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Erdogan, you don’t protect democracy by suspending it

Haven’t we heard this before, “we are taking action, protecting democracy by suspending it”. Every dictator and zealot in waiting gushes out the same mantra.

We have seen it in Pakistan, seen it in Thailand, many years ago in the Philippines and South Korea.

The majority of despots in Africa and South America don’t even bother to hide their action with pretty words.

The latest to join this group is the so-called reformist democrat when he first came to power, Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey.

After declaring emergency, he insisted democracy would “not be compromised” and lashed out at critics of the sweeping purge that has raised deep concerns about democracy and human rights in the key Nato member. The extra powers, to restrict freedom of movement and other rights, were needed “to remove swiftly all the elements of the terrorist organisation involved in the coup attempt”.

In the early days of Anwar Ibrahim’s fallout with Dr Mahathir Mohamad, there was talk that Anwar was hiding in Turkish embassy, protected by a fellow democrat.

Have a read on what the western press think of him now.

He is more like Mahathir and Najib Abdul Razak now, oh sorry, he makes Najib looks like a malaikat (can’t say saint now as those red shirts may launch a demonstration in front of my house).

At least Najib just allegedly sacked the attorney-general (AG) and a couple of politicians. He did not sack fifty thousand like Erdogan has done.

It seems only ones left are the tea lady and the despatch boy who escaped.

If you ever wondered how the National Security Council will allegedly pervert democracy, well, it is at work in Turkey now. I wonder whether we had a ‘lawatan sambil belajar’ to Turkey before we introduced ours.

Be on alert for pretenders of democracy

This is why we must always be alert, on full alert for these pretenders of democracy.

So what if people didn’t support the government and support the opposition instead. Everyone pays tax so everyone deserves a job. So only government supporters deserve government jobs, is it? They are not paid by the party but by the government.

How could anyone manage to gather a list of 50,000 opposition supporters a few days after the attempted coup? Surely this list was ready. This is not a purge of coup supporters, if so, charge them in court and prove it, not just fire people who have families to look after and feed. This is opportunistic.

I support the theory that this coup was staged by Erdogan. Turkey’s army cannot be so inept that they botched up a coup. After all these are the guys who shot down a mighty Russian fighter jet.

Even before this coup attempt, many basic rights were being eroded, restriction of the press, arrests of journalists, enforcement officers misbehaving and so on. Now, it’s anyone’s guess.

The botched coup did not damage democracy as it strengthened it - many came out and demonstrated against the rebel army. What Erdogan is doing now is destroying democracy.

The 45 days of emergency will be extended, then extended and then people won’t know the difference. This is what happened in Pakistan and this is what is still happening in Thailand.

The Europeans will make some noise and issue some strongly-worded statement but they won’t really care, the have bigger problems in their home states and they need a fuel depot to refuel their fighter jets in the south.

What I don’t get is how people could still support such a dictator and a despot who is leading Turkey to ruin from what was once a beacon of moderates and democracy. They even took on the Israelis by running supply ships to supply starving Palestinians.

Can we see the similarities with the predicament Malaysia is facing?

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