"The decision of Turkish voters to give unprecedented new powers to the authoritarian president Recep Tayyip Erdogan and turn the country into an elected dictatorship is a disaster for the West," writes the well-known British journalist Owen Matthews in the British edition of The Daily Mail. According to the author, Erdogan "actually joined the Russian leader Vladimir Putin as a new authoritarian leader on the eastern border of Europe".

"This marked the epoch-making failure of the EU, which for many years took part in the negotiations aimed at pushing Turkey toward joining the European Union - and as a result watches the country slide back into the abyss of repression and authoritarianism," the journalist said..

"This is also a disaster for global stability," the author continues. - If Turkey fails to become a functioning democracy, then what can we hope for in the rest of the region? Just like Vladimir Putin in Russia, Erdogan took advantage of national security as a justification for tough measures not only against terrorists, but also against freedom of speech and political opponents, "reads the article.

The president of Turkey, according to Matthews, "maintains its popularity thanks to strict media control. And although he did not fully block out oxygen to radio stations and television, unlike his Russian friend and ally, Turkish courts successfully covered up a lot of opposition newspapers and TV channels ".

"The warnings about chaos and the promise to restore national grandeur are common themes of Erdogan and Putin," reads the article. However, the author writes, "while the imperial vision of Erdogan found a positive response from its internal audience, its aggressiveness made its collision with Europe inevitable". Although Turkey is still an official candidate for membership in the European Union, "Erdogan has achieved greater political popularity by quarreling with Brussels, rather than striving to push through the reforms necessary for membership" in the EU.

"Erdogan can regulate the flow of migrants according to his caprice - so he pinned Europe to the wall, and that's why the EU offered the Turks the possibility of visa-free entry to Europe in exchange for Turkey blocking migrants' attempts to cross the Aegean Sea," explains Matthews.

"European leaders - even the usually straightforward Merkel, who did not hesitate about Germany's economic damage due to the introduction of radical economic sanctions against Putin after the annexation of Crimea in 2014 - kept a shameful silence about human rights violations under Erdogan," writes the author..

In his opinion, "simply the threat of a new influx of migrants is too toxic for them politically, as well as the risk of provoking a new wave of anti-European sentiments on the continent - from France to Hungary - that can sink the entire EU".

"At one of his last rallies, Erdogan said that an impressive vote" for "would be" a lesson to the West, "writes Matthews in conclusion.. "This is indeed a very shameful lesson of how the West collectively failed to prevent the return of the most prosperous, democratic and pluralistic country of the Islamic world to despotism".

Translation: Inopressa.