Since he was sworn in as Turkey's president in 2014, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has slowly tightened his grip on freedom of expression, turning Turkey, once held up as an exemplar of secular democracy in the Muslim world, to the world’s biggest prison for journalists.
Editors of national newspapers now face life sentences for working “against the state”. People have been arrested for Facebook posts criticising the government and last week over 4,400 public servants were sacked in an act branded by critics as a witchhunt targeting the political opposition.
Meanwhile Erdoğan has maintained cordial diplomatic relations with global leaders including Donald Trump, Theresa May and Vladimir Putin, and hopes to extend his constitutional powers with a referendum on 16 April.