"In reality, there was never any golden age of liberalization under Erdoğan. The praise he attracted from Western elites as a ‘moderate’ and a ‘reformer’ was motivated above all by the AKP’s staunchly pro-American foreign policy and readiness to maintain good relations with Israel (the same criteria that earn the Saudi regime its ludicrous plaudits as a moderating force in the region). It also helped that NATO’s favourite Islamists had taken up the neoliberal agenda with gusto, privatizing state assets into the hands of AKP cronies—including Erdoğan’s close relatives."

Erdogan's cesspit