Another overbearing commentator was Joachim Hagopian of Global Research. An
ex-army officer by trade, the faul mouthed US psychologist rushed in to offer his
shameslessly defamatory and patronizing appraisal of the situation: “Typically what do
political leaders (like Erdoğan!) do when they’re struggling to stay in power? They
launch a fake coup or war, sabre rattling (note the crude innuendo about ‘Eastern
despots’) against internal or external threats to rally a jingoistic nationalism amongst its
malleable, flag-waving citizenry (that are the Turkish people!)”
Bewildered as we were by the covers of Time, Newsweek, The Economist and Der
Spiegel magazines and tried to fanthom the journalistic skill that actually obscured the
bloody attempt and managed to disseminate the ill feeling that is an inevitable collary
to measures to be taken in a state of emergency, Western leaders like Obama and Kerry
added “injury to insult” by silently waiting “for hours in hopes that Erdogan would be
dethroned before finally conceding, issuing public statements backing the Erdogan
government, seemingly only after they had no other choice.”
“Whoever has ears, let them hear” had said Jesus Christ, aleyhis selam, in Matthew
11:16-24. He was referring to conceited Pharisees whom he graciously likened to children
who can indeed be very self-centered and typically consider themselves the center of
the universe. Their complaints are often about fictive events - yet, fiction can breed
great malice.
We the living in this part of the World maintain our hope that these modern Times of
Trouble will too pass. The men of decency and conscience will once again appear on the
Western horizon. That they will mourn when they hear our dirge, and rejoice when they
hear our pipes. Alas, the World needs people whose ears are clogged neither with
orientalist, nor Islamophobic fiction.
Alev Alatlı, Dr. h.c.
July 25, 2016
Beykoz, Turkey
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