Destination 'great Muslim democracy': Time to get off the train

Every new day adds fresh validation to the adage that "Turkey is fun unless you have to live in it." In one recent speech, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan described himself as an enemy of interest rates "because interest rates are a means of abuse." 

Where did Mr. Erdoğan say that? At a ceremony at the Presidential Palace for the signing of $1.1 billion in foreign financing for two city hospitals that will be built in Turkey. Mind you, Mr. Erdoğan is the president of a country where the government pays $19 billion in interest rates every year.

Not all Turkish news is amusing. Indeed, it is often gloomy, unless one is captivated by Mr. Erdoğan's neo-Ottoman illusions of grandeur than by Turkey's ballooning democratic deficit that can no longer be hidden anywhere in our galaxy. 

That deficit and its perpetual growth should in no way surprise anyone who knows how consistent Mr. Erdoğan can be. In the early years of his political career, he famously said that "democracy is like a train; you get off once you have reached your destination." If you think Mr. Erdoğan said that a long time ago so it is now out of date, take the president's March 2016 statement that, "For us, these phrases have absolutely no value any longer." How much more honest a politician could be?

So it is "shocking" for this columnist that Turkey and the world were "shocked" with the Oct. 31 detention warrants for 15 executives, columnists and journalists from the Cumhuriyet newspaper on charges of "terrorist activity." The "Turkey is fun" dictum is quite visible in the prosecutor's allegations: The journalists are not members of either the Fethullahist Terror Organization (FETÖ) or the outlawed Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), but they have committed acts of terror on...