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Some of the most significant gains came in Europe where the bulk of Turkey’s 2,929,389-stong diaspora lives. Voting from abroad has only been possible since 2013 and the low turnout among diasporic citizens in 2014 suggests that politicians had not yet worked to mobilize them. In Holland, for example, where 8.6% of diasporic voters were registered at the time of the referendum, turnout was only 7.2% in 2014, but rose to 46.7% and 46.8% in November 1, 2015 and April 16, 2017, respectively. Though Erdoğan’s share of the vote in 2014 (78%) was higher than in either the AKP (69.7%) or the YES vote (70.9) received, the difference in turnouts makes comparison difficult. Moreover, Holland was part of a larger trend in 2017: of European countries with more than 10,000 diasporic voters only voters in Switzerland registered a decline in support for Erdoğan’s priorities.

a fractional number of voters who were willing to vote for the AKP over other parties and Erdoğan over other candidates were unwilling to give him sweeping powers.

Overall, the YES vote was 3.7 percentage points higher than the vote for the Justice and Development Party (AKP) in its November 2014 election. At the same time, the YES vote was 0.4 points lower than in the 2014 presidential election. Though Erdoğan achieved his goal of winning the election and securing additional powers, this feat may be pyrrhic: it was achieved with the help of an MHP leadership that has been shown to be out of touch with its own voters; it was achieved with diminished support in key regions like the Black Sea; it was achieved with increased support in southeast regions where tens of thousands of citizens did not reach the voting booth. President Erdoğan has successfully cobbled together a coalition of voters sizeable enough to win, but governing will be the greater challenge.

Following the constitutional referendum on July 25, Tunisia approved the new constitution, replacing what was considered one of the most progressive in the Arab world. The new document is missing many of the articles that had guaranteed the protection of rights and freedoms. It eliminates several constitutional commissions created under the 2014 constitution, such as the Human Rights Commission, which investigated human rights violations, and the Independent High Commission for Audiovisual Communication, the country’s media regulatory body.

“The 2014 constitution protected the freedom of the press, publication, and expression. However, the new constitution does not mention anything on the independence of the judicial system, which is one of the few things that could guarantee fair trials when violations against journalists or the press occur,” Mohamed Yassine Jelassi, president of the SNJT, told CPJ in a meeting. “And now, with the lack of independent constitutional bodies, we are going to start dealing again with a Ministry of Communications that takes its orders straight from authorities.”

Jelassi told CPJ that the new constitution further diminishes the protection of journalists and the freedom of publication by using vague language that could lead to the conviction of journalists on charges unrelated to journalism. Under the 2014 constitution, authorities were prohibited from interfering with any journalistic content, since it would violate the freedom of publication. By contrast, the new constitution protects the freedom of publication only if it does not harm “national security,” “public morals,” or “public health,” which are all defined by the law.

while Al-Jazeera has all its paperwork, licenses, and taxes in order, the office remains closed. As of early September, police were still heavily present in front of the bureau’s building

“Most private [and non-profit] news organizations are partially funded by foreign groups or governments,” said Khadhraoui. “Without these funds, it will be impossible to pay staff salaries, and therefore there won’t be any independent press sector in Tunisia.”

“We’ve been working in this society for 25 years and have done well in parliamentary elections in Minufiyya since 1987.” They agreed that anti-Brother rumors, money, the security services and police, and the strength of the old ruling party had factored into the result. Yusuf added that many army privates are recruited from Minufiyya.

The local councils in this country are nests of the old system, with corruption up to their knees. It’s time to cleanse these sites because this is where the day-to-day interactions with the people happen

more autocratic reconfiguration than political transition

The three separate entities are not coequal in power. As the presumed champions of the old order, the SCAF remains a leviathan with national support despite its deep unpopularity among activist networks. The SCAF miscalculates all the time but never in ways that endanger its tightening grip over the Brothers and the third forces.

the Brothers will likely fall prey to the SCAF’s ultimatums, as they clearly are not up to the task of wresting power from the military

