Turkey's Stockholm syndrome: The 'fortune-ist'

There must be millions of column inches of credible material in print or on the web explaining why President/Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has been winning and winning and winning ? and will win again on June 7. With all due respect to all possible explanations [or any combination of explanations], academic or journalistic, this columnist feels obliged to introduce a neologism, the ?fortune-ist,? hoping to contribute to the already rich debate. 

Mr. Erdo?an?s popular appeal does not direct merely at the half-educated Turk who loves the president?s tough guy manners. It is not a miracle appeal to the Turk who simply wants his country be ruled by the advancement of Islam as a religion or ideology. 

Nor is it just the ?black Turk? who felt alienated by an oppressive etatist/elitist ideology that created millions of poor and outcast souls. The average Turk loves his newfound neo-Ottoman illusions of grandeur. He also loves the self-deceptive feeling of ?we are imperial again.? He is the man who lives in a desperate shanty home in Afyon, earns $200 a month, but is proud that the Sultan is building the world?s biggest airport in Istanbul. 

He is the man who takes pride in a statement from the military headquarters that says ?our howitzers [with 40 km firing range] shelled Syrian missile batteries [180 km away].? He is the man who believes that the ?new Turkey? has already built a ?100 percent Turkish? fighter jet. He is the man who believes that Mr. Erdo?an?s mighty Turkey will soon liberate Jerusalem and create an independent Palestinian state, after giving the ?Jooos? a good lesson. 

But there is another Turk. The ?fortune-ist.? 

The fortune-ist Turk is the defendant who stands in court on charges of plotting a coup d...