La Repubblica published an interview with the Nobel prize-winning Romanian writer of German origin Herta Müller. The famous writer touched upon the ongoing Ukrainian crisis. According to Herta Müller, the events unfolding in Ukraine are horrible.
"The things going on in Ukraine are terrible. The annexation of Crimea was outrageous, but this destabilization continues. Putin conducts an anti-Nazi campaign, but in fact his values are very close to that of the far-right," the author said.
According to the world-famous writer, Russia is once again trying to become a "great nation" and adopts a nationalist policy, which may be very dangerous. The most terrible thing is that there are people in Europe who sympathize with Putin, Herta Müller believes.
"I am enraged when people from East Germany say that they understand Putin. East Germany was a dictatorship and no one in their sane mind would like to live in a dictatorship. People flee from dictatorships. No one wants to live in this new Eurasian Empire led by Putin," the famous author said.
Hürriyet Daily News published an article by Murat Yetkin headlined "It’s all about Erdoğan’s way."
"Following Ekmeleddin İhsanoğlu, the candidate supported by a coalition of opposition parties on July 10, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also revealed his perspective on the Turkish presidency on July 11 in Istanbul during a pompous show, as there is less than a month left before the first round of elections on Aug. 10. The third candidate, Selahattin Demirtaş, supported by the Kurdish problem-focused HDP opposition, will speak on July 15, again in Istanbul," the article reads.
"Erdoğan once again underlined in his long speech (under the title “On the road to a new Turkey”) that he will be a president without any hesitation to use all of the executive powers in order to realize his targets for 2023, the 100th year of the Turkish Republic. It is not hard to guess that he would like to run for a second five-year term in 2019, if he is elected,' the author writes.
"And he is pretty sure that he is going to be elected in the first round. There are polls showing his rate for Aug. 10 between 52 and 55 percent; one of them raised the bar as high as 58 percent, which is the approval rate for constitutional amendments as of the 2010 referendum," the article reads.
According to the author, Erdoğan has maximized all of his capabilities as the head of the government, not only to secure a win in the first round of elections.
"It’s all about Erdoğan’s way. He already had nearly 45 percent of the votes in the local elections on March 30 of this year. Erdoğan is a master when it comes to consolidating his power base by using antagonism,' the article reads.
"The main antagonism in this campaign is likely to be the need for a stronger president with more executive powers and less check-and-balances for a stronger “new” Turkey, versus the current parliament-focused system with a separation of powers," the author writes.
"This is populism at its extremes and his supporters like that. If the opposition cannot find quick and effective measures to reverse the flow, Erdoğan is likely to be the strongman of Turkey, at a time when neither the U.S., EU nor NATO feel like having the luxury of questioning the quality of their ally when its borders are in flames," the author concludes.