If Mursi moves to favor the street, the generals could mobilize the state and anti-Brother discourse in the media to paralyze his presidency. Should Mursi instead cut a deal with the SCAF, he will enrage the protest movement, parts of which were involved in swinging the election his way. And, given the constitutional declaration, Mursi’s presidency has an asterisk beside it before it even begins. [5]

plenty of dubious activity probably happened away from polling stations. In all nine of Minufiyya’s electoral centers, the Muslim Brothers told the same story, lamenting the amount of money that had filtered into the local towns and villages. Many of the people allegedly distributing cash were local council representatives from the former ruling party. The Shafiq campaign also lodged complaints against the Brothers, but they were less convincing, such as the claim that a Brother had thrown a Molotov cocktail at a shopkeeper. At any rate, along with the high stakes, the aggressive campaign tactics on both sides are one reason why the runoff’s turnout eclipsed that of the first round (46 percent)

comparisons with the mighty Pakistani army are not misplaced. [6]

Since Mubarak’s ouster in Feburary 2011, the SCAF has called the Egyptian people to the polls five times. Three occasions have been particularly momentous: the March 2011 constitutional referendum, the wintertime parliamentary contests and now the presidential runoff. In each of these three instances, the generals have pulled a bait and switch, gutting the voting of meaning after it was over. Ten days after the referendum, which received 77 percent of the vote, the SCAF unilaterally decreed an additional 54 amendments that the public had never seen. Then the parliamentary elections helped to construct an elite arena that excluded the revolutionary forces from negotiations over a pacted transition. [7] The elections thus produced two parallel universes: one of the transition and one of revolution. [8] Key political forces, including the Brothers, kept the country stable while the SCAF reestablished the state’s control over the street. Finally, minutes after the presidential polls closed, the SCAF mooted the last exercise with its second constitutional annex.

what happens when an electoral exercise does not yield a predetermined result or an absurdly large margin of victory for the incumbent? Is it unequivocally about voter choice? Does it cease to be a spectacle? The experience of post-Mubarak Egypt to date suggests that choice and spectacle are not mutually exclusive. The outcomes have not been preordained; in the presidential race, the rulers’ preferred candidate lost. Yet the hubbub surrounding the elections has assisted in ingraining a supra-constitutional force into the political system while promoting an image of Egypt as polarized between two, and only two, views: the fuloul and the Brothers. In the medium term, at least, the SCAF will aim to play these poles off one another in monarchical fashion while simultaneously tamping down the politics of the street. This deleterious outcome -- rather than democratic empowerment -- is likely to be the legacy of Egypt’s first post-Mubarak presidential election.

34,000 domains were suddenly blocked inside Egypt. Because the original Batel website and its mirrors share the same IP, Egyptian security agencies appeared to have blocked this IP at the backbone. Websites are often hosted on a shared IP address, a single IP address that hosts multiple domain names. When Batel’s IP was blocked, every other website hosted at the same IP address also became unreachable. The collateral damage was enormous.

Dual-use technologies are being exported from Canadian firms to authoritarian states. These technologies can be used to either serve a legitimate purpose or one that violates human rights, depending on how they are configured. Sandvine’s continued presence in Egypt (the company has a team in-country, to maintain its technology) makes it difficult to imagine it is unaware of how its products are being used. While this dynamic may not be new, the potency of these technologies has increased. As the case in Egypt demonstrates, they have the capacity to stifle speech at an impressive scale.

included seven members of the Labor opposition, who astonishingly defied their party, which has just begun to soften its line on Brexit so as to accommodate increasing worries about the economy, employment and workers’ rights. These seven Labor members—Ronnie Campbell (age 74), Frank Field (75), Kate Hoey (71), Kelvin Hopkins (76), John Mann (57), Dennis Skinner (85) and Graham Stringer (67) have an average age of 72, which underlines a truth about the Brexit vote and the lurch to the right in Britain. They are the product of something profound going on among an older generation, even among some left-wingers. These people yearn for a past that does not exist and they do not give one solitary damn for the future of young people who will be forced to inherit the economic mess.

