A byline for Erdoan? Liberal megaphones for illiberal voices | Open … – The Guardian

Turkeys president, Recep Tayyip Erdoan, speaks to a crowd in Ankara during the inauguration on 16 July 2017 of a monument to commemorate the victims of the coup attempt a year earlier. Photograph: AP

Some readers bristled when the Guardian published an article with the byline of Recep Tayyip Erdoan, the president of Turkey. Why had the increasingly authoritarian leader been given space to say online, as the headline put it, Turkey, a year after the attempted coup, is defending democratic values, and in print, Turkey, a year on, has a strong democracy (Opinion, 15 July, page 35)?

A selection of readers reactions:

I was genuinely shocked Apart from the tens of thousands of academics, civil servants and teachers hes imprisoned, he has locked up thousands of journalists and closed down every non-compliant newspaper, TV channel and radio station.

Ive read your own counterbalancing editorial piece on post-coup Turkey published a day later, but this doesnt explain the rationale behind providing media legitimacy to Turkeys de-facto dictatorship.

Running this item shows a depressing lack of judgement, and one I do not expect from the Guardian [T]he actions of the government he represents are universally regarded as a threat to democracy in his country. In running such a story the Guardian can now be accused of aiding the attempt to legitimise the actions of such governments.

I like the Guardian and the way that it offers a different opinion on the world but to actually provide a platform for a man like Erdoan is a step too far. The damage he has done to Turkey and the wider region should preclude him from securing a platform like the Guardian.

I asked the relevant editors about their decision and they replied: It is part of our role to let our readers know what people in power are thinking. Erdoan is the elected president of Turkey and represents one of the most significant countries in the region. Publishing his argument does not in any way legitimise his repression or imply the Guardians endorsement of his actions.

The Guardian, along with the rest of the international media, has in its editorials and reporting of Turkey been relentless in holding Erdoan to account since the coup. In the last couple of months alone we have covered the dismantling of the judiciary, the opposition mobilising for a justice march, the hunger strikes, the prosecution and trials of journalists, and much more.

In recent months we have hosted numerous columns by international and Turkish writers condemning Erdoans autocratic tendencies. We have also published Amnesty Internationals opinion on the crisis in Turkey. Just days before the first anniversary of the attempted coup, we ran an op-ed both online and in print by the head of the opposition, Kemal Kldarolu. It was following this that the Turkish government approached us, arguing that the president should, for balance, be allowed to set out their thinking in the Guardian so readers could hear both sides as they marked the coup anniversary.

Clearly Erdoans crackdown in the last 12 months has been reprehensible but in the piece we published, he raises what is arguably a legitimate point about the numbers of Turks who came out to defend the system against the military. He also used his piece to issue a warning to western governments about the price of not supporting those Turks who stood against the coup and that in news terms justified its inclusion.

I substantially agree with the editors perspective. But not for all the same reasons. In this context a foreign leader with constant media attention and many platforms at command balance is not a weighty factor.

A major international media outlet like the Guardian must try to be a forum where those who wish to be informed can find a range of leading views, including views with which they may vehemently disagree.

Leading views include those of leaders of countries, howsoever they obtained, use or extend their power. What they put on the record under their own names, even the cant, becomes a reference point. The public record has a way of turning on public figures.

For ironists, here is Vladimir Putin in the New York Times in November 1999: Because we value our relations with the United States and care about Americans perception of us, I want to explain our actions in clear terms

And here is Putin in the Washington Post in February 2012: True democracy was not created overnight.

Let political leaders speak too much, not too little or at too few. Let history hear them and judge.

The gradually closing White House briefings, a part-shuttered state department, the erased sections of public agencies websites, the minimalism of sometimes incoherent tweets these are the political communications techniques that trouble me more than authoritarians exploiting abroad the free press that they lack the confidence to permit at home.

Readers can be trusted to weigh the words of a politician like Erdoan, with a record like his before and after the attempted coup, and to reach their own conclusions within the context of the coverage the Guardian and others continue to provide as Turkey and its neighbours convulse.

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A byline for Erdoan? Liberal megaphones for illiberal voices | Open ... - The Guardian