Ece Temelkuran: Is Erdogan's control of Turkey under threat?
The Interview
BBC
4.3 • 537 Ratings
🗓️ 24 February 2023
⏱️ 23 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Stephen Sackur speaks to Ece Temelkuran, a prominent exiled Turkish writer and critic of President Erdogan. Erdogan has dominated Turkey for two decades but after the terrible earthquakes, with economic and political problems mounting and an election imminent, could his opponents finally bring him down?
(Photo: Ece Temelkuran in the Hardtalk studio)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Hard Talk on the BBC World Service with me, Stephen Sacka. |
| 0:04.2 | My guest today has, for the last seven years, reluctantly lived in self-imposed exile. |
| 0:10.6 | Back in 2016, Echete de Melkoran, one of Turkey's most prominent and controversial journalists, |
| 0:17.6 | decided she had to leave her home country because she no longer felt free and |
| 0:22.9 | safe to criticise the government. Since then, President Erdogan has tightened his grip on power, |
| 0:29.7 | strengthening the powers of the executive presidency and continuing to repress dissent. There are |
| 0:36.3 | signs, though, that his two-decade-long grip on Turkish politics |
| 0:40.1 | may be weakening. And now, of course, Turkey is grappling with a long-term humanitarian disaster |
| 0:47.4 | caused by February's twin earthquakes in the south of the country. All of this with a presidential |
| 0:53.1 | election scheduled for May, |
| 0:55.4 | does Turkey's opposition movement have what it takes to end the era of Erdogan? Well, Echete Temulkaran |
| 1:02.7 | joins me now. Welcome to Hard Talk. Thank you, Stephen. Your country is grappling with |
| 1:10.0 | a humanitarian crisis of unimaginable scale the death toll has now |
| 1:14.1 | past well past 40,000 millions are displaced and the government is saying that this is a time for |
| 1:21.1 | national unity and solidarity for you as a very prominent critic of President Erdogan, |
| 1:29.5 | can you at least share that sentiment? |
| 1:32.7 | Well, there is a national unity. Unfortunately, the government is out of this unity. |
| 1:37.9 | They have to connect with people right now, because most of the people, |
| 1:42.5 | well, I can say millions of people, |
| 1:45.5 | are feeling like they are trying to help the victims of the earthquake |
| 1:50.4 | despite the government, despite the regime's strong hand |
| 1:55.8 | who is trying to do everything on their own. |
... |
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