A lot of us Turks here are totally at the opposite side of Erdogan but come on. That type of blunt propaganda is really not needed. We need to stand on the side of democracy, and oppose this party in democratic ways. I'm truely ashamed how several UK/US media outlets stood on the side of the coup faction.
Good luck democratically opposing someone who, after gaining power through democracy, begins stifling dissent in the media and the judiciary. If the Turkish people don't understand that this man is trying to create the machinery for autocracy, then they can't be saved.
The trouble is this encourages a tendency to assume that whoever is has executive power today is the legitimate representative of democracy so long as they once won an election.
Now from what little I know of Turkey, I think Erdogan does have a good democratic case behind him, since he seem popular and won a recent election. But it also really does count against him if he roughshod of the machinery (such as a free press) that makes democracy work.
I don't know enough about Turkey to balance those two things, so I am not willing to stand on any side in this dispute.
The trend is not rising though. He's twice failed to break the numbers required to legally change the constitution, and now even his majority is not very solid. He survives on a steady diet of fairly suspicious shocks, like this coup attempt and a string of terrorist attacks that conveniently targeted his enemies rather than his friends.
He's also played the old "Putin switcheroo" between premiership and presidency to work around constitutional limits, which is why he's trying to strengthen his new role.
The democratic case for Erdogan is the same as for Putin, really; and that says it all.
> A lot of us Turks here are totally at the opposite side of Erdogan .... I'm truely ashamed how several UK/US media outlets stood on the side of the coup faction.
You answered your own question. Outside Turkey no one really knows/understands the coup faction.
So they figure anything must be better than what is there now. (Which may or may not actually be true.)
The coup faction is an imam (Fethullah Gulen) living in Pennsylvania who is the follower of an early 20th century religious Sheik called (Said-i Nursi). He has tens of thousands of policemen, soldiers,officers as followers. They wanted to implement rule of Sharia. Erdogan is also another religious-minded politician who had similar goals. Till 2012 they were good buddies and have the same audience, conservative, religious poor people. It's kind of their post-2012 battle for power in all parts of state, economy. Fethullah is weak in public support so avoids politics, but organized very well. They are like a spy organization. I don't know anything similar in Western politics. They were about to be expelled in 2 weeks from Army posts, but made a last ditch effort to grasp power and topple Erdogan.
