Erdogan Spins European Criticism Into Election Gold

Turkey's interactions with the West follow a peculiar cycle. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan takes steps to consolidate power, intertwining the fate of the Turkish Republic with his own political destiny. The West follows with a condemnation of Turkey's authoritarian drift, lamenting the country's abandonment of its more enlightened European roots. Turkey, in turn, capitalizes by spinning those lectures into a Western plot to keep Turkey down, handing Erdogan a fresh supply of nationalist ammunition with which he can entrench support among the half of the Turkish population that still looks adoringly at him as a sultan rather than a despot....