Istanbul--President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has launched aggressive attacks on media foes ahead of Turkey's most tightly-contested elections in over a decade, prompting fears of a clampdown on freedom of expression but also defiant vows not to stay silent.
Erdogan personally filed a criminal complaint against the editor-in-chief of the secular Cumhuriyet newspaper Can Dundar over a front page story it said proved Turkey had sent arms to rebels in Syria, warning he would "pay a heavy price".
And after a New York Times editorial said there were "dark clouds" over Turkey, Erdogan denounced the paper as "trash" and even said it had a tradition of vilifying Turkish leaders going back to the Ottoman Sultan Abdulhamid II.
Erdogan, who became president in August after more than a decade as premier, wants after Sunday's legislative polls to create a presidential-based system that his opponents fear would lead to one-man rule.
But the ruling Islamic-rooted Justice and Development Party (AKP) is under pressure, with opinion polls suggesting it may need to form a coalition for the first time since it came to power in 2002.
In this context, the Cumhuriyet story published on Friday was a bombshell, accusing Erdogan of covering up arms shipments to Syrian rebels fighting President Bashar al-Assad.
Prosecutors were quick to open an investigation and Erdogan in his personal complaint Tuesday demanded that Dundar serves two life sentences and 42 years in prison for espionage and publishing false information.
Human Rights Watch said Cumhuriyet was doing its job of "researching and reporting the news", and warned there was an "alarming pattern of the government clamping down on any scrutiny of its conduct".
AFP
