Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, appears as the sole person in his country’s politics who knows what he wants. Erdogan seeks absolute power and acts against all obstacles to his ambitions. He is eager to identify new “enemies” whose purported conspiracies he believes justify his harsh rule.

Through the end of October and most of November, Erdogan has carried out a spree of enhanced repressive measures. This latest onslaught reflects his current fixation on a referendum, proposed for spring 2017, to ratify or reject constitutional amendments that would provide a dramatic increase in his presidential powers.