Naturally, there are older politicians on both sides of the House who warn about the dangers to democracy contained in the bill, one being the veteran Conservative Kenneth Clark, but at base the great divide in Britain is between generations.

question is how much damage the older generation does before being replaced by younger people who are generally more accepting of immigration, do not revere Britain’s “heroic” past, and are part of a connected world that views national borders as less and less important

MPs mutter about waiting for the right moment to oppose the government, but the truth is that the energy is all with the anti-democratic side, the one that keeps citing the People’s will but wants to remove power from the People’s representatives. The whole of the Executive is now focused on diminishing the role of MPs and taking the country out of the European Union, come what may, in 18 months’ time. There is literally nothing else of note being debated in Parliament. Brexit sits like a massive weather system over the United Kingdom, draining energy from its national life and politics.

Britain already has control of its borders, while the myths about Britain being overrun by foreigners are slowly being exposed by leaks. Two weeks ago, a leaked report showed that the vast majority of students (97 percent) and those who visit Britain on work and visitor visas return home when their time is up. It is shameful that this was not published before the referendum and probably gives as good a reading of May’s true political instincts as anything else. Her government is sitting on 50 separate Brexit impact studies, which it refuses to allow the public to see before Britain leaves the E.U.

Turkish Islamists are no longer politically uniform -- especially women and young people, whose waning support for the AKP was apparent during the April 2017 presidential referendum. To attract both sectors, Erdogan promised to lower the age at which a person can run for parliament and to grant lavish subsidies to housewives. These vows, however, appear to be insufficient to keep the people under his "spell."

Erdogan has long promised his supporters that he would cultivate a "pious generation", and invested heavily in religious Imam Hatip schools. His younger son, Bilal, even referred to the students attending these schools as "Erdogan's generation." Yet, it turns out that the children enrolled in these institutions have been failing miserably on all standard academic tests. Research conducted in March by 50 teachers from the Imam Hatip schools revealed that students are moving away from Islam in favor of a more general deism. The report generated a heated debate. While some secular groups doubt its findings, many feel vindicated by them.

Children from AKP-loyal families, as well as intellectuals and activists, are apparently questioning the touted morals of their elders. In a recent op-ed, hijabi-feminist Berrin Sonmez attacked what she called the "hypocritical piety" of Erdogan and the AKP elites. Sonmez and others have been criticizing Erdogan for his one-man rule, claiming that it runs counter to Islamic values and culture

As of 2017, there were 90,000 mosques in Turkey, led by government-employed imams. These mosques have experienced a notable decrease in attendance, particularly among young and middle-aged men. Some of those who continue to frequent the mosques are doing so less for religious reasons than for networking and job-seeking. In addition, more and more mosques have begun requesting hefty contributions from their congregants, while imams are coaxed by the state to collect donations after each sermon. One young imam who publicly complained about this practice -- he said that mosques "no longer serve people, but rather serve as a source of income for certain people" -- was promptly removed from his position.

Religious orders not associated with the Diyanet are beginning to attract more practitioners. While Diyanet and government officials make headlines for their lavish spending and luxurious lifestyles, outside religious orders are presenting a more righteous way of life

As Diyanet mosques function as pseudo-AKP headquarters across Turkey and abroad, the alternative religious orders pose a significant threat to Erdogan's standing and power

U.S. officials have sought to forcefully nudge Tunisia while avoiding a total rupture with a nation whose cooperation on counterterrorism is seen as a crucial element of U.S. strategy for North Africa. Tunisia, with a population of nearly 12 million, for its part values U.S. military support and needs America’s backing as it seeks a deal with the International Monetary Fund.

The Biden administration has adopted a more critical stance than its European allies, many of whom are focused on deterring migration via North Africa

U.S. officials believe their pressure may be having the effect of heading off even more problematic steps, like a more dramatic crackdown on the media and civil society groups.

What the opposition has learned in the last two years about communicating in ways that average people can understand will soon be apparent.

Egypt's judicial structures were built under nondemocratic systems; their credibility and independence rested in the past on the very uneven extent to which they could wall themselves off from autocratic rulers. But the challenge today comes from bodies (the presidency and the parliament) that have very serious democratic credentials. What institutional reconfiguration does that require? How can the judiciary be made to serve a democratic order without being the tool of any particular party (even a majority one)? These are questions that Egyptians should have discussed and decided, but instead they will have to make do with answers that that flow only from short-term political maneuverings.

