President of Turkey Tayyip Erdogan

Turkey’s Populists See an Unlikely Ally

Source: New York Times

By Mustafa Akyol

ISTANBUL — The election of Donald J. Trump as the next president of the United States came as an unpleasant shock to much of the world. But in Turkey, my country, it was applauded — not by everyone, for sure, but by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his enthusiastic supporters.

As it became clear that the Republican candidate had achieved an upset, pro-government Turkish columnists, some of whom are also members of Parliament, began cheering it as a blow to the American establishment. Mr. Trump won, they emphasized, despite the opposition of the American news media, Wall Street, the C.I.A. and Hollywood. Hillary Clinton’s defeat, they declared, was the defeat of “the globalist fascists.”

The first official statement from the government came from Bekir Bozdag, the justice minister and an Erdogan confidant. “Nobody can win elections with newspaper headlines, polls, televisions,” Mr. Bozdag said. “The American people said no to their will being manipulated.”

Then came the response from Mr. Erdogan himself. He congratulated the American president-elect in a phone conversation that went “unbelievably well,” the news media here reported. He also invited Mr. Trump to visit Turkey “as soon as possible.” Then Mr. Erdogan criticized the protests in the United States over the election as the work of the same global cabal that he says is constantly trying to topple him.

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