The Turkish Presidet Recep Tayyip Erdogan makes political theater out of a 6-year-old girl, who tries to stand strong, while crying.



From "Erdogan Tells a Weeping Girl, 6, She’d Receive Honors if Martyred" (NYT):

She wore a maroon beret and a Turkish flag in her pocket, and had made a soldier’s salute during Mr. Erdogan’s televised speech, when he spotted her in the audience.

The maroon berets are fighting in Afrin, a Syrian enclave the Turks are trying to take from the Kurds, and when the president noticed the girl’s beret, he called her to the stage.

“Look, look, look, what is there? Girl, what are you doing there?” he called out. She held her salute, but her face began to crumple in anxiety as she was lifted out of the crowd to meet the president. “Here are our maroon berets. Look, we have our own maroon berets,” Mr. Erdogan said as she crossed the stage....

Mr. Erdogan’s remarks to the girl on Saturday drew criticism from some on social media, who felt that the talk of martyrdom was inappropriate for a child so young.

Who knows if she was crying out of fear of martyrdom, the strangeness of being plucked out of a crowd and displayed on stage, or overwhelming awe at meeting her glorious leader? Who knows if the Turkish people in general disapproved of this melodramatic theater?

In America, the President imagines his own readiness to accept martyrdom. He would — in his dream — run to take bullets to save schoolchildren. That's not happening right now, so there's nothing to be afraid of, only pride and glory to bask in. Might not the little 6-year-old girl — like the American President — feel exalted in this vision of martyrdom?