The Turkish government, led by autocratic leader President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has banned the entry of over 100,000 foreigners from 150 countries, including journalists and academics, just because they have expressed views critical of the government.
This is a violation of the most basic principle of democracy – freedom of expression. This is also a violation of the criteria for Turkey’s membership in NATO and the Council of Europe, which is based on the “shared values of democracy, human rights and the rule of law.”
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Turkey spies on the social media accounts of every would-be visitor, when they apply for a visa and buy a plane ticket to Turkey. Foreigners have been also arrested and jailed in Turkey for any “anti-Erdogan” and “anti-Turkey” comments and for “likes”, before they were deported. Hence the risk.
Just like its big brother Turkey, Azerbaijan also spies on the social media accounts of every potential visitor, for any “anti-Azerbaijan”, “anti-Aliyev” and “pro-Armenia” comments and for mere “likes”, in order to ban them from entering, to deport them or even to arrest them. Even after Artsakh fell to Azerbaijan, Azerbaijan continues to maintain its silly “persona non grata” list of people who visited Artsakh, when it was independent. There are thousands of people who are now permanently banned from visiting Azerbaijan on this list, and even the dead have not been removed from that list.
This is the typical mindset and modus operandi of dictatorships like them.
You should forget that the writer, Abdullah Bozkurt, is a member of the Gulenist terror network or FETÖ. If you learn history, you would know that Gulenists/FETÖ and the CIA are responsible for putting Erdogan into power to begin with. But Gulenist hypocrites are rightfully despised by all people. Heck i have a HDP voting environmental activist friend who hates Gulenists. No one likes Gulenists in Turkey. Seculars, Religious, Christians, Kurds, Alevis, Armenians, Assyrians, Jews, Arabs, Refugees are united against Gulenist terrorist scumbags.
Gulenist hypocrites like Abdullah Bozkurt and Enes “the CIA spy” Kanter just want to re-infilitrate all institutions like the army, judiciary and academia. No one will let that happen!
Btw Harut, you know that Gulenists assasinated Dink.