Columnist veegt vloer aan met Erdogan

Those who deserve the label of statesman have both the guts for personal risk and an ability genuinely to empathise with popular suffering without being paralysed by it. Even now, it is possible to look back at Winston Churchill, that flawed and stubborn bulldog of a leader, and be struck afresh by his visceral courage during the Second World War: the immensity of what was at stake, his stomach for battle, his ability to look human agony in the eye and simultaneously infuse the public with fresh heart.

Beneath it all was the certainty in wartime that Churchill was powerfully, emotionally on the side of ordinary British people. I would not conclude, from last week’s events, that Erdogan is on the side of ordinary Turkish people, and clearly nor have the mourners for the dead of Soma. In terms of character, the stain is now spreading across the carpet.