Why are democracies silent about Turkey’s tyrant?                      

This month, the capital of a major Nato power, with a common sea border with Russia, was shaken by massive protests. Scores or more of thousands turned out to call for democracy and the release of one of the world’s most prominent political prisoners.

You won’t have seen footage of these angry though peaceful mass demonstrations, as the BBC has all but given up reporting international news, unless it involves Donald Trump and or Gaza. Unless you scour the international press the chances of getting details of why so many went onto the streets are not high.

The country in question is Turkey whose leader has been ruling since 2003. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, 71, is eight years younger than Donald  Trump and a year younger than Vladimir Putin. Like the Russian Tsars and Ottoman Sultans of old, these two gentlemen on the borderlands of Europe have no interest in joining the democratic world.

Turks poured onto the streets of Istanbul and Ankara in fury at Erdogan’s latest move to keep himself in power ahead of the next election in May 2028.

Erdogan came to power after he won election as Mayor of Istanbul which provided the springboard two decades ago to become first prime minister, then president. His main opponent  Ekrem Imamoglu,  a mild mannered, centrist businessman, is currently Mayor of Istanbul for the Republican Peoples Party, (CHP in its Turkish acronym), the secularist party created by the founding father of modern Turkey Kemal Ataturk.

By contrast to the CHP, Erdogan’s AK Party is an openly Islamist party. Erdogan hardly bothers to hide his affiliation to the Muslim Brotherhood, the main global institution seeking to impose Islamist ideology in all nations with a majority Muslim population.

Now one of his puppet courts has sentenced Imamoglu to 20 months in prison. He was already detained on the fake charge that he had made up his university degree. The CHP made him their candidate to take on Erdogan as president in the 2028 elections. Erdogan has swept other secular CHP leaders, including dozens of municipal leaders, into prison but the peaceful resistance on the streets has been remarkable.

Turkey is a loyal Nato and Council of Europe member. It has been in a Customs Union with the EU for decades, but this offers no help to Turkish citizens or businesses who want to join Europe.  So far Brussels and London have been silent on Erdogan’s Putin-style denial of core democratic rights in Turkey.

The CHP, Labour and other European left parties belong to the umbrella bodies the Party of European Socialists and the venerable Socialist International. They issue pro-forma statements of solidarity, but have none of the weight of a government minister or PM.

Polls show 65 per cent of Turks want a return to democracy. The chairman of the CHP, Özgur Özel, has attended the Labour Party conference. A powerful orator, he attracts big crowds to public meetings.

The former Greek socialist prime minister, George Papandreou, denounced Erdogan in the Greek media and even tried recently to visit Imamoglu in prison. This was blocked by the Erdogan autocracy.

Turkey is now listed as one of the 26 member states in the much-touted “Coalition of the Willing” initiated by Keir Starmer and Emmanuel Macron to support Ukraine. Yet at the UN and at other global forums, Erdogan refuses to criticise Putin — unlike the CHP, which stands with European democracy.

There are demonstrations against Israel every week on the streets of Britain, on university campuses, and shown on media outlets. But so far British Labour MPs and the wider left or its publications have been silent on Erdogan’s assault on democracy.

Denis MacShane is a former Minister of Europe.

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