Turkey is a long way from Cleveland, where the Republicans are holding their presidential convention. But I'd urge you to study the recent failed military coup against Turkey's President Recep Tayyip Erdogan. America is not Turkey -- but in terms of personality and political strategy, Mr Erdogan and Donald Trump were separated at birth.
And the drama playing out in Turkey today is the story of how off-track a once successful country can get when a leader who demonises his rivals and dabbles in crazy conspiracy theories comes to believe that he alone is The Man and ensconces himself in power.
Let's start with Mr Erdogan, who was prime minister from 2003 to 2014, but then manoeuvred himself into the previously symbolic role of president and got all key powers shifted to that position. When I first heard the news of last Friday's coup attempt, my first instinct was to consult that great foreign policy expert Miss Manners, The Washington Post's etiquette columnist, because I was asking myself, "What is the right response when bad things happen to bad people?"
"Dear Miss Manners: I instinctively oppose military coups against democratically elected governments, like the one in Turkey. But am I a bad person if part of me felt that Turkey's president had it coming?"
Anyone who has been following Turkey closely knows that Mr Erdogan has been mounting a silent, drip-by-drip coup of his own against Turkish democracy for years -- jailing reporters, hounding rivals with giant tax bills, reviving an internal war against Turkish Kurds -- and making himself a modern-day sultan.
I'm glad the coup failed, especially the way it did -- with many secular Turks who actually opposed Mr Erdogan's autocratic rule, and had been abused by it, nevertheless coming out against the plotters on the principle that Turkish democracy must be upheld.
The maturity of the Turkish people resulted in Mr Erdogan getting a do-over to demonstrate that he is committed to the universal precepts of democracy. Will he? Or will he go right back to his preferred means of staying in power: dividing Turks into his supporters and enemies of the state, weaving conspiracy theories and using the failed coup as a licence for a witch hunt?
A day after the failed coup, Mr Erdogan dismissed 2,745 judges and prosecutors. How did he know exactly who to fire in one day? Did he already have an enemies list? He has now reportedly purged 1,500 university deans, revoked the licences of 21,000 teachers and either purged or detained nearly 35,000 members of the military, security forces and judiciary as part of his "cleansing" of coup supporters.
Mr Erdogan was an outstanding leader his first five years and truly lifted the country's economy. But since then it's all gone to his head, and he has gotten away with increasingly bad behaviour by creating an us-versus-them divide between his loyal, more religious followers, and the more secular communities in Turkey.
Because his followers see their dignity wrapped up in his remaining in power, he can say and do anything and never pay a political price. But Turkey in the long run suffers. Sound familiar?
Mr Trump relies on the same tactics: He fabricates facts and figures. He regularly puts out conspiracy theories -- his latest is that US President Barack Obama's "body language" suggests that "there's something going on" with the president -- hinting that Mr Obama is not comfortable condemning the killing of cops by African-American gunmen and has sympathy for radical Islamists.
Mr Trump also relies on the us-versus-them bond with his followers to avoid punishment for any of his misbehaviour. He, too, is obsessed with his own prowess, and he uses Twitter to get around traditional media gatekeepers -- and fact-checkers -- to inject anything he wants into the nation's media bloodstream. And most of the people Mr Trump has surrounded himself with are either family or second-raters looking for a star turn, including his vice-presidential choice and the person who wrote his wife's convention speech and clearly plagiarised part of it from Michelle Obama.
just as he's been a "chaos candidate". Americans will regularly be in the streets, because they are not going to follow a man who lies as he breathes, who has not done an ounce of homework to prepare for the job and who generates support by conspiracy theories and fear.
If you like what's going on in Turkey today, you'll love Mr Trump's America. ©2016 The New York Times.