To whom and how does leadership appear as populism?

When something truly happens to Turkish democracy, who will weep after it? We said that the answer to this question is directly connected to Turkey's survival problem. We also know how skilled those who criticize Turkey on democracy are at bending and twisting all the criteria of democracy as they wish. After all, we have witnessed that they consider even one day of mourning too much after the rare democracies lost in the Islamic world. Mourning, indeed! In the face of the possibility of a coup in Turkey, or in the face of the de facto coup in Egypt, they all but put on bells and danced.

Sisi, the putschist who has slaughtered in the most radical way everything there is in our age in the name of democracy and human rights, was, moreover, collectively rewarded by all the leaders of the AB, who posed for pictures with him in the days when he slaughtered 9 innocent people by executing them with state power and skill. At the Summit held in Sharm el-Sheikh under Sisi's hosting, the European Union leaders met with the Arab League leaders and all together gave Sisi no warning about the innocent people he had just freshly slaughtered, or about the inhuman, heavy torture being suffered by the tens of thousands of people he holds in his dungeons without questioning or trial.

They did not even offer him a reminder in the name of human rights and democracy. On the contrary, sisi delivered to them a pithy oration "on how just the grounds that Egypt's particular conditions can offer for slaughtering humanity when necessary," and they listened as if spellbound and applauded.

One is tempted to wonder whether the ancient Egyptian tradition of dazzling through enchantment has come back to life and the AB leaders were taken in by the spells of Pharaoh's famous magicians. But I fear the situation was something beyond such enchantment. Perhaps we can speak of voluntary enchantment. And voluntariness may relate either to material or to ideological interest.

What the Europeans unfortunately deem fit for the Islamic world as rulers is only dictators like Sisi and their treatment of their peoples. That is why they do not even feel the need to criticize him either on democracy or on human rights. Therefore, although we are not very fond of saying it, the bitter truth we always experience and live is that it is futile to expect any good from Europe for developing our own democracy or the humane governance and quality of life that our people deserve. Our peoples sufficiently deserve to live humanely, and striving to provide this is our bounden duty.

In recent days an article was published in Britain's famous leftist liberal newspaper The Guardian on our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, co-signed by Bethan McKernan and Gökçe Saraçoğlu and titled "From Reformer to 'New Sultan': Erdoğan's Evolution into Populism." The article, which reads Erdoğan's story through a familiar reading that has become rote in neo-orientalist Europe, as populism and of course again as becoming a dictator and authoritarian, is in fact a typical example of precisely this Western hypocrisy.

Normally, given the shame of the image that all the AB leaders gave together with Sisi at that well-known time, the more conscientious circles of Europe would have been expected to refrain from making a criticism of Erdoğan in this respect for at least ten years. The newspaper in question is The Guardian, that is, Europe's leftist-liberal newspaper. Are we being too naive in still expecting a little conscience from the left-liberals?

The article refers to a scientific database and research that determine that Erdoğan's political story has evolved into populism. You look, and it is again The Guardian that built and feeds this database. And the narratives on which they base Erdoğan's story in Turkey are not at all surprising: names each of whom is known to have a personal story with and obsession about Erdoğan. Two names are apparent: Soner Çağaptay and Abdüllatif Şener; the others are not much mentioned, but it is very clear that they rely on a discourse fed by FETÖ, the CHP and the HDP.

To make an assessment of Erdoğan based on these people's statements, actually voiced out of a motive of hatred, enters a study from the start only into the opposition column, never into scientific or objective standing. Or is there some norm we do not know of, according to which in politics the opposition is more innocent, more valid or more objective than the government?

The story The Guardian tells summarizes in one stroke the change he has gone through, independent of all factors, ignoring the things that Erdoğan has lived through in his political course together with all of Turkey, ignoring the dealings of the insidious opposition, institutional or non-institutional, the successive coups and weathervane tricks they undertook.

"First he was a good democrat, a reformer, but then, all of a sudden, as he reached power he turned inward, became exclusionary, became authoritarian and a dictator, etc." In fact they lean on the comfort of selling the most ordinary reader a story of the kind he is accustomed to and demands, such as "At first he was good, then he went bad."

They also overlook how the leader they call a "dictator" travels from square to square in elections to explain himself to the people and to get votes from the people, and that if he does not get the votes he wants he has to constitutionally give his place to others immediately. If Erdoğan is doing populism, for instance, is the opposition in return calling for a lofty politics?

And what is it you call populism, for God's sake? What Erdoğan does to merge with his nation and, with his nation's support, carry his country somewhere is at least called leadership, is it not? And strong leadership is one of the strongest social capitals for a country. Thanks to this leadership Turkey today is able to come out of many calamities that affect the world as well with less damage, even with gains. If you take this leadership away, room will be opened for real dictators who are ungovernable or who will serve themselves and not their people. That is all they want.

In fact, right at this point, an article published recently in the New York Times seemed to tell what the real problem is. The article, published under the byline of Adam Taylor and titled "The free world is leaderless," identified how important leadership is in our day and that leaderlessness is increasingly one of the Western world's most important problems. There is a serious void that increasingly pushes the free world into the arms of right-wing populism and makes it more ungovernable, and that produces no solution to the issues of the world or to the issues of their own countries.

In contrast, thanks to Erdoğan's strong leadership, Turkey has not experienced this deficiency for years.

If this leadership looks like populism from over there, that is, if it does not look very pleasant, do they not show all their intentions about what they actually want to see in Turkey?