President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan renewed focus on his treatment of the press by cancelling an award of honorary citizenship for former New York Times correspondent Stephen Kinzer. The honor was based on Kinzer’s lifetime work with regard to Turkey and his specific efforts to save mosaics threatened by flooding, thus preserving Turkey’s ancient heritage. The reason for the direct presidential intervention to cancel the honor is that, last January, Kinzer wrote a column in which he stated:
Once seen as a skilled modernizer, [Erdoğan] now sits in a 1,000-room palace denouncing the European Union, decreeing the arrest of journalists, and ranting against short skirts and birth control. Strong leaders can descend into this kind of political madness.
Some pundits, diplomats, analysts, journalists, businessmen, constitutional scholars, politicians, military officers, university professors, students, teachers, doctors, lawyers, engineers, human rights activists, accountants, environmentalists, municipal workers, neutral observers, and journalists might look at Erdoğan’s efforts to cancel Kizner’s award and believe that they are just more evidence that Erdoğan is abusive of the press. Let these critics eat baklava!
I have seen the light and it is clear that Erdoğan deserves our respect.
Sure, Erdoğan has transformed Turkey into the world’s largest prison for journalists but, are these journalists actually professional? Have they received and transmitted the wisdom of Erdoğan as is their duty? No, dear readers! They all have subversive agendas. They were all chapuls! They twisted the truth about that poor veiled woman who was set upon in Istanbul by an S&M gang, and then they changed all the closed circuit camera tapes to ensure that evidence disappeared. The journalists are lucky that Erdoğan shows them compassion and mercy.
And these complaints that Erdoğan has built a huge 1,150-room palace illegally on preserved land? No, dear readers. The president isn’t compensating for any personal shortage. He is the ruler of a great nation, and the successor of emperors, and needs space for his harem of male Disney extras. The simple fact is that the 1,150-room palace is but a mere gatehouse to the complex which Erdoğan deserves.
And the slander that Erdoğan is corrupt and has siphoned off millions, nay billions of dollars? The fact of the matter is that the president deserves such money! After all, if as Erdoğan implies, “L‘état, c’est moi,” then doesn’t that money represent just how the Turkish economy has boomed under Erdoğan? It is easy to be jealous of Erdoğan’s financial and investing prowess. He would never cross the lines between politics and business and use his position to enrich himself and his family. Nay! Erdoğan is a religious man, and he would never taint religion with corruption, nor will his hands become pregnant in the afterlife (that’s what Egemen Bağış, Erdoğan’s right hand man, is for)! Those who complain about Erdoğan’s vast wealth: they are mere Jews, interest rate lobbyists, Gülenists, Alevis, intellectuals, environmentalists, or chapuls! I admit, I once tried to plot against Erdoğan, nevermind that I was not in Washington when Erdoğan’s court journalists placed me in a meeting so secret no one attended. I admit, my telekinesis was no match for Erdoğan’s all-knowing perception of reality.
Erdoğan is also brilliant on the world stage. President Obama promised to “degrade and destroy” the Islamic State, but the American strategy has failed. No other world leaders have successfully fought the Islamic State. Erdoğan, however, was far more clever: he gained the Islamic State’s trust by arming and supporting them. He co-opted them from within.
Surely, the sultan will find his clothes. It is time that everyone realize the respect that Erdoğan so richly deserves. And, with this short blog post, let me be the first to give it to him. Three cheers, Mr. President. You are no buffoon; rather, you are God’s gift to Turkey, nay, the world!
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