Let's not fool ourselves, Turkey looks depressing

All I'm going to do is list a number of recent developments reported in the Turkish media over the past couple of days. I'll start with the most recent case demonstrating the state that Turkey is in:

•Sports Minister Çağatay Kılıç strongly warned Galatasaray, one of Turkey's most prominent football clubs, to review its congress decision on March 25 to not expel two of its leading former players from club membership. The Galatasaray delegates ended the membership of a number of former government officials under investigation or have arrest warrants against them because of their links with the network of U.S.-resident Islamist preacher Fethullah Gülen, who is accused of masterminding the July 15, 2016 military coup attempt. But delegates also voted to keep two of their former national team players, Hakan Şükür and Arif Erdem, who are openly Gülen admirers. The Galatasaray delegates said the two were part of the club brand, regardless of their political stance, which has put the club into the government's target.

•After the German foreign intelligence agency BND, a British parliamentary commission has also stated that the Turkish government could not convince it that Gülen's secret network was behind the July 2016 coup attempt. What's more, while the U.S. authorities are not directly saying that Gülenists were not behind the coup, they are claiming that the Turkish government has not been able to convince them. 

•Turkey is an important member of the Western defense alliance NATO and proudly says it has the second biggest army in the alliance. However, the U.S. - the most powerful NATO member and also Turkey's major military ally - has chosen a Syrian Kurdish militant group, the People's Protection Units (YPG), in the fight against the Islamic...