However, Çiller’s being a part of the government -- although she was known for her close cooperation with the military with regard to the struggle against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) -- didn’t ensure that Erbakan, representative of the “other Turkey,” would become integrated with the system; and thus they set about staging never-ending provocations and perpetrating manipulations which it was thought would surely cause the government great difficulty. The eerie movement called the Aczimendis, the charlatan named Ali Kalkancı and all other strange groups given a “religious” appearance were “put onto the market” one after another and various psychological war tactics were devised by these groups.The military and the establishment had picked on the Erbakan government, which had to be toppled at all costs. Any tactics were thought acceptable to achieve that end. And the decisions made at the National Security Council (MGK) meeting held on Feb. 28, 1997, which was later to be called a post-modern coup, were designed to attain that purpose. While the civil administration was intimidated by the army after it ordered a column of tanks through the streets of the Sincan district of Ankara, it also started making attempts to build a new society by acting as a social engineer, encouraged by the MGK decisions that were designed to eliminate the democratically elected Erbakan government.
Strangely enough, at a time when the PKK terrorism was at a peak the MGK had decided that the greatest danger in Turkey was religious fundamentalism. The people were divided into factions through this social engineering in order to fight this allegedly top threat. With the help of the many anti-democratic laws made during the process, they victimized hundreds of thousands of people. So, the real question is whether there was really an imminent religious threat so massive as to overshadow terrorism. Of course there wasn’t. If there was, we would still be talking about it today. So, what was there instead? The terrorism trouble existed then, just as it does today -- the exact same terrorism we are trying to root out nowadays with a cross-border operation.
In this embarrassing period during which democracy as well as some of the most fundamental individual rights and freedoms were shelved under military guardianship, some of the most popular parties were shut down; and in the elections held two years later, a coalition government was formed by Bülent Ecevit, Mesut Yılmaz and Devlet Bahçeli, the leaders of the Democratic Left Party (DSP), the Motherland Party (ANAP, now ANAVATAN) and the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), respectively. During this time, when democratic supervision was paralyzed, transparency and accountability were “removed from circulation,” corruption, professional misconduct and theft reached terrifying heights. In only three-and-a-half years, as a result of improper banking transactions, public banks were left with the obligation to pay around $20.5 billion for what was claimed to be a “duty loss,” and the banks and media tycoons that were supportive of the process siphoned off $12.5 billion from private banks. Because of all the professional misconduct in the administration, at another highly tense MGK meeting held on Feb. 19, 2001, the entire country found itself in the midst of the greatest economic and social ordeal of its history when the president threw a booklet of the constitution at the prime minister. The public became 40 percent poorer overnight, with the annual income per capita falling to $2,000 from $3,242.
The pains suffered during the Feb. 28 process, the 11th anniversary of which came yesterday, and which was shameful in terms of democratic and universal values, have unfortunately not yet been forgotten. Let alone forgetting, many of the wounds opened at the time have not healed. Although Abdullah Gül, a minister of the toppled “Refahyol” government, is now the president, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, who was dismissed from office and imprisoned for reading a poem of a nationalist poet, is prime minister, the wounds opened by Feb. 28 are still bleeding. The rights of the victimized covered students have not been restored, and the injustice still inflicted on the students of vocational schools and the religious imam hatip schools -- who have been doomed to failing the university examination because of the nonsensical “coefficient” practice -- has not been eradicated.
The financial and psychological losses suffered by so many firms quite arbitrarily labeled as “radical” by the despotic generals of the time have not yet been covered. These firms, proving the saying, “Good may come out of evil,” found their way out by opening up to world markets, a move that culminated in significant social and political developments. A good example is the purchasing of the world-famous brand Godiva by one of the firms accused of supporting religious fundamentalism at the time.
Thank God, people tore off the straitjacket that Turkey was forced to wear by a herd of ferocious people at the first opportunity. And all those responsible for this anti-democratic era were punished by the people, cursed and practically excommunicated. For instance, the chief prosecutor of the time, Vural Savaş, who putatively laid down the legal ground for the post-modern coup process and for the shutting down of the RP and the Virtue Party (FP), entered politics by founding a party; however, he couldn’t get even one percent of the vote, and he was forced to leave the Atatürkist Thought Association (ADD), which he wanted to preside over, in a disgraceful way.
President Demirel was the architect of the operation carried out to overthrow the government by inciting the military, and his dreams of being elected for a second time were not realized. Today, he is a focus of people’s hate and he lives out his retirement in overwhelming solitude. But, whenever he receives the signals of extraordinary times, he makes statements that cause dissent, unable to let go of the ambition of still obtaining a high post in the state.
Another architect of the process, Yılmaz, literally obliterated his party, which was the most popular party of the 1980s, obtained the title of being the first and only prime minister tried at the Council of State. Today, he is playing the lonely deputy in Parliament, which he entered with the votes of his friends and relatives in order to provide himself with political immunity. And are you wondering what happened to the despots of the time such as Çevik Bir and İsmail Hakkı Karadayı? They, too, took their well-deserved places on the embarrassing pages of the history of our democracy.
So, do you think the Feb. 28 process has ended? It’s not easy at all to say yes to this question in a Turkey where there are still those who keep devising plans that would paralyze the democratic system, those hoping for help in making the violation of rights into a norm forever, where those who frighten the masses with virtual threats and those who find a new existence in fears are still plentiful and where the denied rights of hundreds of thousands of people haven’t been provided to them. What we can say at best is: Turkey is still going through the process of leaving behind the atmosphere of the Feb. 28 process.
