Turkish ground troops crossed the border into Syria on Wednesday, and by Friday, Turkish police have arrested over 20 people on terrorism charges for criticizing the new war. They say before this, 78 cases were already open related to the conflict.
Turkey’s recent policy is to arrest people, particularly journalists, who are perceived as too friendly to the Kurds, or too unfriendly to military operations. The trend seems to be continuing with the Syrian offensive.
Prosecutors reported cases had been opened against multiple leaders in the pro-Kurdish Peoples’ Democratic Party, objecting to them calling the process of Turkish troops crossing the border into Syria “an invasion.”
Among journalists, a big reason for arrest seems to be that they had reported on civilian casualties in Turkish airstrikes against Syria. This was dubbed “terrorist propaganda” and attempts to “incite hatred,” since the official Turkish position is that no civilians were killed.
Turkey has a long history of punishing dissenting journalists, and that escalated greatly after the failed 2016 coup, during which there were wholesale purges, and the nationalization of newspapers previously seen as insufficiently supportive of the ruling government.
We shouldn’t have a problem with Turkey arresting war critics. Trump is good buds with people like Sisi, MBS and Kim to name just a few. Maybe the Turks are just “restoring democracy” as John Kerry once said about Sisi.
A democracy is the greatest when the leaders can control the information by prosecuting the hate crimes . A liberal democracy can make the truth against the law so the devil wins .