Until end of the cold war, nationalism in Turkey was hand in hand with the west (actually more than that: their legs were touching under the table; they were heart to heart ) .
What happened so that saliva from nationalists becomes this acidic when the word ´west´ being mentioned?
Lets look at the recent events a bit closely..
The ruling power managed quite well in 1960 and 1970s, with the left and in 1980s and 1990s with the Kurds. Although it took two coup d´etats to deal with the left and then a continues military regime to deal with the Kurds they were kind of successful and they always had the western support (specially about the struggle with the left..West has always been sympathetic to Kurds but being a Nato ally, being an only reliable power in the middle east etc prevented the west from condemming anything harshly)
But with the start of 2000s, a new enemy emerged..Turkey´s conservatives!!
Their number was greater than the previous enemies..And their new party AKP was not looking like the other Islamic parties such as RP (Erbakan´s party which was removed from the power by the military)..If it was, it would be easier ´to deal with them´ for the ruling class..
But this AKP was talking about more freedom, they changed many undemocratic passages in the constitution to comply with the Copenhagen criteria (EU criteria), they did support ´annan plan about the Cyprus to solve the dead lock created by the state, they even gave signals that they could talk about this ´so´ called Armenian genocide..
And the ruling class aka secular traditionalists, unelected rulers got caught unprepared with AKP´s election success..
In 1990s, because of the absence of civil vision, the ruling elite started to develop its own defense mechanism. Many think-thanks were established and they answered the question ´who is going to be the next enemy?´..
The answer was ´islamists´.
When they anticipated that the western pressure would increase about the human rights and Kurdish issue, they revived the ´sevr phobia´!! This was the time also they started to mention the name of Soros and how Turkish intellects got paid by them..
The justice system got along with the unelected rulers and most of them, once retired,got active roles in some orginisations such as ´Ataturkcu dusunce dernegi´ which organised those huge demonstrations against the islamists a few years earlier..(now some of the active members are in the court with ergenekon case)
Although the anti western sentiments started after the cold war because of the need of an enemy for the ruling class nationalists, in order to keep hanging on the power, AKP´s success and relatively good relations with the western countries was the last straw for them..That is why these anti western rethorics became a de facto chewing gum for some of the people in Turkey..
That was the time when they started to critisize every step AKP started to do for EU..
Generals started to talk about almost anything, weekly in the media..
The ruling class started to look ways to close AKP by accusing them with their ´secret agenda´-sheria-, CHP, the party of ruling class, which is supposed to be center -left, instead of critisizing government for doing less about the democracy, they started to accuse the government for doing too much for the democracy and the EU..
It was these very recent years when they started to belittle the global values and the words such as democracy, intellects, freedom, peace with huge passion. These were the times when Orhan Pamuk subjected to all those attacks, all those belittlement , calling him betrayer etc..Killing priest Santoro, bombing the daily paper Cumhuriyet, torturing and killing 3 Christians in Malatya, killing Hrant Dink etc.. They were all ´deep state´ related..
Anyway..coming back to the topic
These people and its accessories hate the west.
They associate the west with their support for Kurdish people and islamists and ultimately losing the power.
So anything mentioned to them and those things are associated with the west, I mean anything, such as ´human rights´, such as ´democracy´, such as ´freedom´, will create ´red to bull´ effect and they will try to find any way to discredit them.
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