Turkey again in Freedom House cross wires

 
Turkey along with its president Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was singled out for adverse attention in the recently released Freedom House annual report – which points to a decline in global freedom and to more aggressive tactics by authoritarian leaders.
 
The conduct of the Erdogan government has been a persistent target of the Washington-based democratic watchdog body. Last year the Turkish media was marked down from “partly free” to “not free” and a report released only last December documented a sharp decline in Turkish citizens’ freedom to use the internet.
 
In its current, annual, report, entitled Freedom in the World 2015, Turkey with 54 points is downgraded to being freer than Nigeria (43) but less free than Ukraine (62). The report puts the blame squarely on the Turkish head of state whom it accuses of “consolidating power” by waging “an increasingly aggressive campaign against democratic pluralism.”  
 
Erdoğan “openly demanded that media owners censor coverage or fire critical journalists, told the Constitutional Court he does not respect its rulings, threatened reporters (and rebuked women journalists), and ordered radical, even bizarre changes to the school curriculum. Having risen from the premiership to the presidency in August, he formed a “shadow cabinet” that allows him to run the country from the presidential palace, circumventing constitutional rules” the report writes.
 
The report attributes Turkey’s drift from democratic norms to the former prime ministers attempts to accrue greater power but also to the government’s effort to quash corruption cases against his allies and associates. It is this which has prompted greater interference in the media and the judiciary.

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