They have not been able to catch up with the spirit of the times and they have waited in vain for the socio-cultural, economic and political transformations taking place in Turkey to fade away so that they would not have to change. Alas. That was only an esoteric dream that would never come true. Our generals have also been misled and even betrayed by the social and political scientists who argued that the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) decisive and hegemonic occupation of the center of the political spectrum was an anomaly that would be corrected as soon as possible. These scientists’ academic prestige has sunk together with the generals’ hope for an old Turkey where they had “a good life,” in the words of Ertuğrul Özkök, the recently resigned editor-in-chief of the oligarchic bureaucracy’s daily Hürriyet. These scientists could not even see that the AK Party not only occupied the center-right but the center-left as well, if -- of course -- the dichotomy (right-left) could still serve as an academic tool to analyze politics. Failing miserably to analyze society and politics, our generals have come to the point of labeling and accusing anyone who criticizes them a traitor.In our generals’ and their militarist supporters’ noble opinion, not only are Islamists, former Islamists and so on traitors but Kurds, genuine leftists, liberals, democrats, pro-European Union intellectuals and non-Muslim minorities are as well. Any time the generals are caught red-handed lying, they counter-attack their critics with the words “traitor,” “enemy of the army,” etc. Let us assume that our generals are right and the ones who criticize the army, who ask for more transparency and accountability, who ask for the application of the Copenhagen criteria, who ask for a wall of separation between the army and politics are indeed traitors. Should we not then try to persecute, prosecute and punish all these traitors? Of course. We have to. If we apply our generals’ logic, it would be very simple to catch them, as all these shameless, brazen-faced traitors are either outspoken in their above-listed demands such as transparency and accountability or they support these traitors by buying their newspapers and watching their TV channels. But I think there is a small hurdle before rounding up these traitors. We need to calculate roughly how many traitors there are out there so that we can see if we have sufficient prison space, if of course we are not planning to hang them right away.
I am writing this piece on the first day of the year, and I have ample time to help our militarists and coup-lovers. I suggest that one way of calculating the number of the traitors is to look at the circulation numbers of the dailies and ratings of the TV channels that constantly and consistently demand EU standards, transparency, accountability and so on. According to my calculations, the figure is around 50 percent both in the printed and electronic media. It means very roughly that half of the Turkish population is a traitor based on the criteria of our coup-lovers and outspoken generals. You might object to this figure and say that only a certain segment of society buys newspapers and staunch non-democrats may also be watching traitor channels. But, I have a plan B.
What about looking at the electoral results? As we all remember, former Chief of General Staff Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt made it very clear in April 2007 before the presidential election that AK Party politicians were not real secularists in their hearts and the infamous e-memo released by the General Staff not only harshly criticized the celebrations of our Holy Prophet’s birthday (Yes, they indeed did that, showing that they live in a positivist dream-world) but also suggested that if the AK Party continues to try to get Abdullah Gül elected president the military would intervene. The oligarchy’s media detailed what that meant and so on.
What happened next? Well, 47 percent of the Turkish electorate voted for the AK Party. In a referendum, about 70 percent also voted for a constitutional change that makes the election of the president directly by the people, not by Parliament, making it almost impossible for politics-loving generals to intervene as they have always done. All right, I will resist temptation and will turn a blind eye to the lip-licking figure of 70 percent but it is crystal clear that the naughty, creepy-crawling 47 percent simply betrayed their father-generals. Ergo, my alternative calculations confirm each other: About 50 percent of our population is traitorous according to our generals’ criteria.
Is this possible? Nowhere in the world, not even in Saddam’s Iraq, no state, no ruler, no dictator has accused their population so heavily. No nation, no cultural, ethnic or religious group on earth has such a high ratio of traitors. Is something wrong with the Turkish people? Aren’t our generals simply breaching the infamous Article 301 of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) that penalizes insulting Turkishness?
