As the dust settles in the wake of Friday’s attempted military coup in Turkey, Western media and leaders have been nearly unanimous in condemning Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan for his autocratic crackdown on supposed dissidents.
Observers have pointed out that such condemnation looks like hypocrisy, as the same leaders have allied themselves with autocratic regimes elsewhere in the world and in the Middle East, in particular.
As Common Dreams reported, many leaders such as U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry and EU foreign policy head Federica Mogherini have emphatically warned Erdoğan to respect human rights in the wake of Friday’s failed coup.
Indeed, when Erdoğan announced on Sunday that he would reinstate the death penalty, the international outcry was swift. Mogherini emphasized that Turkey would jeopardize its chances of joining the EU if it did so: “No country can become an EU member state if it introduces the death penalty,” she said, according to the Guardian.
Syrian writer Rime Allaf pointed out the hypocrisy of Western leaders’ outrage on Facebook:
And other foreign policy commentators joined in:
It also didn’t escape notice that the U.S. didn’t publicly comment on the coup until it became clear that it had failed. As Middle East Eye editor-in-chief David Hearst wrote:
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If you want to know why Europe and the US are a busted flush in the Middle East, why they have lost all moral authority, indeed any authority at all, and why they are no longer the candle bearers of democratic change, look no further than the three hours of silence as they waited to see which way the wind was blowing in Istanbul and Ankara.
Meanwhile, others pointed out the United States’ own lack of democratic processes and unconstitutional detentions when it comes to so-called “suspected terrorists”:
