Turkey is a neighboring country. Erdogan has been busy dismantling what Kemal Ataturk built (don't go into how he built it), for more than a decade under the banner of religious freedom. But he is getting more and more resistance because seems a lot of young Turks read religious freedom as "right to be as secular as one wishes" and his government has a lot of corruption going on and the West really managed to sell the whole freedom of speech ideal across the world.
So he, Putin, and all known and unknown cronies will wrestle with a lot of insubordination for years to come. The millennial all around the world see government differently. Unlike the elites. So they just cannot grasp why stuff like Gezi happens.
Actually the concepts of "religious freedom" and "islam" don't have the same presumptions.
Islam contains aspects that aren't "religion" from the western point of view. Many muslims will say Shariah law is an essential part of the religion, handed down by god. Shariah does not guarantee religious freedom, nor is it compatible with most constitutions.
So without restricting religious freedom to a smaller "common core" of religious practice, or a bigger part of the muslim world lowering the importance of shariah, there is always a conflict between islam and democracy.
It seems that Erdogan reads religious freedom as "right to be as Islamic as one wishes." Of course, they're both valid outcomes of religious freedom, but it makes a big difference to those who use religious freedom as an excuse to move the country in a particular direction.
The governing party has been pretty careful in getting rid of this threat. They've imprisoned army's top layer without even real cases. The accused have been awaiting their trial for 5 or more years. I know it sounds ridiculous. It is tragic and hard to believe for someone who lives in a free state but this is the sad truth.
Look, the military interventions are far from ideal, but if I had a choice between a country with a military that steps in lightly when my country's secular ideals are threatened, and a country ruled by a strict authoritarian religious monoparty that strives to weaken democratic establishments, I know which one I'd choose.
As an outsider it seems to me like a choice^ between military backed Nationalism and Theocracy.
If one side uses god as their method of maintaining power and the other uses the army then neither can claim to be representing democracy, at least as a method of acquiring and maintaining political power.
Outside of a basic democratic paradigm, I'm not sure what choice really means. But, even inside modern democracies the concept slightly theoretical.
And yes, each one of these was a big setback for democracy. It was not my claim that military coups are good for democracy.
But which would you rather have, a big setback and then a chance to rebuild a democracy, or a takeover by a party bent on eliminating democracy and the multiparty system, and turning the country into a permanent, hereditary, sham "democracy" in the style of Syria?
Well there are some situations where you can't just choose between 2 options and hope everything will go on track once you make that choice. Otherwise the history will keep repeating itself - an intervention will be an 'aspirin cure' only, which will probably result with deeper consequences in the near future.
Well, besides the 140 characters, in a lot of cases it's also a foreign government controlled medium, with tons of paid "independent individuals" spurting propaganda against your country's interests to influence local policy in favor of this or that large interest group.
