How Turkey's Democracy Went From Insanity to 'Beyond Insanity' by Burak Bekdil  •  April 26, 2019 at 5:00 am         "Bad economic management, among others, brought him [Erdoğan] to power ... It may remove him power, too." -- International banker who asked not to be named. Ironically, the man who could recharge the machine called Erdoğan & Co. (or push it over the cliff) is the president's son-in-law, Berat Albayrak. In December 2015, Russia's defense ministry said it had proof that Erdoğan and his family were benefiting from the illegal smuggling of oil from Islamic State-held territory in Syria and Iraq. "Turkey is the main consumer of the oil stolen from its rightful owners, Syria and Iraq. So, guess when and where wonder boy Albayrak last came to the attention of the U.S. public? On April 16, when he met with President Donald Trump in Washington. A smiling Albayrak happily announced that Trump took a reasonable point of view regarding Turkey's planned purchase of the Russian-made S-400 surface-to-air missile system. He also said that there was agreement at his meetings in Washington to increase annual bilateral trade between the United States and Turkey to $75 billion. The man who could recharge the machine called Erdoğan & Co. (or push it over the cliff) is the president's son-in-law, Berat Albayrak. (Photo by Stringer/Getty Images) In the country he has ruled since 2002, 80% of the minorities cannot openly express themselves on social media, and a good 35% say they are subjected to hate speech on the same platform. His top ulama [Islamic scholars] once issued a fatwa that read: "... a father kissing his daughter with lust or caressing her with desire has no effect on the man's marriage". Between August 2014, when he was elected president of Turkey, and April 2016 he sued at least 1,845 people for insulting him, thereby winning the title of "the world's most insulted president". Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan once accused Western Europe of "intolerance that spreads like the plague," and described Belarus, which Western countries describe as a dictatorship, as "a country in which people with different roots live in peace". Continue Reading Article