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The Turkish government, however, has suggested that the protests are part of a plot against the country, involving foreign governments and financial institutions.
Earlier this month, Hurriyet quoted Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan as hinting that Israel was “delighted” with the protests.
The Jerusalem Post. “Turkey probes ‘foreign links’ to anti-gov’t protests.” June 23, 2013.
Remember: it is never the narcissist.
Not so surprisingly, I am not the only one latched on to this theme in observation (and, for the record, I am not in touch with anyone else on it either)!
Trust me.
🙂
“Paranoia and police power are never a good combination, but Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan appears to have readily embraced both,” writes blogger Jonathan Turley (June 17, 2013) on his eponymous blog (“When Paranoia and Police Power Meet: Erdogan Denounces International Media Conspiracy”).
This next represents the ranting — not really, in fact not at all — of a most diplomatic Turkish journalist, Mustafa Akyol:
Foreign leaders and the news media can help by advising Erdogan to focus on reconciliation and restraint. But they should do this sensitively, so as not to further provoke the quintessential Turkish paranoia that there is always a “foreign finger” behind every social turmoil.
“A Quiet Bit of Advice.” The New York Times, June 5, 2013.
When the powerful work “behind the curtain” — in the land o’ winks ‘n’ nods, in the smoke filled back rooms, in the quiet words delivered with a handshake and a palm full of money, that sort of thing — the opacity of that governance inspires speculation in the public mind: anything is possible and just about anything slipped into the information stream — the media — may be treated as credible for being so difficult to challenge.
Effects may not be reserved for the public mind only: the same deceptive and disingenuous practices involving mind and mouth may have effects on their practitioners: if they know themselves to have “bent and twisted it some” on the way through their minds and out of their mouths, who else might be duplicitous?
I’ve coined the term “Facsimile Bipolar Political Sociopathy (FBPS)” (see “Coins and Terms”) to approach the common autocrat’s messianic ambitions, delusions of grandeur, the want of pleasing mirrors (start with the morning’s newspaper or mention on television), the rejection of criticism, and the abject fear of unknown conspiring others.
The uninformed mind cannot wrestle with itself in regard to FBPS, but the informed one may, for the hazy confrontation with imaginary demons devolves back toward a more clear and clarifying confrontation with one’s self.
The cool headed Mustafa Akyol warms again to the theme a little later in the month of June with an article in Al-Monitor:
Erdogan, wondering why his whole nation does not love him unequivocally for all the great things he has done, soon found the real culprit behind the anger in streets: “foreign powers” and their collaborators such as “the interest (loan) lobby.” The more extensively the foreign media, such as CNN International andThe Economist, covered the protests and criticized the government’s heavy-handed response, the more Erdogan and his followers became convinced about an ill-intended “foreign hand” behind the masses.
How long before Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan sees himself accurately mirrored in the dissenting domestic press and the comparatively disinterested professional journalism of Big Media worldwide?
If he is lucky, he will see himself more as he really is, his people more as they truly are and aspire to be, and the world itself more as it really is and may become.
Of course, an adjustment like that — one moving from self-aggrandizement and the mania for control to produce it (most often by pandering and slandering through time itself) toward greater appreciation and respect for others plus accommodation, compassion, fairness, and inclusion — may require exceptional courage and insight.
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