Why is Turkey’s Erdogan being demonised in the West? (and by the so-called “alternative” media)

(Though she doesn’t get into the nitty-gritty detail of the deep-state politics going on in the Middle East right now in relation to the move to force regime change on Turkey, Soumaya does a good job of explaining how we only seem to support real dictators in the area while demonizing elected leaders trying to make their nations more democratic. It’s a good article.)

by Soumaya Ghannoushi, from Middle East Eye

Many masks have slipped since Turkey’s failed military coup last Friday, such that a great many on the right and the left alike, who never tire of eulogising about democracy and human rights, the masses, and people power have been exposed as little more than pseudo liberals and fake democrats.

Ironically, the same western “experts”, “analysts” and “commentators”, who had in the last Turkish elections gleefully predicted the overthrow of the AKP but were sorely disappointed after its victory, have committed an even more colossal error of judgment this time round.

Instead of expressing a clear principled stance against military coups and in favour of democracy and the popular will, they chose to side with the putschists as they bombed the Turkish parliament with F16s and gunned down peaceful protesters.

They cheerfully sought justification for the plot to topple a democratically elected government when it was under way, heaping scorn on the elected president instead of the generals and soldiers who conspired to overthrow him.

And when the coup was defeated, against all the odds, the tune turned to lamentations over democracy and its terrible plight under “arrogant” and “authoritarian” Erdogan and gloomy warnings of an inevitable slide to repression and tyranny.

A Sunday Times commentator even rebuked the coup plotters, which he referred to using such lofty descriptions as “the guardians of secularism” and “a force for progress”, even as “Modernity” itself, for staging its coup in July when “everyone is soporific with the heat”, suggesting that September would have yielded the desired outcome.

The same symphony of exoneration of the coup plotters and demonisation of Erdogan was played by left-wing media. Hours after the coup’s launch, the liberal, left-leaning Guardian ran a piece that bore the surreal title “Turkey was already undergoing a slow-motion coup – by Erdogan, not the army”.

[read more here]