Europe needs to focus on the right questions on FETÖ

"I have said that 90 percent of Turks agree on only two things: That there is a God and that FETÖ [the Fethullahist Terror Organization] is behind the coup," Oğuz Kaan Salıcı told me, while speaking about the meetings of the foreign affairs commission in the United States, right after the coup. 

Salıcı is an Istanbul parliamentarian from the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP). He is a member of the parliament's foreign affairs commission as well as the Turkey-U.S. friendship commission. 
He told me how awkward he felt when they saw the need to go to the United States to explain what happened.

Actually, what happened was pretty absurd; like Turkish warplanes bombing the Turkish parliament. The fact that it was absurd does not mean it was not real. That's why almost all foreign visitors who have started to come to Turkey are now taken to the bombed parliament building.

The Turks' resentment is not about the world's initial reaction. It was their resistance to accept the Turkish explanation that "a network led by an exiled cleric masterminded the coup."

I checked my messages on the night of the coup. I was messaging with a friend abroad and I saw that a little bit after midnight I wrote him that this was a silly coup attempt by the Gülenists. Looking back I do not recall what exactly made me say that at the time. 

But if you leave aside a tiny minority who thought this could have been orchestrated by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan himself (a claim which I discarded immediately that same night when I was asked about), it has taken a surprisingly short time even for the ardent opponents of Erdoğan and the ruling party to be convinced that Gülenists were behind the coup. 

Those unfamiliar with Turkey,...