Erdogan Threatens to Settle Score With The Times

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is threatening legal action against one of Britain's oldest and most influential newspapers, The Times. The newspaper published an open letter, in the form of an advertisement, signed by 30 prominent names, ranging from Ataturk's biographer Andrew Mango to Oscar-winning actress Susan Sarandon. The letter addressed Erdogan directly, harshly criticizing the brutal use of police force to clamp down on the Gezi Park protesters in June, as well as his dictatorial instincts. Erdogan's unflinching outburst against the ad is a typical act of intimidation, targeting a domestic audience rather than actually filing a case against The Times or the letter's signees.

Erdogan has previously acted in a similar fashion, for example, when he threatened to sue the US State Department in December 2010, but to no avail. As I wrote that same month in the Weekly Standard, "At issue is the insinuation, laid out in US diplomatic cables purloined by Wikileaks, that Erdogan is corrupt." One such cable, dated Dec. 30, 2004, was penned by former US ambassador to Turkey Eric Edelman, stating, "We have heard from two contacts that Erdogan has eight accounts in Swiss banks." Erdogan denied the allegation.

Edelman further wrote in one of the cables uncovered by WikiLeaks, "[H]is explanations that his wealth comes from the wedding presents guests gave his son and that a Turkish businessman is paying the educational expenses of all four Erdogan children in the US purely altruistically are lame."

Back then, I concluded the article stating, "The WikiLeaks story will eventually fade away but a legal case against American diplomats would keep the allegations of AKP [Justice and Development Party] corruption front and center — the same allegations that so unnerved him in the first place."