With a parliament and a presidency possibly in the hands of like-minded political forces, the demand for robust oversight and accountability might be much greater than the supply

above all a failure of Egypt’s political class

the vast majority of Egyptian political forces opted to negotiate with the SCAF—much as they had under Mubarak and his predecessors—rather than find ways of working together, giving the ruling military council a virtual free hand to manipulate the process and sowing the seeds of future instability

For all its electoral prowess and mastery of retail politics, the Muslim Brotherhood has been spectacularly inept at nearly every other aspect of politics

Faced with periodic unrest and a recalcitrant bureaucracy the Brotherhood may finally be starting to realize that there is more to politics than elections, and that its ability to govern—at all if not effectively—requires a modicum of good will and political consent

Despite representing sizeable constituencies, the various secular, liberal and revolutionary groups that make up the opposition camp remain highly fractious and lack both a coherent political vision and a reliable political base on the ground. In lieu of a strategy, opposition forces continue to fall back on the over-used and increasingly ineffective tactics of protest and boycott. In addition, the opposition has failed to cultivate and mobilize what should have been a natural constituency: the highly energized but politically unsavvy youth movements that spawned the Jan. 25 uprising and that have remained a vanguard for change ever since

If the Brotherhood presides over a government that cannot govern, the NSF represents the equally absurd specter of an opposition that won’t oppose

In addition to crippling basic governance, Egypt’s chronic instability is steadily eroding basic law and order and battering its already shaky economy—all of which fuel the cycle of unrest

Despite high levels of enthusiasm in the early stages of the transition, voter apathy has increased steadily over the past two years. Each round of voting has witnessed successively lower voter turnout, culminating in December’s constitutional referendum in which just 32% of eligible voters turned out

Egyptians have no choice but to learn to deal with each other. Like it or not, Egyptians may have no choice but to engage in a genuine national dialogue aimed at reaching a broad-based consensus. Indeed, a credible process of consensus-building may be the only way to militate against the Brotherhood’s majoritarianism and the opposition’s spoilerism

The problem is that the Egyptian political class, and the protestors in Tahrir, was split on the question of elections and could never form a united boycott front to push SCAF to take the elections seriously (or push for a better transition plan). There was never a credible alternative presented to SCAF's transition plan, and Islamists in particular, by endorsing the flawed referendum process, made it impossible to call SCAF's incompetence. Over the summer it was because secular-Islamist arguments squandered the attention and energy of the political class. More recently it was was in part because of the MB (although the argument that liberals wanted to postpone elections because they were afraid of the MB does not hold: the MB will do well now or in three months' time), which saw in the elections a chance to consolidate their newfound political legitimacy as well as a better source of legitimacy then Tahrir with which, should it choose to, it can confront the SCAF (assuming it does well in the elections.)

Remember that in the last 20 years most Egyptian parliaments were seen as invalid, with the state preferring to gloss over the results of lawsuits contesting results (even by the Supreme Constitutional Court) rather than accept the invalidity of successive parliaments (and hence the laws they passed.) The next parliament may be on shaky legal ground, although this will probably (as under Mubarak) be ignored for convenience's sake. Except this parliament will produce the next constitution. 

The year ahead may be full of decisions regarding the elections, and the government and parties will probably want to ignore them, subverting the rule of law for stability's sake. All because they did not spend enough time thinking their decisions through.

the degradation of the state's institution, its ability to implement (or defend) the rule of law, and the very little legitimacy the state enjoys. In global surveys, I remember seeing Egypt ranked alongside Congo in terms of "legitimacy of the state".

Egyptians deserved better than the process they got today, and they should work to get the people who put them in this position out of power as soon as possible.

The military's relentless "war on terror" against the Muslim Brotherhood and the campaign of arrests against journalists and activists makes Egypt's future look even bleaker. The fight against the Muslim Brotherhood has been so far-reaching that virtually anyone who dissents from the current regime is at risk.

