Whenever and wherever there is a coup, counter-coup, or any coup attempt in any corner of the world, especially if U.S. interests are at stake, would it be surprising to find any U.S. fingertips at the crime scene? At the turn of the century, the world witnessed a coup attempt in Venezuela, an oil-rich country in the backyard of the United States. At the time, it was an exemplary state for other Latin American countries in terms of its vibrant democratic trends. Yet, somehow its democratically elected president, Hugo Chávez FrÍas, was declared undemocratic and authoritarian. He was constantly called to resign due to his "aggressive" manner. Despite his 80 percent approval rate among his citizens he was presented as a dictator. All of these developments, seen retrospectively now, were in fact preparations for his ousting. Hence, a coup d'état was attempted on April 11, 2002 to remove Chvez from office. Yet, in 47 hours he was restored by military loyalists and the ordinary Venezuelans. There was a confrontation between government supporters and protestors in front of the Miraflores presidential palace in Caracas leaving 19 people from both sides dead. At that time, it was said that people gathered in front of the palace via text messages on their mobile phones, which was the first example of using communication technology in defending or later, demanding democracy, like in the Arab Spring protests.There could be many reasons, or rather excuses for a coup in any country but considering the global U.S.'s strategic interests, it is inevitable that the U.S. might have been involved in the process. As Angel Rabasa indicated in his column in the LA Times just a few days (April 23, 2002) after the counter-coup: "But what happens when a democratically elected president is working to undermine democratic institutions? What if that same leader is working to undermine global U.S. strategic interests? And if that president's behavior oversteps the bounds of tolerance of major sectors of the population and is overthrown, what course of action would be in the best interests of the United States and of Latin American democracy?" Chvez obviously deserved to be overthrown because Venezuela was the third biggest country to provide oil to the U.S. after Saudi Arabia and Canada. So, the U.S. could not risk its interests if he controlled the PDVSA (state-owned oil and natural gas company) against the general strikes (December 2002) to bring the country's economy to a halt. The purpose of the strikes was to pressure Chvez to call early elections. He did not yield to protests and replaced the workforce with employees loyal to the elected government. Only then the production was re-established to revive the oil-dependent economy.He was also blameworthy as he visited some "awkward states" like Iraq, Iran, and Libya in 2000 and tried to form an alliance among the southern countries cooperating with each other on economic, social, and cultural issues. Yet, he could not state the reality that "the world is more important than five." Years before Barack Obama, he established a friendly relationship with Cuba. He was against "Plan Colombia," to combat Marxist FARC guerillas by not allowing the use of its air space by U.S. warplanes. Many other similar accusations were filed against him but the main issue was his attempts to improve the quality of life for his country as was acknowledged by his own electorate.Another Latin American country with comparable backgrounds of dictatorship in the past and emerging economy and democracy in the region is Brazil. The last 13 years witnessed a struggle to improve its standards under the presidents Lula da Silva and Dilma Rousseff. Due to their socialist backgrounds they faced numerous challenges despite their efforts to improve the conditions of the poor with their social projects like Fome Zero (Zero Hunger) and Bolsa Familia (Family Allowance), and Luz para Todos (Electricity for All) to eradicate hunger and poverty in the country. These and other social projects have helped Rousseff increase in the approval ratings to 80 percent. Other sources of this high popularity came from mainly economic measures like the reduction of taxes and lowering overnight interest rates. Nevertheless, her popularity fell to 13 percent because of the allegations that Rousseff was involved in the so-called Petrobras scandal as a result of which some top government officers were arrested including the treasurer of the Workers' Party, minister of the energy and mines, and the speaker of parliament. The operation was called Operação Lava Jato (Operation Car Wash) because a gas station owner was watched when he was giving a luxury SUV to one senior executive of Petrobras as a bribe. Then a large-scale probe was launched into the cause of the rumors and many search warrants were issued. Although Dilma Rousseff denied having any prior knowledge of improper payments and money laundering at the company, she was officially impeached in parliament.From this very brief account of events taking place in countries far away from Turkey, the Turkish public would immediately recognize the similarities. Under the leadership of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) has won every election since its establishment in 2002. The AK Party realized many reforms to improve the country's democratic and economic standards providing many rights to previously marginalized sections of the population and recuperating the infrastructure of the country. The popularity of President Erdoğan has increased since his election first as prime minister and then as president. During his reign, the Turkish economy has recovered at inordinate length and overnight interest rates fell massively. Turkey has become a regional actor in the Middle East and this new status caused a lot of concern for the western powers who would not share their influence in the region. As a result, Turkey faced a lot of challenges in the form of coups carried out by the Gülenists that has infiltrated the state and the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) on Feb. 7, 2012; the graft operations of Dec. 17-25, 2013; the operation about the MİT trucks carrying humanitarian aid to Syria on Jan. 19, 2014; and the last operation was a direct military coup attempt on July 15, 2016. The previous attempts were sort of covered and tried to gain international support, but the last one the Gülenists did not even try to cover their operation and it raised suspicions that it was masterminded in the United States as the leader of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) resides in rural Pennsylvania. The initial reaction from the U.S. was in support of the coup but later American officials denied any involvement as they did in Venezuela and Brazil, previously.Like any other covert operations, there is no clear evidence that the U.S. would encourage or support any coup attempts in these three countries. However, there have been indications that the U.S. has participated in many global operations according to post facto confessions in the memoirs of American politicians. The underlining issue here is that whether the consequences would serve American interests and how the U.S. government would develop relationships with the actors of the new regimes emerging from the coups. The expectation is the U.S. politicians would figure out a way to secure their interests in their relationships in any country regardless of the nature of the regime. At the surface level, they claim they would have better relations with "democratic and stable" countries. So, the definition of this stable democracy would include various forms of military dictatorship and non-elected authoritarians as long as they collaborate with the U.S.