Turkish clampdown on free press to trigger internal strife: Analyst
Press TV has interviewed William Jones, a member of the Executive Intelligence Review in Leesburg, to discuss Turkey’s clampdown on journalists and media.
What follows is a rough transcription of the interview.
Press TV: It seems that Ankara’s crackdown on free press continues and this is something that began before the election as well. What direction is this going in, in your opinion?
Jones: Well, obviously, it has always been a factor in at least the [Recep Tayyib] Erdogan’s policy by trying to suppress any of the opposition. But in this case, it is very specific. What has been revealed in Cumhuriyet has been the fact of Turkish support for the fighters in Syria, providing them with arms and others which effectively is supporting also the terrorists. They say that they are not the terrorists, but the arms are going to a lot of different groups, including those of ISIS. And this is a very dangerous, a very sensitive issue for them of course because they are pretending that they are fighting ISIS themselves and are part of this coalition, but facts on the ground say something else and it is those facts on the ground that the Turkish government would like to cover up through the arrest of this journalist and muzzling any free press in Turkey.
Press TV: This obviously creates internal cracks within the Turkish society of course. Can Turkey continue in this path when it has got Daesh and its Syria policy at one end and of course internal strife at the other?
Jones: Well, of course it could lead to chaos within Turkey; it could lead in fact to a form of civil war. But more importantly, judging from the Turkish behavior globally and the shoot down of the Russian jet, this could lead to a world war even before the internal situation deteriorates even more and this is of course even more dangerous. The thing we have to also understand is that there has been no serious effort from the part of the United States to correct Turkey on either of these things and of course the shoot down of the Russian jet hard to believe that it could not have been done without certain consent on the part of the United States. So they are also responsible as well as the Turkish government for what is happening to these journalists in Turkey at least by looking the other way.
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