This shows only one thing: The psychological warfare machine behind the organization must be magnificently powerful. In Turkey, only the state can have such a machine.Some argue that the suspects who are now in jail are adventurous people who acted on their own, separately from state structures. But this argument is not convincing. We are not talking about a few lunatics with handguns. If we look at both the hard evidence and circumstantial evidence, these suspects have had access to all kinds of the military's weapons. It is not just an incident where a few people stole a few weapons and bombs from the military. We have around 10 -- as far as we know -- cells, such as Atabeyler, Sauna, Oktay Yıldırım and Co. and Mustafa Sönmez, who are either retired or current military officers. And when they are caught, they are caught with enough military ammunition to create havoc in Turkey.
There could only be two possibilities with regards to this. First, while the military was daydreaming or meddling in daily politics, these officers stole these hundreds of weapons skillfully and without anyone suspecting a thing. No one in the army has seen them. No one ever suspected them. No one ever counted the number of bombs and weapons in the inventory of military compounds or in "Gladiotic civilian places." Is this what our army is all about? Of course not; we have been indoctrinated otherwise.
In contrast to undisciplined, lazy and unskillful civilians who only think about their worldly and carnal pleasures, the army has been the most perfect, effective and disciplined of our institutions. If that is the case, how could these military officers steal so many weapons and bombs not once, not twice or even three times, but every single time? Even an ailing grocer would catch people stealing apples or pomegranates from his shop and here we are talking about hundreds of hand grenades! If our army's performance is worse than an old ailing grocer, is this not another convincing reason to ask about the military's transparency, accountability and expenditures in line with universal standards?
But I do not believe that our army is failing us to that horrible extent. If that were the case, God forbid, we would not be safely living in Turkey. That takes us to the second possibility and in our logical cul-de-sac there is no other exit. Our military in almost full hierarchical order has known about these activities all along and maybe kept them as both a secret and a kind of bargaining chip. If we take into account the fact that there has been a kind of implicit protection of suspect military personnel, we should question why the military has not been so sensitive about its weapons, bombs and, most importantly, its prestige and honor. Refusals or extremely slow reactions of the chief of general staff to investigate the claims are other intriguing questions.
We now know that the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) informed the military about the clandestine, illegal activities and cell structures of these suspect military officers years ago, but the military prosecuted, accused and convicted no one for these crimes, which, I am sure, should be conceived as outside the freedom of expression. If we study the 1971 coup attempts by the usual suspects, İlhan Selçuk and Co., as detailed by Hasan Cemal, Celil Gürkan and several others, the four star commanders of the forces were hoping that the subordinates would be successful in their coup attempts and these generals would be president and so on. But when MİT foiled the subordinates' plot with the help of Mahir Kaynak, the four-star general switched sides and betrayed the subordinate officers and their very "respected" civilian helpers.
Could similar things happen in the 2000s? Come on. Adm. Özden Örnek's memoirs are simply carbon copies of the 1971 attempts.
