media freedom and Turkish democracy. Mr Erdogan is clearly overreacting to criticism and must show restraint.

Published in Dawn, December 21st, 2014