Why are the crusades still not widely recognized as defensive wars fought against Muslim aggression in the middle ages?

Because at least some of the fighting in the Crusades was against people other than Muslims. Not all Crusades went to the Holy Land.

In the first Crusade many French and English knights turned aside from the direct route to the Holy Land to slaughter defenceless Jews in several German cities. In AD 1204 the Fourth Crusade did not reach he Holy Land at all. It attacked Constantinople (Byzantium, now Istanbul) because that city was inhabited by the "wrong" sort of Christians.

Political correctness

Because you are a damned fool in your understandings of the Crusades. It was a ruthless land grab, plain and simple. It was also one of the greatest examples of corruption in the Christian Church. It was a evil as today's militant radical Fundamentalist Islam that believes there is NOTHING too immoral in achieving the quest.

cos they werent

(you dont travel 1500 miles to defend yourself against an enemy thats 1500 miles away from you)

As Pope Urban II recruited almost 100,000 people to support an attack on the Turks, it can hardly be called 'defensive'.

Not all recruited fought - some were supportive in other ways.

This is Catholic propaganda. The Crusades were aggressive wars, and when the first crusading army took Jerusalem they slaughtered everyone, Muslims, Jews and Christians. So much for protecting Christians. The Holy Roman Emperor Frederick the II got favorable concessions from Sultan Al Kamil without fighting.

The fourth crusade too the biggest city in Christianity, namely Constantinople, for the greed of Venetian Christians. The sack of the city ruined its power and helped bring about the end of Christian states in the Middle East.

The Albigensian Crusade was directed entirely against French Christians who were called heretics.

I suggest you look at the historical timeline of the Holy Land. Until the 4th century it was part of the Roman Empire ie pagan. Then the Byzantines took over for around 300 years. Then the area changed hands again when the Muslims moved in. So it was only Christian for half the 600 years since the death of Christ.

The Christians from Turkey and the Middle East were never 'Catholic' and did not have a connection with Rome - they were Eastern Orthodox. And while the Holy Land might have been Christian under Byzantium, it was never a Western Christian land. The Crusaders were never defending their existing lands, or the Holy Land, it was an invasion and a land grab.

The Holy Roman Empire contained the Moose Limb threat to civilisation but was undermined by the Protestants of northern Europe who wanted to break away from the empire. Otherwise, Constantinople could have been saved and the Turks pushed back east for all time.

time to kill some non believers