In Turkey, the March 30 local elections just handed Prime Minister Erdogan a victory and a kind of mandate for his Putinesque rule. His party (AKP) won over 45% of the votes and most of the big cities except for staunchly secularist Izmir. Depending on how you parse it, this is either a predictable or astonishing outcome. The question is, does he think Turkey can stay in the Western alliance at all with the antidemocratic methods and policies he has deployed for shaping the country. Because, as things stand, the only alignment that will tolerate him emanates from the Kremlin - and its cozy club of corrupt rogue nations with rubber stamp plebiscites. Ankara is fast becoming a second Moscow, with the one crucial difference that Turkey has no friends abroad after a decade of Erdogan's leadership. Erdogan cannot bully other countries into friending him the way Putin can. Neither Europe nor the US will embrace his divisive leadership-for-life approach to politics. Turkey has nowhere to turn. It's either isolation or Putin.
Reported by Forbes.com 3 hours ago.
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