The whole attitude of the West towards Turkey reeks of hypocrisy, no one stops for a second to think about why it is that an emerging country with a laicist constitution and a society that as a whole was on a path of modernisation in the Western sense, has dug its heels in and made a 180° turn to elect Erdogan and switch from a parliamentary to a presidential governmental system.
Since the Ankara treaty of 1963 Turkish governments have negotiated for literal decades with European leaders for accession to the EEC, the EC and finally the EU. While every other potential member state was almost immediately fast tracked Turkey was time after time kept on the sidelines looking on with no access to the single market. Even countries with no intention to enter the EU whatsoever like Norway or Switzerland have a lot more favourable terms of trade with the rest of Europe. Why?
Remember in France 2007 one of the first things Sarkozy did after winning the election was to immediately and unilaterally announce that Turkey's accessions negotiations will be put on hold until further notice. Next thing you see is Erdogan wins the election in 2007 with close to 50% of the vote when five years ago he barely got around 30%. Even small time local and regional politicians in Germany have been for years talking about how, once elected, they'll put pressure on Merkel/Schröder to suspend or abandon accession talks.
Meanwhile NATO forces ie those who share the "values" the European Union holds in sacred regard have been bombing destabilising and pillaging countries in Turkey's immediate vicinity from before the treaty of Ankara, causing not only repeated "refugee crises" of dimensions never seen in Europe but of course also raising questions in the overall population why their Muslim neighbours needed to be bombed and invaded.
Is it really that hard to understand that Turks would turn their backs on the West after a while? This isn't even the usual "population shifts to the right in times of crisis" spiel that occurs in the West as it doesn't really apply here, the question you'd need to ask is how does a pro-Western politician in Turkey garner votes in an environment like this with not only no support from the outside but active hindrances being posed for more than 50 years?
Özil dumb as he might be understands at least the part of this where he feels the latent or open racism from parts of the political and media landscape as well as the population as his last statement proves. I Don't think there's any reason to believe that he condones Erdogans actions in Syria or his persecution of Kurds. But I do think that like many other Turks he's genuine when he says "it's not about what person but that it's the president" - why would he play the askari and 'side' with 'Germany' against the Turkish president when the latter at least didn't show him open hostility?
