Sinking Into Tyranny

Peter Hitchens writes:

A major military power on the edge of Europe, which illegally occupies a neighbouring state’s territory, is sinking into tyranny.

Its increasingly megalomaniac leader has built himself a huge new palace and is systematically eliminating all opposition as he prepares to become an unchallengeable supreme ruler.

Journalists at the only remaining major opposition newspaper have been arrested on ridiculous charges.

They are among thousands of others scooped up in an enormous purge, flung into prison or removed from their jobs.

No, it’s not Russia, the economic cripple with a navy even more decrepit than ours, which you’re constantly being told to fear.

It is Turkey, still an unchallenged member of the supposedly pro-freedom alliance Nato.

Turkey, in actions very similar to the Russian seizure of Crimea, grabbed North Cyprus by force in 1974 and has been there ever since, still our welcome ally.

Turkey’s President Erdogan, a passionate Islamist who regards democracy as a means to an end, is at least as repressive as Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and has certainly locked up many more journalists.

So, if all those media who attack Mr Putin the whole time are really so worried about Russian repression, why do they say so much less about the ruthless extinction of freedom in our Nato ally? 

Could it be their anti-Russian outrage is phoney?