Hope dies on the Bosporus

The Politics of Turkey under Erdogan and the AKP: After the coup in July 2016, Recep Tayyip Erdogan had thousands of people arrested in Turkey; regime-critical media were silenced, and freedom of expression was suspended. "Why do human rights, democracy, and freedom of expression stand no chance in Turkey?" asks Yavuz Baydar, a Turkish journalist living in exile, in his political non-fiction book. Around the turn of the millennium, there was hope that Turkey was on its way to Europe. The country had not only strengthened economically; a Western lifestyle was also gaining more and more followers. However, the rise of Recep Tayyip Erdogan from the mayor of Istanbul to the chairman of the AKP and president nullified this and led to dictatorship. Yavuz Baydar, one of Turkey's leading journalists, describes the developments in Turkey.