Do the governments in our so-called democratic states care for what they claim to – their “cherished values” of pluralism and democracy? Their approach towards the regime led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan in Turkey offers yet another evidence that they hardly care for such values.

Observers say Turkey is no longer what its legendary architect and first President Kemal Atatürk had promised once—humanism, republicanism, statism, secularism,and Western liberal-scientific education. There was a time when Turkey had a special relationship with Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East.

Turkey was neutral during the Arab-Israeli war of 1948. It was the first Muslim state to establish diplomatic ties with Israel in 1949. In 1951, Turkey joined the Western powers to protest against Egypt’s decision to deny Israeli ships passage through the Suez Canal. In 1954, then Turkish Premier Adnan Menderes called on Arab states to recognize Israel. In 1958, Israeli leaders David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, along with their then IDF Chief of Staff, landed in Istanbul on a historic secret mission aimed at enhancing cultural and intelligence cooperation between Jerusalem and Ankara.

The Mossad opened its station in Turkey in the early 1950s.The kind of relationship Turkey had with Israel can be gauzed from the fact that, in its first Anatolian Eagle joint air force exercise in  June 2001, Turkey had the participation of Isreal too.

But all that is past . Since  Erdogan assumed the leadership of the ruling  Justice and Development party in  the country , Turkey has been on a conservative Islamic path. Erdoğan has declared Turkey is “the only country that can lead the Muslim world.”

Under the new laws made since Erdogan came to power, Muslim clerics can conduct civil marriages and issue religious opinions on matters of day-to-day life. Erdogan has manipulated to all powers in himself during the last 22 years.

In 2003, Erdogan took power as prime minister. After being elected president in 2014, he moved to change the Constitution to concentrate power in his office. Now he aspires to be Turkey’s president indefinitely. Recently, the regime has detained Ekrem Imamoglu and over 100 of his associates. Imamoglu happens to be a member of the Republican People’s Party, which the legendary Ataturk had founded. Erdogan fears Imamoglu might win the next presidential race and thwart his power plans .

Today the Erdogan regime uses “Islamic sentiments” to broaden its social base in the Muslim world. In the wake of what Hamas did to Israel in October 2023, Erdogan praised  the group as a liberation one. In the recent years, it has invited several Indian Islamist leaders, including Zakir Naik, to spread Erdoğan’s influence across India. In 2016, Turkish cleric Serdar Demirel visited Kolkata to participate in a protest march organized by Muslims opposed to the Indian government’s bid to apply a Uniform Civil Code throughout the country.

Nevertheless, the observers lament, the governments in the world’s leading democracies, including the US, the so-called leader of the free world, have so far refrained from condemning Erdogan’s suppression of democracy in Turkey.

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