Turkey: Erdogan's Stalinist Purge

Gatestone Institute:

• Perhaps even more objectionable is Turkey's persecution of novelists who do not even take part in the political debate. They are hated by Erdogan's Islamist government simply for conveying Western ideas and fighting for freedom of speech.
• Turkey's Erdogan is following the Soviet Stalinist method of burying the books, often along with their authors. Turkey is purging culture.
• After the failed coup last year, Erdogan fired "21,000 teachers" and "1,577 university deans". It is the beheading of Turkey's academic culture. Shamefully, Europe has kept silent about this ideological massacre.

End of August, Madrid: At the Turkish government's request through Interpol, Spanish police arrested a famous Turkish writer, Dogan Akhanli, who was on vacation in Spain. A few days earlier, in Barcelona, Spanish authorities had arrested the Turkish writer, Hamza Yalcin, a reporter for the left-wing newspaper Odak. Meanwhile, in Turkey, another writer, Ahmet Altan was on trial. Turkish authorities prevented yet another Turkish novelist, Asli Erdogan, from flying to Europe to receive the Erich Maria Remarque Peace Prize in the German city of Osnabrück.



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