Two graduate students and two undergraduates recalled personally experiencing the July 15, 2016 coup attempt against Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government at a December 7, 2016, Georgetown University panel, before a youthful audience of about fifty. As crews from Turkey’s TRT Haber television network and Anadolu Agency (AA) filmed/recorded, the panelists praised the coup’s popular foiling as a democratic victory, irrespective of Erdogan’s dangerous Islamist policies.
Such willful blindness mirrors that of other American-educated Middle East studies scholars whose actions and pronouncements lend a veneer of legitimacy to Erdogan’s dictatorial policies, including mass purges and arrests of academics and teachers throughout Turkey. Erdogan’s personal spokesman is Ibrahim Kalin, a George Washington University Ph.D. who serves as a senior fellow at Georgetown’s Saudi-funded Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding. He joined Juan Cole of Michigan, Cemil Aydin of UNC Chapel Hill (Harvard Ph.D.) at an October 2016 conference in Istanbul even as innocent educators languished in prison or faced academic ruin.
Islamism certainly colored the experiences of the panel’s two graduate students, Harvard University Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations doctoral student Rushain Abbasi and his wife Safia Latif, who were in Istanbul during the attempted coup. Abbasi is a former member of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB)-affiliated Muslim Students Association and a former teacher at the Boston Islamic Seminary, an affiliate of another MB group, the Muslim American Society. His previous writing stereotypically attributed Islamist violence to the “histories of colonialism, imperialism, and economic exploitation that still plague the non-Western world,” maintaining, “[i]t is not the texts of Islam . . . that are in need of reform.”
Latif, a Boston University doctoral student in religious studies who earned an M.A. in Middle East studies from the University of Texas, was like-minded. She previously participated in a conference chaired by the notorious Islamist and UC-Berkeley lecturer Hatem Bazian at California’s Zaytuna College. Having witnessed Egyptians in 2013 overthrowing the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of President Mohamed Morsi, she despaired of the same thing happening in Turkey. “To see another democratically elected government with an ostensible Islamist president fall was almost too much to bear. My first reaction was a religious one; I took to the prayer mat and I began praying for the Turkish people.”
Latif blasted the “shameful Western reactions to the coup,” such as media reports of its popular support and then-presidential candidate Donald Trump tweeting that Turks are “taking their country back!” She complained that after the coup, a “lot of the media focus was on political grievances against Erdogan, him consolidating [sic] power, [and] his authoritarian, totalitarian, dictatorial nature,” all of which are, in fact, critical concerns under Erdogan’s Islamist rule. Instead, she blamed the West, claiming that it “doesn’t support democracy and freedom overseas, especially when Islamists are in power,” as “it seems to threaten the universality of the West and its political hegemony.”
Abbasi agreed: “If the coup was successful, we would be very happy” in America. In contrast to reporting on coup casualties, “all the headlines the next day I had seen were about freedom of speech and Erdogan. What are we talking about?” he asked, implying that free speech is trivial.
His comments about the American-based Turkish Muslim leader Fethullah Gülen, who is widely considered (albeit without any evidence) in Turkey and among the panelists as the coup instigator, were intriguing. Many of his friends became religious through the Gülen movement, but left after having “realized the cult nature of the group” and “the hidden motivation, essentially setting up a parallel state, which was displayed on that night” of the coup. The Gülen movement has a “nice veneer to it, but there is very kind of dark underside to a lot of it, in the same way that so many colonial regimes set up schools,” he said, referring to the movement’s worldwide private school network.
Unanimously expressing relief at the coup’s failure, the panelists showed a misplaced optimism in Turkey’s future under Erdogan, whose threats to democracy remained unmentioned. Latif gushed about seeing “Turks defeat the coup across the entire political and religious spectrum” without the slightest indication of dissent from or dissatisfaction with Erdogan. Likewise, after the coup Abbasi emailed to his friends worldwide that “we are essentially going out every night and partying with Turks” amid a “huge sense of camaraderie and brotherhood.” Social media reports demonstrated to him that “every single person was inspired that night in other Muslim countries,” although it’s unclear whether a supposed victory for liberty or for Erdogan’s Islamism was the inspiration.
