Spurning Erdogan’s Vision, Turks Leave in Droves, Draining Money and Talent

Source:New York Times Date:04Jan2019

How authoritarianism kills Turkey’s future: More than a quarter of a million Turks emigrated in 2017, according to the Turkish Institute of Statistics, an increase of 42 percent over 2016, when nearly 178,000 citizens left the country.

Turkey has seen waves of students and teachers leave before, but this exodus looks like a more permanent reordering of the society and threatens to set Turkey back decades, said Ibrahim Sirkeci, director of transnational studies at Regent’s University in London, and other analysts.

“The brain drain is real,” Mr. Sirkeci said.