Monday, July 09, 2018

Purging Turkey from NATO

Erdogan has quickly exploited his presidential victory that leaves him with few institutional checks on his power in order to purge potential opposition from the government.

Here we go again:

Turkey's government on Sunday issued an emergency decree dismissing thousands of public servants for alleged links to terror groups.

The decree, published in the Official Gazette, sacked 18,632 civil servants, including nearly 9,000 police officers, some 6,000 members of the military and hundreds of teachers and academics. Their passports will be cancelled.

At some point, the transition to autocracy will effectively purge Turkey from NATO. Both by getting rid of Turks who favor NATO and all that implies (separation of church and state, democracy, and rule of law) and by convincing NATO that Turkey is no longer acting like an ally who can be trusted.