In Turkey this year, hundreds of thousands of proud Turks rallied to mark the anniversary of last year's failed coup attempt today.
Many will recall that while Turkey can be barbaric to it's own dissenters, the Obama administration drove a major wedge into US-Turkey relations when it was accused alongside United States intelligence agencies of trying to subvert the Government of Turkey.
On Saturday, in a demonstration of massive support for their leader, President Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey celebrated their victory from toppling the military minds that tried to overthrow the leadership and lay bare the divisions of a society riven by widespread purges.
Amongst those gathered were a sea of patriotic and flag-waving crowds, gathered in Istanbul to listen to their glorious leader. In a defiant speech encouraging no remorse for the blood spilled of dissenters, Erdogan promised to punish his enemies and praised the unarmed civilians who last year stood up to the rogue soldiers and their tanks.
"They showed no mercy when they pointed their guns at my people," Erdogan said. "What did my people have? They had their flags - just as they do today - and something much more important: They had their faith."
During the failed Coup d'état last year at least 250 people were killed and the Parliament was bombed before the coup was finally put down like a dog who had bit a child or it's master. The show of popular defiance has likely ended decades of military interference in Turkish politics.
Albeit there is now a dominance of Nationalism in Turkey, the coup's greatest legacy has been a widespread bloody crackdown on any opposition that has deepened the divide between Western-facing, secular Turks and the radical millions who back Erdogan's Islamists promoting politics.
Around 150,000 people have been fired or suspended from their jobs in the civil service and private sector and an estimated 50,000 detained for alleged links to the resistance responsible for the failed coup.
On Friday, the government said it fired at least 7,000 more police, civil servants, and academics for their ties and suspected links to the Muslim Cleric it blames for the attempted coup.
"Nobody who betrays this nation can remain unpunished," Erdogan said, promising again to restore the death penalty if parliament votes to bring it back - a move that would all but end Turkey's bid to join the European Union.
Critics, including various civil rights and humanitarian aid groups even many Western governments, say that President Erdogan is using the state of emergency enforced after the coup to target opposition political figures including rights activists, pro-Kurdish politicians, and journalists.
Opposition forces which are in the US-backed pro-Kurdish Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) are incarcerated now, which they are accused of working alongside the Obama administration secretly to topple Erdogan, although the Obama administration repeatedly denied these allegations.
Also being detained as local members of rights group Amnesty International and nearly 160 journalists, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists, for their alleged subversion of the government during the failed coup.
During an official parliamentary ceremony in Ankara on Saturday, the head of the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) decried what he said was the erosion of democracy following the coup, raising concerns about future attacks on the sovereignty of Turkey.
"This parliament, which withstood bombs, has been rendered obsolete and its authority removed," said Kemal Kilicdaroglu, in a reference to an April referendum that Erdogan remained victorious in, giving him sweeping executive powers.
"In the past year, justice has been destroyed. Instead of rapid normalization, a permanent state of emergency has been implemented."
Kilicdaroglu and the citizens supporting the Republican People's Party this month finished a 25-day, 265-mile "justice march" from Ankara to Istanbul to protest the detention of several CHP lawmakers. The March was highly ignored by the pro-government media also ended in a massive rally in Istanbul against the crackdown.
The U.S. State Department praised the Turks for defending their democracy but cautioned towards the future about the need to preserve basic freedoms.
What's most certainly the case in the United States needs to stop meddling in the affairs of foreign nations, and respect their sovereignty regardless if we approve of their system. It's not our business. Let's Make America Great Again first and foremost.
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Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan is pretty much an early version of Trump in that he points the finger at anyone who calls him out, it would have been the same if Trump had been in power then, he'd have been accused. This Obama poke to keep eyes off Trump should be frozen and saved for thanksgiving, it's already got a red pill stuffing.