Egypt's new regime has proved all too willing to extend the terrorist label to any political opponent, whether it's youth leader Ahmed Maher or Al Jazeera journalist and occasional FP contributor Mohamed Fadel Fahmy (a Canadian citizen whose government has proven unable to help). A prominent pro-regime Egyptian journalist, Mostafa Bakry, even took to the airwaves last week to announce that the United States had a plan to assassinate Sisi -- which if completed, he warned, would cause Egyptians to "kill the Americans in the streets." And how can anyone take seriously the guarantees of rights in the new constitution when, barely a day after the results were announced, both the Salafi former presidential candidate Hazem Abu Ismail and liberal icon Amr Hamzawy face legal sanction for insulting judges -- the latter for a year-old tweet?

I'm not even sure that I would risk going to Egypt these days, given how easily anyone can be imprisoned if accused of Brotherhood sympathies (which happens to me, like many other Western and Egyptian analysts, roughly 50 million times a day in the ongoing performance art of the Egyptian Twittersphere).

maybe now there is space to contemplate releasing political prisoners and stopping the campaign of arrests and persecution of political opponents. Egyptian officials could demonstrate their willing subordination to the new constitution by turning away from the "war on terror," and Gen. Sisi could commit to not seeking political office and instead insist upon the political neutrality of the military and the state.

All signs currently point in the other direction, unfortunately. And that's why so few observers of Egypt see this week's referendum as anything other than the next step in the country's slow drift back into authoritarianism.

It recognizes the right to protection of personal information and limits government access to personal records.

The struggle between supporters of the old secular but authoritarian elite, who have held power since 1923, and the AK government is likely to continue despite the government’s narrow victory.

The Istanbul Stock Exchange 100 index rose 2.7 percent yesterday to a record, helped by the referendum results. Erdogan, 56, has plenty to brag about in the Turkish economy. “A Turkey that in 2002 was the 26th-largest economy in the world is now the 17th,” he said in a speech in Ankara on June 29. “Turkey is being talked about as an example for the world. We’re being watched with envy.” Under the AK Party, the government has tamed the inflation that plagued the country for decades. Since early 2004, consumer price increases have been no more than 13 percent. That’s a victory in Turkey, where the inflation rate touched 73 percent as recently as February 2002 and was even higher, on average, throughout the 1990s.

In March, for example, two journalists were arrested on charges that they had been in contact with military officers who were plotting to overthrow the government. Soon afterward, several thousand people marched down Istanbul’s main street protesting the arrests. They held placards reading “Free Press, Free Society,” and “Turkey Rates 138 in Press Freedom”—a reference to a recent ranking by Reporters Without Borders.The next day, Erdogan delivered a speech in Istanbul. It was an ideal moment for him to reassure panicky citizens and foreigners worried about press freedom in Turkey. Instead he denounced defenders of the arrested journalists, accusing them of launching a “systematic defamation campaign against Turkey” shaped by “evil-minded intentions and prejudices.”This demagogic language disturbs many Turks, including some who admire what Erdogan has achieved. “I have never been as positive and enthusiastic as I am now,” one of the country’s visionary business leaders, the octogenarian Ishak Alaton, a lifelong human rights campaigner, told me in his office overlooking the Bosphorus. But he also lamented that Erdogan has begun to govern with “the sense that he’s invulnerable and omnipotent and all-powerful.”

None of the dozens of people I met during a recent visit suggested that Turkey is in danger of slipping toward Islamist rule. Turkish society has defenses that most Arab societies lack: generations of experience with secularism and democracy, a growing middle class, a booming export economy, a still-lively press, and a strong civil society based in universities, labor unions, business associations, and civic, human rights, and environmental groups. The emerging conflict in Turkey is not over religion, but styles of power.

Partly because the EU has slammed its door in Turkey’s face, Erdogan’s government has been looking elsewhere for friends. This has helped draw Turkey away from half a century of subservience to Western foreign policy. Its first act of defiance came in 2003, when parliament voted against allowing American troops to invade Iraq from Turkish soil. Since then, Turkey has broken ranks with the West on two important issues. It favors negotiation with Iran and stronger pressure on Israel to change its policies in Gaza and the West Bank.

