FINANCIAL TIMES: ERDOĞAN INTENDS TO CROWN HIS QUEST FOR ONE MAN RULE IN TURKEY

British daily Financial Times wrote in its leading article that president Erdoğan mires Turkey ever deeper in autocracy before June 24 elections. The article claimed that “President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has brought forward by a year and a half elections he intends will crown his quest for one-man rule in Turkey.” It is also noted that “In the purges that followed, Ankara has jailed more than 40,000 and fired another 130,000, from the army to academia. Mr Erdogan has joined up with ultra-right nationalists and whipped up a jingoist atmosphere around Ankara’s fight against a Kurdish insurgency inside Turkey -an insurgency that also fights in Syria, where it is allied with the US. Scarcely a day goes by without a diatribe from the president or his courtiers against America or Europe.” The newspaper also defined the heavy jail sentences handed down to 12 journalists and six staff at Cumhuriyet as ‘nothing but a show trial’.