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Orwell’s 1984 comes to life in Erdogan’s 2015 Turkey

Turkey’s president has called on community leaders in villages and neighborhoods to report on “terrorists” in their communities.
A demonstrator tries to destroy a CCTV security camera on Istiklal Street in central Istanbul July 13, 2013. Turkish police fired water cannon and tear gas on Saturday to disperse hundreds of protesters who gathered to march to Gezi Park, which has been at the heart of fierce unrest against Prime Minister Erdogan's rule. Protesters scattered, running into sidestreets where police pursued them, before starting to regroup on Istiklal Street, metres from the main Taksim Square. REUTERS/Umit Bektas (TURKEY - Ta

In his cult novel "1984," George Orwell described a dystopian world of people under constant government surveillance. In a letter to an American trade unionist, Orwell wrote he believed a society similar to the one he imagined could one day become a reality. The world we live in today may not be the exact nightmare the writer imagined, but it often fills us with fear that our lives are closely monitored. This may explain why "1984" has been back on the best-seller list in Turkey in recent years. Its popularity may surge even further after the country’s more than 50,000 mukhtars — leaders of neighborhoods and villages — were tasked with informing the government on fellow residents.

Since January, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has delivered monthly speeches to mukhtars, invited in groups to his palace in Ankara. At the eighth meeting on Aug. 12, he spoke about the need to boost intelligence-gathering against Kurdish militants amid a surge of terrorist attacks since the June 7 elections, and tasked the mukhtars with a new duty. “I expect support on this issue from our mukhtars as well. I know my mukhtars [are aware] what kind of people live in which house. They [need to] go to their governors or police chiefs and report this to them in an appropriate and calm manner,” he said.

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