Erdogan intensifies his purge in Turkey

Arrest warrants for 42 Turkish journalists critical of Erdogan’s regime have been issued and 220 employees of the state-owned national carrier Turkish Airlines have been dismissed because of their (suspected) anti-Erdogan political opinions.

And like Muammar Gaddafi before him, Erdogan is now using the three million Syrian refugees stranded in Turkish camps as a tool of threat and blackmail. He is agitating for €3 billion in EU aid to help improve the living conditions of those refugees, asking rhetorically, in the fashion used by our own unlamented (except by the delusional) Dom Mintoff against foreign non-dictatorships in the 1970s, what will happen if Turkey lets those three million Syrian refugees across the border to the EU, adding (also in Mintoff’s style) “but we will keep our side of the bargain”.

Clearly, it is not the living conditions of refugees which exercise him here, and any money the European Union hands over to that end is more likely to end up being used to his personal advantage.