Navigate to News section

The Rotten Something in the State of Turkey

Today on Tablet

by
Marc Tracy
January 06, 2011

Gareth H. Jenkins recounts the ruling AKP’s decade-long trajectory toward increasing corruption and authoritarianism today in Tablet Magazine. It is ironic because the AKP’s initial rise to power, in 1999, coincided with what was comparatively one of modern Turkey’s most democratic moments.

As for the U.S. diplomatic cables, revealed by WikiLeaks, alleging that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has dirty money stashed away in eight Swiss bank accounts? The government’s response was essentially to tar WikiLeaks as a Zionist enterprise, a response that, Jenkins concludes, was “probably more revealing about the nature of AKP rule than the allegations themselves … further proof not only of the widespread paranoia and anti-Semitism in the party but also of the government’s growing tendency to try to intimidate its critics into silence.”

Marc Tracy is a staff writer at The New Republic, and was previously a staff writer at Tablet. He tweets @marcatracy.