The Georgetown panel, sponsored by the university’s Turkish student organization, marked another chapter in the hagiographic apologetics for Erdogan’s Islamism prevalent in American Middle East studies. Hypercritical of the West’s established democracies but indifferent about majority-Muslim countries like Turkey rapidly losing any remaining vestiges of democracy, the panelists exposed their pious confidence in Islamism. They were oblivious to why some informed observers, including Middle East Forum President Daniel Pipes, rooted for the coup.
Abbasi described his visit to a mosque the morning following the rebellion. The “salawat, the prayers of the prophet, were being sent out from all the mosques, and it was a very inspiring feeling.” Yet any attempt to combine the panelists’ faith with freedom in countries like Turkey, Egypt, and Abbasi’s native Pakistan will require critical self-reflection, not disdain for the West and its freedoms.
Andrew E. Harrod is a freelance researcher and writer who holds a Ph.D. from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and a J.D. from George Washington University Law School. He is a fellow with the Lawfare Project. Follow him on Twitter at @AEHarrod. This essay was sponsored by Campus Watch, a project of the Middle East Forum, and is cross-posted from The American Thinker.

ibrahim itace muhammed says
stability for cotinuous economic growth is more important for turks than so-called freedom rhetorics preached in the west.filthy christian west do not want see progress in any muslim nation.that is why they instigate instability in muslim nations.turkey should take note of that and avoid too much romance with these people of evil and treachery led by evil jewish masters.
PSD says
Ibraham, I can see your mouth frothing from way over here. Wassup?
Westman says
Frankly, Ibrahim, progress is ultimately based in intelligence and industry. The Japanese, without oil or natural resources, elegantly proved what a cooperative society can accomplish.
The ME has great resources and oil, yet the lack of cooperation and infighting among Muslims over religion and tribal affiliation, a completely nonproductive enterprise, coupled with a general malaise, a disinterest in secular education, the removal of women as intellectual contributors, and the huge waste of time for prayers, has left it uncompetitive and rife with ignorance.
Islam destroyed the Renaissance of the East, killing it by 1100 AD. The West had nothing to do with that intellectual demise. It predated the Ottoman Empire and the sacking of Constantinople in 1453.
It appears, Ibrahim, that the Japanese are superior to “the best of peoples”, and they did it all since 1945.
Stop whining; become something.
gravenimage says
Good post, Westman.
JawsV says
Hey Muslim – it’s Islam that’s filthy and evil! Islam – a plague on the planet. Islam should be abolished for the benefit of humanity. Bravo/a Judaism and Christianity, the two Abrahamic faiths!
SK says
Honestly? U.S. foreign policy prefers stable, Muslim allies in the region. Your average Conservative Christian American doesn’t care about making Turkey or something unstable. It makes no sense.
lagitane says
Freedom is the key to economic growth. Had it not been for western Christendom, you would still be rubbing sticks together to keep warm. Virtuallly all the conveniences you value today were created by western males who were free of Islam to innovate. The only invention your males can claim is gay hurling. You are still too primitive to charge an entrance fee. Murder is filthy and of Satan.
Westman says
Yes, I remember teaching talented students who were excited about a “revolution”, a coup in their homeland; who suddenly found themselves called home, education ended, and sent to die on the battlefields of the Iran-Iraq War.
No good will come of Erdogan’s “revolution”.
Veka Fitzfrancis says
There are no better fools, for cultural jihad, than useful ones. American universities are thick with these islamo-supremists.
Angemon says
Odd – I keep hearing the exact opposite: that “the West” only supports “islamists”. Those positions can’t both be right…
JawsV says
Catholic Georgetown has gone down the PC tubes.
billybob says
“[The West] doesn’t support democracy and freedom overseas, especially when Islamists are in power.”
Gee – I wonder why. Could it be that the first things Islamists will do when in power is impliment Sharia? Then it’s all over for democracy.
common sense says
We tried implementing democracy and freedom, that pissed them off. Maybe these students and snob ass Muslims don’t quite remember the bombings of voter polls in Iraq following the fall of Saddam. Still playing yugi oh card games.
Midway says
They’re infesting the colleges & bringing their ideology with them refusing to assimilate.
gravenimage says
Georgetown University panel applauds Erdogan’s coup and the Islamization of Turkey
………………………….
Georgetown is one of the worst–infested with Muslims, and riddled with dhimmitude.