Donnerstag, 07.01.2021 / 21:49 Uhr

Schadenfreude in der Türkei

Von
Thomas von der Osten-Sacken

In vielen Ländern dürften die gestrigen Bilder aus Washington für gute Stimmung gesorgt haben: Ob in Nordkorea, Teheran oder Moskau.

Aber nirgends feierte man wohl mit so viel Schadenfreude wie in der Türkei:

“America is burning,” reads a top trending hashtag in Turkey following the storming of the Capitol building by supporters of outgoing President Donald Trump — an expression not of alarm but rather of widespread schadenfreude. A large number of Turks feel deep animosity toward the United States. For many, America is getting its just desserts for the decades of humiliation it's inflicted on other weaker states. Images of Trump supporters in their outlandish outfits and the Statue of Liberty on life support making the rounds on social media were hailed with mockery and glee. “The curses of the children you slaughtered are yet to take effect,” read a typical tweet.

“Let it burn, let it burn, let it burn,” read another. (...)

Turkey’s parliament speaker Mustafa Sentop was not immune to the schadenfreude. He invited “all parties in the US to use moderation, common sense to overcome this domestic political crisis.” His concern proved to much for Samantha Power, the Barack Obama administration’s former ambassador to the United Nations. “Erdogan [and] leaders like [Vladimir] Putin [and] Xi [Jinping] have waited a long time to issue statements like this,” she tweeted. (...)

“For the Turkish government like other authoritarian regimes, it’s been a welcome chance for whataboutism,” observed Nicholas Danforth, a senior research fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy, an Athens-based think tank.

"For many other people who’ve watched decades of often arrogant, often hypocritical American lectures about democracy, it’s an understandable occasion for schadenfreude,” he told Al-Monitor. “But it’s also worth noting,” he added, “that some of the progressive voices and human rights NGOs that have been most critical of authoritarianism in Turkey have also been the most alarmed about the situation in the United States.”