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all institutions that allowed them to make it to the highest officer in the first place. Dictators use their international trips to bathe themselves in false legitimacy (by posing shaking hands with democratic leaders) and at the same time try to demoralize democrats back home.

FP: What were the reactions to that ad?

Javier El-Hage: Except for a few twitter messages by Erdogan supporters telling us not to insult the Turkish president, the response on Twitter, email and elsewhere was overwhelmingly positive. The majority of people in democracies, jointly with the thousands of Turkish citizens that have been persecuted by Erdogans regime, agree with us, so their retweets and words of support after seeing the campaign were very loud and significant for us.

FP: What do you think about President Trumps decision to visit, in the span of a very short time, three countries that are the biggest prisons for journalists (Egypt, China and Turkey)?

Javier El-Hage: Unfortunately, President Trump isnt an outlier on this. Except for exceptional international leaders like the Venezuelan president Romulo Betancourt in the 1960s (who broke diplomatic relations with Francos Spain, Trujillos Dominican Republic, Castros Cuba and others) this type of engagement with dictators (for reasons of national security, economic interest, or simply diplomatic kindness) has long been par of the course in the international relations of even the worlds longest and strongest democracies. We want to change this.

Although we think the downfall of severing diplomatic ties with dictators would be much less consequential than many intellectuals in democracies tend to believe, we do not necessarily advocate for this policy from the outset. However, it is key that democrats ask difficult questions to their dictatorial counterparts and afford respect for those persecuted under their regimes, since otherwise the anti-democratic world order that dictators tend to promote will come back to bite them anyway.

The Trump administration could lead on this front, but, after his visits with Erdogan and several Middle Eastern dictators, we are not holding our breaths. Still, we are fortunate to operate from a democratic country, so as part of this countrys free civil society we will continue to exercise our right to freedom of expression and call on democratic leaders to be tough on dictators, even as we know that this makes democratic leaders uncomfortable (perhaps more so than dictators, who are accustomed to simply crush dissent).

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Javier El-Hage about the message to Erdogan published in The Washington Times: Dictators should never be simply ... - Fairpress (blog)