The Coup and the West
Illustration by Necmettin Asma - twitter.com/necmettinasma

Turkey has been increasingly heavily criticized by Western political institutions and media, largely using very biased and flippantly false information



On July 15, Turkey experienced one of the bloodiest nights in its recent history after a failed coup attempted by a small group within the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK). More than 240 civilians were killed and more than 2,000 people were wounded by the rebel army officers. Unlike the previous two coups in 1960 and 1980, a small faction in the Turkish army, known as the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ), who follow the teachings of cleric Fethullah Gülen, pulled off this coup attempt. Gülen, who has been living in Pennsylvania since 1999, is known for his strong ties to the CIA.The rebels targeted several state institutions, such as the Parliament building, police headquarters, intelligence service buildings, bridges, the Presidential Palace and most importantly civilians who were protesting against the coup in the streets. This coup aimed to destroy key state figures such as the president, prime minister, head of intelligence, ministers and members of Parliament. The previous two coups targeted administrative posts such as the government, Parliament and other institutions and in no way targeted civilians and tried to paralyze the state as a whole. This coup is by far more the most violent experienced in the country's history and targeted the government and wanted to kill the president and prime minister as well as some other key figures.TURKISH DEMOCRACY STRONGER THAN EVERDespite numerous problems on several issues, Turkey has a working democracy, a fair election system, clean general and local elections that are repeated every four and five years respectively with a considerable rate of voter attendance, an elected government, an elected president and a well-established judicial system. Further, a very large number of problematic laws and regulations, mainly related to human rights and democratic rights, have been weeded out from the Turkish legal system in the last 12 years, done at an accelerated speed to catch up with European Union laws, rules and regulations. Many laws that were used to suppress even very basic human rights were either changed to the benefit of the citizenry or completely abolished over the last 13 years by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party). The current laws and regulations can in no way be compared, in terms of democratic standards, with the laws and regulations that existed some 10 to 15 years ago. Any unbiased observer would agree with this situation. The current situation in Turkey is far better than the situation in Turkey in the early 2000s in terms of democratic standards, rule of law, freedom of speech, free media, and freedom in general in political activities, economy, and everyday life. This freedom has boosted the Turkish economy over the last 10 years and the Turkish economy has grown continuously, competing with China, India and other rapidly growing economies. This freedom in general is one of the main reasons for attracting more than $100 billion in foreign capital in investment in several sectors over the last few years.However, despite these developments and improvements in democratic standards and their implementation, Turkey has been increasingly heavily criticized by Western political institutions and media, largely using very biased and flippantly false information. Many of these critiques are baseless accusations for the army or police practices regarding PKK terrorism in the southeast of Turkey. The PKK has been committing the most violent crimes of terror since 1984 and is responsible for killing thousands of civilians in the southeast and elsewhere in Turkey. Plotting a bomb in a shopping center or bombing innocent people who are waiting for public buses in a busy street to go to work or home are just some of the tactics recently used. Unfortunately, this has increased considerably in the past year costing hundreds of innocent lives. Not surprisingly, despite all these terrorist activities and civilian casualties, the west in general has sheltered the extensions of this terrorist organization, The PKK, in Germany, France, the U.K., Austria, Belgium and Sweden. All the rhetoric about being against terrorism and condemning terrorist activities is nothing more than lips service and the Turkish people have been watching this carefully and recording all these countries and their support to terrorist organizations to their collective memory.Another very sinister terror organization buried itself under religious rhetoric and educational activities. It has become a very serious headache for Turkey over the last few years. They attempted a judicial assassination of four key ruling AK Party cabinet members, then later went after around 40 wealthy businessmen who have undertaken mega projects in Turkey worth tens of billions of dollars, then Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the prime minister at that time and the current president, at the hands of a few public prosecutors, judges and several police chiefs in December 2013. Then the government painfully realized that almost every state institution such as the judicial system, security forces, army, educational institutions, almost every public service and institution had been infiltrated by the group. This was the result of 40 years of very secretive, hypocritical and hideous activities of FETÖ, including stealing the questions for school placement examinations and prosecuting people seen as rivals. Despite all these sinister activities, plots, character assassinations, and cases of fraud, they somehow, managed to deceive people that they are indeed devout Muslims who have nothing to do with anything, including stealing exam questions, which is against Islam. They did not only pilfer exam questions but they stole top secret documents from army headquarters and the police archives, and took some classified information from different institutions including Turkey's famous technical and scientific research institute (TÜBİTAK) through their fanatic members in the related institutions.The very recent coup attempted was organized and conducted by FETÖ and the cost was hundreds of lives.This is something so severe that it would change the history of any country. Turkey has acted as any country that has been exposed to a military coup would. It first defended its democratically elected government and president and then the democratic institutions, with the help of its people armed with nothing but their bare hands.WESTERN HYPOCRISY STRONGER THAN EVERWestern governments and institutions first waited to see who would win the tussle then after realizing the elected government and the president had won the battle, they started sheepishly condemning the coup one by one.This is so embarrassing for Western governments, like the U.S. and EU, that are the champions of so-called Western values that include supporting elected governments, democratic institutions, freedom of speech and being against all sort of armed attempts, removing an elected government by force et cetera.Worse was to come. What the whole world saw, instead of a strong protest against the coup d'état and supporting democracy in Turkey, they, not surprisingly for the people who know what western governments are like, launched a media campaign against the Turkish president and government accusing them of mistreating the people who were involved in the coup. Western governments quickly forgot their so-called universal democratic values and very embarrassingly started defending the murderers. What happens to the right of the hundreds of the people who were killed by the murderers? The right to life is supposed to be above everything else and the people who got involved in this coup have been denied these lives after wounding another few thousand people. A normal healthy brain is expected to focus on those people who were lost or wounded and condemn the murderers first and should normally expect these murderers to be punished in the most severe way to establish law and order after such severe havoc. The Turkish people have been watching Western governments and media with little surprise and know this unashamed face very well since they have seen the very same hypocritical attitude many times before. The West, this time, has openly supported the coup and they have been caught red-handed. When they saw that the coup had failed, they immediately started shifting the attention from the criminals to so-called human rights, which has been an excellent instrument to put a pressure on anybody.Western media and the so-called democratic institutions should first concentrate on their own governments' undemocratic regulations and implementations and human rights violations when they happened in Paris, New York, Berlin, Hamburg, Brussels and London, before talking to Turkish authorities and teaching them how to treat a murderer. This is indeed a ridiculously bizarre situation. Turkish people have seen this film many times before and will not allow the West to play this drama once more and its black propaganda is not working any more.In any normal country, to establish law and order and protect the rights of innocent people, anybody involved in any wrongdoings and the people who helped him or her to fulfill these wrongdoings are also punished with the perpetrator. This is a universal rule of law and this is exactly what has been happening in Turkey since the failed coup.The judiciary has been scrupulously investigating every single case and everybody is 100 percent sure that Turkish courts are far better than Western courts. The whole world has seen the delivering of so-called justice many times in the trials of black people white policemen in the U.S. and trials of minorities in Germany and France.Therefore, the whole world, including the U.S., EU, the U.K. and other Western governments, and their propaganda machines such as CNN International, BBC, France 24, ZDF, and all print media, are expected to respect the efforts of reestablishing law and order in the country, and bringing the perpetrators to justice. Also, we invite these countries and their media, for once in their life, to side with the oppressed and speak up against the aggressors.