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Like other authoritarian leaders, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey has made it a point to show his people who’s boss. He has waged war on the Kurdish separatists, imprisoned critics, taken control of much of the media, cowed the military and convinced a preponderance of his people that he is indispensable.

Tough talk, aggressive action and grandiose swagger are his hallmarks.

But Mr. Erdogan does, it seem, have a vulnerability: a thin skin. He cannot abide criticism. The evidence is the nearly 2,000 cases that prosecutors have opened against Turks for insulting Mr. Erdogan since he was elected president 18 months ago.

On the list of offenders are cartoonists, journalists, academics, even children. In a rather bizarre example of this trend, a Turkish man recently filed a criminal complaint against his wife for insulting Mr. Erdogan. It is the first known instance where someone has been the subject of a complaint for maligning the president in the privacy of his or her own home, Reuters reported.

Under Turkish law, insulting the president is a crime punishable by up to four years in jail but the law has been invoked only rarely – until now. “I am unable to read the shameful insults made against our president. I start to blush,” said Bekir Bozdag, the justice minister and a member of Mr. Erdogan’s AK Party, said on Wednesday when answering questions before Parliament.

The idea that Mr. Erdogan is so delicate that he would be grievously wounded by any language is hard to believe, and really beside the point. He is a ruthless and intolerant ruler who has proven that he does not really believe in and cannot abide his country’s democratic system. Democracy requires that citizens are able to speak out when necessary against their leaders.

Free expression, including criticism, is essential for a free people. This much we know: Mr. Erdogan never would have made it through the 2016 American election campaign.