For example, Mort Abramowitz and Eric Edelman, both former U.S. ambassadors to Turkey and co-chairs of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s (BPC) Turkey Initiative, recently penned an op-ed for the Washington Post calling on Erdoğan to reform or resign. Both names echo back to the days of the 1997 military memorandum as they were involved in coup scenarios to push then Prime Minister Necmettin Erbakan of the Welfare Party to resign and end his coalition government. It was not the first article from the two. A previous Washington Post piece in 2014 by both and another lobbyist, Blaise Misztal, who is the director of National Security at the BPC, asked for regime change in Turkey and called on U.S. President Barack Obama’s administration to overthrow the Turkish government.

Then Michael Rubin, a former Pentagon official and another committed neocon, manifested his sympathy for a coup in Turkey last week. In an article that was originally published on the American Enterprise Institute’s website that then found a platform in Newsweek, Rubin openly encouraged the Turkish military to carry out an intervention, stating that the U.S. government would work with the new regime if that happens. Again, the piece was not the one and only hostile piece written by Rubin on Turkish politics. He tried to intimidate the Turkish public last summer before the last elections in another hysterical article, asking: “Is Turkey heading to partition?” Accusing Erdoğan of almost everything bad that happens in Turkey and the Middle East, he was quick to put the blame of the outlawed PKK’s ending the cease-fire on Erdoğan and to welcome the partition of Turkey.

I do not remember how many similar pieces we have read in the last three years, although the real intentions are declared explicitly and boldly in the abovementioned ones. The basic structure in all these articles is common, easy and catchy. First, demonize Erdoğan as much as possible and say he is a threat to democracy and U.S. interests; two, sort complicated issues like press freedoms, the Syrian civil war, constitutional debates and the war with the PKK in a row and do not forget to link all to Erdoğan, ignoring fact checking since the first obligation is not telling the truth; three, call on him to go or call on others – the public, military or the U.S. – to dispose of him; four, push the Turkish people to hate, anger and polarization; five, go back to square one and declare once again that he is a dictator or a despot, adding the results and reiterate that he is a great threat to democracy, Western values and U.S. interests.

If it were the first time the international media had carried out a smear campaign against a leader and a country, we would fall into the trap. Brazil, Iran, Egypt, India, Russia and China, the international mainstream media has deliberately and systematically targeted all who do not bow down to the hegemony and the greatness of the U.S. in a similar way for years.

But what is more troubling than that is that the mainstream media is often covertly and secretly engaged with U.S. government institutions like the CIA. Carl Bernstein, one of the reporters who covered the Watergate scandal, spent six months investigating the relationship between the CIA and the press and published his findings in Rolling Stone in 1977. Bernstein says the CIA’s dealings with the press began during the earliest stages of the Cold War. “American publishers, like so many other corporate and institutional leaders at the time, were willing to commit the resources of their companies to the struggle against ‘global Communism,’ ” he states. The CIA used many journalists, and those had the reputation of being among the best in the business.

Today, the biggest threat to U.S. interests is no longer communism. It is others, leaders like Erdoğan who puts a premium on his country’s independence, listens to the others of the world like Muslims, refugees or the poor and dares to take a stand against the deep elites of the U.S. or powerful lobbyists. The methods once used against communism are now being used against leaders like Erdoğan. As days pass, and they cannot get rid of him, they push harder and openly ask for regime change or a military coup. But it is not only about Erdoğan, it is about the future of a people, the Turkish people. It is about sovereignty and the independence of an aged country. Turkish people will not give up on him, as they are fully aware of what they are forced to do.