Banu Eligur, who has taught courses on political Islam at Brandeis University and is the author of The Mobilization of Political Islam in Turkey, believes that Erdogan’s government has “mobilized against the secular-democratic state” by naming pious Muslims to be “high-ranking civil servants in public administration” and by bullying the press, the judiciary, and universities. In fact, much of what Erdogan is doing seems popular. A recent opinion survey taken by an outside group found 62 percent of Turks in favor of Erdogan’s foreign policies. In another, when people were asked to rate their level of religious belief on a scale of one to ten, 71 percent rated themselves at seven or higher. In Turkey, Islam, Nationalism, and Modernity, the historian Carter Vaughn Findley observes that Erdogan’s government has surpassed the old secular establishment “both in recognizing the value of a religiously neutral government as a guarantee of pluralism and in espousing the reforms required to advance Turkey’s EU candidacy”

. The plot to destabilize the country, and the cases connected to it, are popularly known as “Ergenekon,” a reference to a mythic Turkic homeland and the name that plotters allegedly gave to their subversive plan. Mike King Many Turks greeted the opening of this case with both astonishment and jubilation. Investigating the military and its corrupt allies in the judiciary and bureaucracy was widely seen as a major step toward consolidating democracy. As the case has dragged on, however, it has taken on a different tinge. The authenticity of some incriminating documents has been challenged. Prosecutors have cast their net so widely that people have begun to wonder whether the true purpose of the case is to punish conspirators or to intimidate critics of the government. Since the government has been slowly replacing prosecutors with people it favors, there is suspicion that politics is once again intruding into the judiciary.

“I can no more believe these two guys were part of Ergenekon than I can believe Obama is part of the Ku Klux Klan,” said Hakan Altinay, a former director of the Open Society Foundation in Turkey, which is supported by George Soros. “It’s an important episode for left-liberal opinion, which has up to now been part of this government’s core support. It’s a tipping point.”If intimidation is a goal of this case, it may be working. “I wonder, is my phone tapped?” a young journalist told me at the end of an interview in Istanbul. “Should I censor myself?”

In Streets of Memory, a recent study of cultural attitudes in an Istanbul neighborhood that was a jumble of nationalities, Amy Mills writes:The price of belonging, in Turkey, comes at a cost—the forgetting of particular histories at the expense of the frequent retelling of others and the silencing of particular memories that cannot entirely be repressed. She finds troubling evidence of “polarization in thinking about national identities and minority histories.” People shy away from recalling, for example, the infamous pogrom in 1955 when rioters backed by police attacked homes and businesses owned by Greeks, Armenians, and Jews. But she also notes “an increasing curiosity and desire among Turkish citizens to learn more about places and pasts in Turkey.”

Attacking the government on sensitive issues like Kurdish rights, criticizing its handling of the Ergenekon case, and ridiculing Erdogan personally are not the only ways Turkish journalists can endanger themselves these days. There is another subject some fear to probe too deeply: the power of Fethullah Gulen, a shadowy but immensely influential Turkish religious leader. From a secluded estate in Pennsylvania, where he moved to escape possible prosecution for alleged antisecular remarks in the 1990s, Gulen directs a worldwide movement that is one of the most remarkable forces in modern Isla

This movement may be, as its sympathizers insist, a benign force that stabilizes Turkish life. But some Turks mistrust it, and their suspicion deepened when it turned out that one of the journalists arrested in March, Ahmet Sik, was about to publish a book about its rising influence called The Imam’s Army. Police confiscated advance copies. The text, which among other things alleges that Gulen sympathizers dominate the Turkish police, quickly appeared on the Internet, setting off what one blogger called “a frenzy of downloads.”

The mayor, Yilmaz Buyukersen, a former university rector, told me that while some other Turkish cities are not as open to pastimes like late-night drinking, he has no doubt that Eskishehir represents Turkey’s future. Like many Turks who are not part of the ruling party or the Gulen movement, though, he worries about what is happening in Ankara.“Reading the newspapers depresses me,” he said. “Everything is about accusing, arguing, fighting.”There is pressure on the press, on labor unions, on professional organizations, on NGOs, on universities. The justice system responds to the ruling party. All of this creates fear in people’s minds. But I’m still optimistic. The new generation is aware of everything, open to the world, and totally in favor of freedom and democracy. Journalists and others are resisting the pressure they’re under. There is absolutely no going back.

