Turkey has gone through some very tough times and we journalists have suffered in the hands of military dominated regimes in Turkey as our country lived through a period of being known in the West as a "military democracy." That was before 2002 when the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power with a landslide victory and has ended the military domination in Turkish politics as of 2007.

In the bad old days journalists used to be persecuted for expressing their views. This columnist and the journalist on his staff in the old Turkish Daily News frequently ended up at court for challenging the military dominated state. So it was customary that the diplomats of Western countries would turn up to observe the trials of journalists and intellectuals.

However, even then what they did was to "observe" and not to "interfere" in the court process.

Diplomats do not have a mission to interfere and affect court proceedings. They do not have the authority to put pressure on judges.

That is why President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had to warn the diplomats, who attended a court case in Istanbul for Cumhuriyet daily Editor-in-Chief Can Dündar and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gül, that they were stepping out of line and this cannot be tolerated. He was voicing the sentiments of millions of Turks who are fed up with diplomats who seem to be trying to dictate policies to Turkey.

What the diplomats did was to give outright support to the two journalists who are being tried on violating the country's national security. They had selfies taken, they made a great show of their support and they openly interfered in the judicial process. Would any country tolerate such an organized and outrageous behavior?

Turks believe that these diplomats acted according to the directives of their respective foreign ministries and not on their own initiatives which means this is a planned assault on Turkey.

What is sad is that they were not even monitoring or observing a human rights case or a country trial dealings with freedom of expression but they were at a trail where the defendants have been accused of jeopardizing national security playing into the hands of the enemies of the country by participating in a spy plot that uncovered Turkish covert operation to provide assistance to the Turkmens of Syria...

Would the U.S. allow Turkish diplomats to parade and voice support for the defendants of an al-Qaida case? Would the British or the Germans allow our diplomats to voice support for DAESH militants during court hearings? Would that be appropriate? Of course not.

So the foreign diplomats who extended their support to suspects at a trial in Turkey have clearly stepped out of line. They should have known better but they did not.

It seems some people in Turkey are telling these diplomats and their respective countries that the Turkish administration is fragile and on the way out. They say such support to Dündar and Erdem Gül will contribute to this effort. Yet, they should see that the administration of Erdoğan is here to stay with the popular support of the Turkish people. They should learn to live with Erdoğan and his purely "national" policies which are not dictated to Turks by outside powers.