“World leaders hail Erdogan on local vote win,” the news headline ran, referring to the outcome of Turkey’s local elections on March 31. They laboriously ignored that President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist AKP party lost in all of Turkey’s three biggest cities – and for the first time in 25 years in Ankara and Istanbul. They were nevertheless able to find one element to hail regarding Turkey’s strongman. But, “world leaders?”
Here is the full list: Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, tripartite Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Chairman Milorad Dodik, former Bosniak member of the Presidency of Bosnia and Herzegovina Bakir Izetbegovic, Guinean President Alpha Conde, and Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama.
Those gentlemen are “world leaders,” according to Erdogan’s propaganda machinery.
In reality, with the exception of Qatar’s emir, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, and Venezuela’s troubled man, Nicolas Maduro, Erdogan is increasingly friendless.
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