The foreign media's willingness to relay uncritically the government line on Turkey's obstreperous foreign policy ("not Islamist, just Ottomanist") the Ergenekon trial ("not persecution, just democratisation"), the proposed reforms to the Turkish constitution ("not Weimar, just Germany") and the general realities of the Turkish political system can only be described as collective journalistic malpractice. To read any major American or British newspaper is to come away persuaded that these political developments represent the triumph of daylight over the occult forces of "ultranationalism". Rarely is it stressed that the Ergenekon case makes no sense: these retrograde ultranationalists have supposedly been in bed with the Maoist PKK, the extreme-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party, the Islamist Hizbollah and Milli Görüs, the ultranationalist Turkish Revenge Brigades, the Turkish Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party and the Islamic Great East Raiders Front. In other words, if you put all the alleged conspirators in a room together, they'd promptly kill each other. Rarely is it mentioned that many of the defendants have been held in jail for months, sometimes more than a year, sometimes without medical care, sometimes until death and often without an indictment.

And how does Owen Matthews of Newsweek view these developments? "The army is beaten," he rejoices in an article headlined: "Why the US should hail the Islamists." The political logic, he writes, "should be simple. The arrest of a shadowy group of generals for allegedly plotting a bloody coup should be a victory for justice. The end of military meddling in politics should be a victory for democracy. And greater democracy should make a country more liberal and more pro-European." The Ergenekon arrests, he concludes, are "a vital step in Turkey's road to becoming a mature democracy. In the long term, the downfall of the army will make Turkey a stronger democracy and a more stable and mature partner. So the world would be wise to side with the AK party, not seek a return of the discredited generals." 

Let's ignore the obvious — do you see much that looks "liberal and pro-European" coming out of Turkey these days? The leaders of Hamas are naming their kids "Erdogan", not "Cameron" — and look at the slightly less obvious. The suppressed assumption, almost universal in the Western media, is that Turkey is divided into two camps, the anachronistic, godless, elitist generals who hunger for military coups just for the thrill of hearing the tank engines rumble, and the pious conservatives who are so forward-thinking and democratic they're practically channelling the spirit of Thomas Jefferson with one hand and building a bridge between East and West and straight into the 27th century with the other. 

It's not so. This simply ignores the lack of democratisation across the board in Turkey, not to mention roughly 80 per cent of the Turkish population, who belong to neither camp and just wish the government — whoever's controlling it these days — would stop stealing everything. 

The struggle is taking place among the ruling elites, not the people, and these ruling elites are pretty much all thieving scum, as they will be until parliamentary immunities are lifted, voters are given the chance to elect their own MPs and government service is seen as something other than a chance to enrich oneself through cronyism and corruption. The deeper struggle here is about power and the right to steal, not religion or the military. Those are just the excuses to manipulate public sentiment, which is particularly easy to do if the media goes along for the ride. 

In dry discussions in the Western media of the proposed reforms to the constitution, it is often mentioned approvingly that judges, in the new system, will be picked by the legislative branch. How very democratic. But it might be noted, though it never is, that it is the prime minister who picks the legislative branch — party leaders here have and exercise total, dictatorial control over the choice of MPs in their parties — and thus this reform would dangerously exacerbate the already authoritarian tendencies of the Turkish political system. To blame these authoritarian impulses on the military is to mistake the symptom for the cause: the cause is the general tendency of anyone in power in Turkey to abuse it, a systemic problem that the new constitution would exacerbate, not rectify. If the military is to be weakened, an even more rigorous separation of the remaining powers is necessary. Otherwise, the dictatorial tendencies of Turkish party leaders will run riot. This is obvious, and it's common sense — but somehow it's never mentioned.