On April 17, Brazil’s lower house of Congress passed a vote to impeach President Dilma Rousseff, based on charges that she violated the country’s budgetary laws. In return, both Rousseff and some of her supporters condemned this vote as an attempted “coup" against the nation's democratically elected president. 

Interestingly, more than 6,000 miles away, staunch supporters of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan passionately agreed with this interpretation of Brazil’s affairs. Various pundits of the pro-Erdogan media wrote hastened lines about "the coup plot" in Brazil and expressed "democratic solidarity" with the Brazilian president.

For instance, prominent pro-Erdogan columnist Hilal Kaplan wrote that “the coup in Brazil,” which was realized partly by the “big capital owning families,” must be a lesson for Turkey. Another commentator wrote a long piece titled “The coup has won, and Brazil has lost.” And a TV show used all of its airtime to report on “the coup attempt in Brazil and its consequences.” Meanwhile, on Twitter hundreds of comments in Turkish appeared about “the coup” in Brazil and how to defend democracy in the face of such challenges.

The secret powers behind this “coup” was also a part of this narrative. Journalist Ardan Zenturk suggested that ”deep America organized a 'white coup' in Brazil," and that the CIA and philanthropist George Soros must have been involved. Another writer, in an article in the pro-Erdogan daily Milat, also regarded “the CIA” as the real culprit of the “coup” in Brazil, only to warn, “The CIA is cooking up a coup in Turkey.”