But in light of an impending "dictatorship of the Erdogan clique," says Tarhan, she wants to campaign for a different and more modern Turkey. "In this country, religious leaders are now declaring women who have been raped to be partially culpable, because they showed too much cleavage. They see women as nothing but baby-making machines. Do you really think that I can just sit there and do nothing?"Until recently, Emine Ulker Tarhan was a Supreme Court justice in Ankara. But now she has discarded her robes and is challenging Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the Turkish leadership. The prime minister, she alleges, is establishing a surveillance state and is “becoming more dictatorial every day."
There are days on which Emine Ulker Tarhan isn’t constantly worried about bugs and wire taps. They are days when Tarhan, tall and blonde with metal-rimmed glasses, gets her 1964 VW Beetle out of the garage and puts on a CD by Zulfu Livaneli, the Turkish balladeer whose voice reminds her of “clear air."
And then are days, she says, when she feels like a character in George Orwell’s tale of a surveillance state, “1984." That’s when she sees the thought police on patrol, and when she is afraid to say the wrong word in her own home.
Today is one of those days. It’s a Monday morning in the embassy district of the Turkish capital Ankara, and Tarhan, wearing a black blazer over a blue blouse, is sitting in a friend’s law office, where the two are exchanging knowing glances. Could this office be bugged, too, they wonder? “Our country’s government is becoming more and more dictatorial every day," says Tarhan. “This isn’t paranoia."
echr
,
Fethullah Gülen
,
freedom
,
German
,
journalists
,
news
,
Political
,
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
,
Turkey
