More evidence that Turkey is the black sheep of NATO comes from a report that Turkey’s agents have doxxed a dissident journalist who writes for an American think tank.
Doxxing is the practice of publishing someone’s home address and other personal information in order to gin up harassment or violence against the person. In this case, a news outlet that is seen as a house outlet for President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s repressive regime has published a photo of Abdullah Bozkurt and his family’s address in Sweden after a Turkish official last year threatened that Turkish intelligence “will feed him to the fish or the sharks [because] traitors always get their punishment.”
Bozkurt is a “writing fellow” for the Middle East Forum, a U.S.-based think tank founded by conservative historian Daniel Pipes. Bozkurt was one of thousands of people who fled Turkey in the wake of a vicious government crackdown after a failed “coup” attempt against Erdogan in 2016. The crackdown imprisoned thousands, whether or not they were actually involved in the coup, merely for being critics of the regime as Bozkurt was.
As the ME Forum reported on Tuesday, “Bozkurt has written extensively on the regime’s internal crackdown; corruption; ties to Iran, Hizbullah, al-Qaeda and ISIS; attacks in Iraq and Syria; and export of Islamism. Just yesterday, he revealed the regime’s plans to provoke fellow NATO member Greece using clandestine operations. (For a list of his writings, please click here.)”
Erdogan, an Islamist autocrat, brooks no criticism and cannot abide a free press. Turkey reportedly imprisons more journalists than any other nation in the world, including communist China, refusing even to spare a 75-year-old woman described by Amnesty International as being “surprised at how a notebook in which she kept friends’ phone numbers could be taken as evidence to support accusations of ‘terrorism.’”
Despite this record and the recent doxxing, Bozkurt says he won’t stop his work. Alas, Erdogan’s record indicates that Bozkurt is at serious risk. And as neither a U.S. citizen nor U.S. resident, he is not automatically owed any direct U.S. protection. Nonetheless, the Biden administration ought to warn Erdogan that if any harm comes to Bozkurt, it will be yet another reason the West might consider treating Turkey as a pariah, notwithstanding Turkey’s membership in NATO.
“Such barbaric behavior is par for the course for Erdogan’s regime,” said Pipes on the ME Forum website. “It threatens Greece, blackmails Sweden and Finland, invades Syria, bombs Kurds, and exports radical Islam globally.” It also has played both sides with regard to Russia’s monstrous invasion of Ukraine.
Figuring out what to do with Erdogan, who moved Turkey from its longtime pro-Western stance, is a tricky diplomatic conundrum. The question is whether Turkey does more harm as a non-loyal member of NATO than it could do as a nation openly aligned with terrorist states and with Russia or China. Yet, by now, the State Department ought to know some pressure points that can keep Erdogan from at least some egregious behavior.
Journalists affiliated with respected U.S. organizations are the next closest thing to a U.S. citizen abroad. The U.S. government has an ethical obligation to speak up on their behalf and use diplomatic pressure to increase their safety. Bozkurt merits verbal support — before he ends up harmed or killed.
