Chief advisor to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and columnist İlnur Çevik defended a crackdown on media, including the Cumhuriyet newspaper, in Turkey while suggesting that it be done “Western style” to avoid creating the perception that critics are being silenced in the country.
Çevik, who was also a journalist for years at the former Turkish Daily News, wrote in his column on Tuesday, in reference to the crackdown on the media, that such operations are necessary but that these kinds of things are done in a certain way in the West. “We have to do what we are doing without giving the impression that the opposition is being silenced,” Çevik said before adding that Turkey needs to learn how “these things are done in the West.”
Çevik, in his Nov. 1 column for the Yeni Birlik daily, openly supported the detention of two Diyarbakır co-mayors, the recent closure of Kurdish media outlets and the crackdown on Cumhuriyet.