Erdogan’s party won 326 seats in the 550-member parliament. This was far short of the 367 that would have allowed him to push through whatever constitution he wished, and also shy of the 330 that would have allowed him to call a referendum on a draft of his own. So his triumph at the polls was mixed and his authority is not absolute.

The failure of Egypt – as perverse as it might sound – was another factor that strongly contributed to the Tunisian success. The events around Mohamed Morsi in June/July 2013 were a strong warning sign for Tunisia’s Islamists not to overplay their attempted influence on society. Clearly the Tunisian army does not hold similar political ambitions as the Egyptian military, but the scenario as in Egypt was also not fully plucked out of the air. It also brought secularists who opposed the strong majority of Islamists back to their senses. The implications of the message from Egypt of, “Who needs a constitution, and who needs dialogue, if one big demonstration and a referendum of 48 hours is enough to topple a full political system” (Radwan Masmoudi), also became very clear in Tunisia. The blatant failure of the Muslim Brothers in Egypt brought all the opponents in Tunis back to the table.

The enduring contribution of external players constituted a third factor that contributed to the NCA’s success. Particularly the influential UGTT trade union, not least with the inclusion of the Employers’ Association UTICA, the League of Human Rights LTDH, and the Bar Association of Lawyers in the “National Dialogue” roundtable meetings, who pushed for keeping talks about the 149 constitutional articles ongoing.

Reporter Zeynep Karatas said she was shocked when her story about police brutality during Women's Day demonstrations was replaced with an article about the inauguration of a new steel bridge.

Zaman’s circulation numbers fell from 600,000 to 18. This has been a bittersweet victory for Edib, who views the boycott by readers as a show of solidarity and passive resistance. Yet the newspaper he loves is being strangled before his eyes.Employees wonder why they are putting together a newspaper that is never going to print and is expected to be read by only 18 people. In spite of this, many of them are refusing to abandon ship.

Zaman's journalists are working under heavy police surveillance.“There must be at least 30 to 40 policemen inside our headquarters in Istanbul who are playing 'editor',”

 “I was giving an interview to a Singapore-based TV channel in a public park next to the building and a policeman approached me, took my name and told his superiors I was talking to foreign media,”

On Thursday, the new administration deleted the paper's digital archives, removing thousands of articles, including those of Haaretz reporter Louis Fishman.

"It is out of the question for either me or any of my colleagues to interfere in this process," Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu said.Edib disagrees. He said the deletion of Zaman’s archives was a political move to damage the paper's legacy and remove all traces of critical opinion from its records. “Every day there has been a new Zaman on the shelves, but I feel no part in it, nor do any of my colleagues, since we have nothing to do with the editorial line, story choice or layout,” he said.Those were his last words before our telephone conversation was interrupted by a police officer.

According to Aykan Erdemir, a former member of Turkish Parliament now serving as a senior fellow at the Washington-based Foundation for Defense of Democracies, the evolution of Erdogan's “disciplinary technologies” paints a startling picture of media control in Turkey.

“Erdogan's control over the media cannot be explained just by the fight between him and Fethullah Gulen. This is a bigger issue,” Gul said. He has concerns about how far Erdogan might go in order to silence opposition in the run-up to a referendum on the presidential system.  “Voices, that express discomfort (regarding Erdogan's presidential model), even within his own party, are being smeared and silenced.”

In this climate, Aykan said he wouldn’t be surprised if the remaining independent media outlets begin to “willingly” promote the virtues of Erdogan’s executive presidential system.

he feels a lack of solidarity from Turkish journalists and the international community

Two days after the newspaper takeover, the Turkish government was greeted in Brussels with billions in aid and renewed prospects of joining the EU for their help in resolving Europe’s migrant crisis, which critics say indicates the relative weakness of the EU's negotiating power.Edib and Akarcesme said they felt disappointed, if not betrayed, by the EU appeasing Turkey in exchange for cooperation in curbing Syrian refugees. Brussels is only validating Erdogan's image, power and popularity at home, they said.