Turkey is not on the defence, but in the seat of accuser

Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu's back-to-back trips to Paris, Berlin and Brussels last week, followed by the trips to London, Davos and Zurich he sets out on today, have shed light on a new ground of encounter with the European Union. In an atmosphere in which the Paris attacks are on the agenda, we have witnessed dialogues in which Islam and violence, democracy, human rights, Islamophobia and multiculturalism were discussed at length and taken up anew.

Davutoğlu's visits were undoubtedly the best answer to the whining that Turkey is breaking away from the European Union. Indeed, we do not even call it criticism, we call it whining, and in fact we cannot say that this whining awaits an answer.

The whining and empty noise are part of the smear campaigns waged against Turkey, and they do not expect any argument by which they might be persuaded. On the contrary, they are calculating how to drown out every answer that might persuade them with yet louder noise.

Sadly, this noise is made by the politicians and media members whom the parallel structure feeds through its lobbying activities. That a report on press freedom in Turkey passed in the European Parliament during the hours when the Prime Minister was in Brussels is to a large extent the result of these efforts, this black propaganda. Of course, it is the European Parliament's own disgrace that it can fall under the influence of such distorting black propaganda.

That the parallel structure was able to incite a host of parliamentarians into action in a rush on Sunday, 14 December, at hours when, by European standards, everyone is normally spending their holiday in great peace, and provoke statements against Turkey, and to bring this black propaganda to the level of an effort that secured the passage of such a decision in the European Parliament, has not made them proud.

With what they do they show what their power amounts to, but with this show of force they lose, day by day, their legitimacy in the eyes of the Muslim Turkish people. That is, if they are concerned about the state into which this black propaganda against Turkey, carried out with himmet money collected from the people of Turkey, has brought them.

It appears that the parallel structure has exhausted all its expectations regarding Turkey and Muslim public opinion and has devoted all its calculation and investment to perception operations aimed at foreigners. They no longer care in the slightest how Muslims or Turks see them. They are trying to gain something by complaining about Turkey and Tayyip Erdoğan to foreigners. A strange calculation, a shameful calculation, a disgraceful calculation. The ultimate result of these calculations is harm and loss. A plain fact.

In the European cities he has visited, Davutoğlu is also giving speeches at think tanks. His speeches are followed with great interest by European public opinion. His speech at Friends of Europe in Brussels in particular was, in many respects, a veritable political manifesto on Turkey-Europe relations and on the Middle East and world politics. In the section of this speech where he described comparatively the roles Europe and Turkey played in the Middle East, especially during the Arab Spring process, he very well demonstrated that Turkey is by no means a party that should be on the defensive on democracy, but on the contrary enjoys the advantage of being a party that accuses, criticizes and calls for sincerity. Yes, he reminded that the Friends of Europe, who hastily appeared before the cameras and made statements against Turkey for a few journalists who were detained on 14 December merely to take their statements, on the charge of ruining other journalists' lives by fabricating false evidence and setting up conspiracies, had not shed a single drop of tears for Egypt, which massacred three thousand of its people in a single day and arbitrarily arrested hundreds of its journalists, and had not even been able to call those events a coup. Moreover, today those "European friends" are striving to normalize relations with Egypt's coup regime.

The European friends who try to keep Turkey under psychological pressure for supporting the Muslim Brotherhood are, because of these pressures, the ones who must feel ashamed and defend themselves. For that reason nobody is in a position to criticize or accuse Turkey; on the contrary, it is Turkey that is in a position to accuse everyone, owing to its principled and consistent stance in favor of democracy. Moreover, it is not true that Turkey stands exclusively with the Ikhwan. Turkey stands with legitimacy and democracy. When the democratic process worked and the anti-Ikhwan Nidaa Tounes party came to power in Tunisia, Turkey did not refrain from supporting that process either.

The authorities from which the parallel structure seeks help today against Turkey and against the AK Parti, whether EU countries or the US, have not a single word to say to Turkey on democracy, human rights and freedom of expression. Turkey holds a clear superiority over all of them in sincerity on democracy, especially in supporting democratic processes in the Middle East.

Turkey is no longer on the defensive on democracy and human rights as it used to be; it is in the seat of the accuser.