Mesut Yılmaz was harshly criticized by Europeans in Brussels as the prime minister was turned down later on at the European summit in Luxemburg and Turkey lost precious years until the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) came to power in 2002, reviving the Turkish people's aspirations to make Turkey a full member of the European Union.

I know, some people in the Turkish media have not been happy with what they have been hearing from Western politicians and the international media after the process to close the AK Party through judicial means began. They never hide their unhappiness and openly take positions against these European politicians. When a media outlet, an international paper or a news magazine allocates space and a column to the issue, they are infuriated.

The latest outburst came when Newsweek International covered the case in Turkey with the title "Turkey's Judicial Coup D'état," almost all pundits who supported the chief prosecutor's motion to close the AK Party wrote articles chastising the points raised by Newsweek's authors.

As for the one who is always on the lookout for the re-emerging spirit of Orientalism, a misguided Western approach -- an approach I believe should stay as dead as a doornail -- I was irritated by the article. Orientalism is hidden in many Western intellectuals' minds and surfaces whenever a debate is sparked concerning non-Western countries. In one of the articles in Newsweek, two authors, both with a scholarly and diplomatic background, went so far as to call for an immediate intervention by the US to prevent Turkey from going astray.

I tried very hard to see their point, but I nevertheless didn't like the authors' tone and style in approaching the matter. They seem to forget how mature Turkey's democracy has become when it comes to handling and solving its own political problems without any direct outside help. I understand the authors still think the same way as Rudyard Kipling (1865-1936), an English poet who was called "imperialism's mouthpiece," thought in his time when he suggested that the "white man's burden" is to bring non-Western countries into civilization.

Well, we are already there and ready to take up problems and issues in our hands and solve them as any civilized society would do.

Following debates in the Turkish media on the international coverage of the closure process of the AK Party by judicial means, I came to realize that some of our pundits are even less equipped to understand than their Western counterparts what is happening in Turkey. Outside observers don't go after the AK Party critically and are lenient with secularists for sacrificing the democratic system. In the past, writers from Western countries, when the issue of secularism is raised in the context of secularists versus democrats in Turkey, usually tended to side with secularists. Foreign observers themselves always took up the issue of a "secret agenda" when the AK Party's name came into the debate.

This time around positions seem to have changed. Many foreign academics and political commentators strongly suggest that the "threat to secularism" in Turkey is a smokescreen by so-called secularists to undermine democratic reforms. Many believe, and rightly so, that Turkey's AK Party is a good example of the democratic participation of the masses for other Muslim countries to emulate, without any hidden agenda. In their articles and commentaries, outside observers have started to point their accusing fingers towards secularists.

This is the first time a breach of trust has emerged between our so-called secularists and the foreign observers, who always found a way to criticize religiously inclined politicians in Turkey and gave their full support to people who accuse them of being fundamentalists.

The threat of fundamentalism used successfully throughout the years in Turkey was a virtual one which had no reality to it whatsoever, but the majority of people in Turkey believed in its existence, and whenever that virtual threat was used, the people always cast their votes under the influence of propaganda. The change came in 2002, and 36 percent of the people went against the grain and voted for the AK Party. This tendency continued and even grew in 2007, when one in two people in Turkey cast their vote for the AK Party.

All of a sudden, foreign observers discovered the same reality: The threat against secularism in Turkey is a false one created to maintain power or to intervene in the political system unjustly.

If this tendency of giving support to democratic forces goes on for some time, the democratic forces of all tendencies in Turkey would certainly win in the end, regardless of the AK Party's destiny at the hands of the judiciary.