RECEP TAYYIP ERDOGAN

The Sultan's winning streak: Brussels gave him a carrot instead of a beating, and in Turkey it has never been stronger Erdoğan finds himself targeted on social media after his daughter announced she had given birth to a fourth child Writes: Robert BajrušiPosted: October 4, 2020 4:47 pm Recep Tayyip Erdogan Recep Tayyip Erdogan Adem Altan / AFP Turkish ruler Recep Tayyip Erdoğan can be calm. Although it tried to seize gas deposits in the eastern Mediterranean from Cypriots, this week the European Union did not impose sanctions on Turkey, but only threatened, and Ankara, in fact, offered carrots in the form of visa bans and more favorable tariffs, only to prevent the Turkish "sultan" its last year’s ultimatum and missed a million migrants to Europe. In such circumstances, no one paid attention to the fact that this Thursday, October 1, the Law on Social Networks came into force in Turkey, passed in parliament in late July. The intention to pass the law was obvious - to prevent platforms such as Twitter, Facebook or YouTube, through which opposition politicians mobilize their supporters and criticize Erdoğan's omnipotence. A talented football player Erdoğan has ruled Turkey for eighteen years. He was born in 1954 into a poor family, and grew up in Kasımpaşa, a working-class part of Istanbul. As a boy, he sold sesame water and pretzels on the street to help his family, later coached football, then entered politics and in 1994 became mayor of Istanbul. He came to power in 2002, as the leader of the AKP party, of which he was one of the founders, and the following year he became prime minister, remaining in office until 2014. Under Erdoğan's leadership, Turkey experienced rapid economic growth and gained self-awareness of its own strength. But at the same time, it sank into a semi-dictatorship, culminating after a coup attempt in July 2016. It then imposed a state of emergency and had tens of thousands arrested, including journalists who criticized its destruction of democracy, and hundreds of thousands of public workers lost their jobs. He has revoked much of the powers of parliament, and now his regime is allowed to do whatever it wants with social media. According to the Turkish government, the main goal is to prevent violations of personal rights on social networks and platforms. The reason for this legislative initiative was an incident from the private life of the president himself: after his daughter Esra Erdoğan and her husband Berat Albayrak , who is (quite strangely) finance minister, announced the birth of their fourth child on Twitter, numerous users insulted Erdoğan. The Turkish president was angry and announced restrictions in a fit of rage: "Do you understand now why we are against YouTube, Twitter, Netflix and other social media? Because we want to stop this immorality. Because we are descendants of a nation with high morals and high values," Erdoğan said. in addressing citizens. When threatened, journalists should trust Tayyip Erdoğan. RELATED NEWS TENSIONS WITH GREEK Turkey on sanctions threats: 'EU stance serves to satisfy Greek side' RELATIONSHIP AGAINST Caucasus expert on conflict escalation: "Russia is key player in Nagorno-Karabakh" Namely, at the end of 2019, it was announced that more than 150 journalists were in custody or prisons, and that since 2014, a total of 53 journalists have been convicted of "insulting the president", ie since the year Erdoğan was appointed president. Finally, during the AKP's rule, 8,000 of the 24,000 journalists lost their jobs, and when, due to the danger of the spread of covid-19, 90,000 prisoners were released from Turkish prisons in April, the journalists were not among those amnestied. Back in May, Ankara authorities published a “Guide to the Use of Social Media,” a 161-page manual outlining measures to ensure the “correct, healthy, and safe use” of social networks. The author was the head of the Communications Office of Turkish President Fahrettin Altun , who recommended a “centralization process” to prevent the spread of “manipulative information from the creators of global opinion”. Public threat In the future, if Twitter and Co. refuse to open a representative office on Turkish soil, Turkish courts could reduce their scope by up to 95 percent. In addition, a fine of one to ten million lire will be paid for “problematic content”. It hasn't been fabulous so far. In Turkey, access to more than 400,000 websites has already been blocked, and Twitter, YouTube and Wikipedia have also been periodically censored. The EU is silently watching all this because it is afraid of Tayyip Erdoğan. Erdoğan went to the Global Forum in Geneva last year and publicly threatened that his country would repatriate nearly a million Syrian refugees "in a very short time" and accused world powers of "protecting oil fields more than Syrian children." The European Union got scared and made another in a series of deals with a president who wants to be sultan. But all deals with dictators are short-lived. Since then, Erdoğan has sent troops to Libya, is now directly involved in the Nagorno-Karabakh war, tried to put his paw on gas deposits in the Cypriot economic zone in the Mediterranean, threatened war with Greece, and turned Hagia Sophia back from a museum into a mosque, challenging new animosities in Christians. He doesn't care, because he knows that the European Union will oppose him with diplomatic statements instead of sanctions.