Erdogan: strongman turned reformer IS THE grand reformer back? It depends whom you ask. Many among Turkey’s tiny Syrian Orthodox Christian community, or Syriacs, would say “yes”, in response to the cocktail of legislative and administrative reforms unveiled on September 30th by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the conservative prime minister. It includes a provision under which the state will return land belonging to Mor Gabriel, the world’s oldest Syriac monastery.Ask the country’s largest ethnic minority, the Kurds, and you might get a different response. Never mind that pupils at state-run schools will no longer need to declare every Monday morning that “I am a Turk” or that thousands of “Turkified” villages can reclaim their original names. In the words of Gulten Kisanak, co-chair of Peace and Democracy (BDP), Turkey’s biggest pro-Kurdish party, “this package does not respond to any of our expectations”.Turkey retains its title as the world’s biggest jailer of journalists. The Greek Orthodox seminary on the island of Halki remains shut, despite repeated pledges that it would soon reopen. The Alevis, Turkey’s largest and long-persecuted…
