I am of course referring to the Turkish power elite from the political, business, media, military and bureaucratic spheres.The March 2003 junta of Gen. Çetin Doğan included 137 journalists on a list of those who the junta had hoped would support their coup while another list of journalists, this time those who would be detained after the coup, was dramatically shorter, with only 35 candidates, including Hrant Dink. I am in no way suggesting that all 137 journalists listed are coup lovers, but it seems that the junta thought they could potentially benefit the coup and support it after it was successfully staged. Given that only a handful of the listed staunchly defended their democratic credentials and unequivocally declared that coups are harmful to the country and tantamount to treason, we have every right to be agitated by these journalists’ journalism. Moreover, the majority of those on the list of 137 have been steadily, but brazen-facedly, trying to undermine the Ergenekon case.
Recently, Deniz Baykal has been repeating his demagogy, that there might be some criminals among the Ergenekon suspects but that he was against the style the prosecutors and police have adopted while conducting the operation. When pressured about the misconduct, Baykal and his staunch supporters among the elite, including the media, repeatedly ask why the police conduct operations at an early hour at the respected suspects’ houses without informing them. The answer is very simple: If the police inform them beforehand, some of them could easily flee and the police could never have discovered the evidence they discovered so far. Remember how some of the suspects were caught with secret lists, assassination plans and so on in secret compartments in their houses and in their handbags? I’m not even mentioning the CDs, laptops, etc. Do you really believe that if invited to the police station or the prosecutor’s office, these respected suspects would take the evidence with them? Anyway.
What I am trying to say is that the majority of our elite has not strongly condemned Ergenekon plots, coup attempts, junta formations and so on. When challenged, they tend to say it is a matter for the courts to decide or that there is an ongoing case into the matter, but they never hesitated to call the 2006 Council of State assassination a kind of Turkish Sept. 11, though they had not even a shred of evidence. They were all quick to blame the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government for inciting the incident and provoking the murderer, and thus several ministers were attacked at the judge’s funeral. We now know that the assassination was planned by enemies of the AK Party in an attempt to topple the government. Enemies of the AK Party do not have to love the AK Party, but they could insist on democracy being the only game in town and that the judiciary must diligently try to satisfy our suspicions. Instead of critically supporting the Ergenekon terror organization case and asking for a detailed judicial investigation of all other innumerable coup plans, they always come up with excuses to tolerate the suspects. For instance, several of them now say planning a coup is not a criminal offense unless it is successful. Who would prosecute a coup after it is successful? The junta would not even wish you “good morning after supper.”
These elite know very well that they will never be able to win democratic elections without jettisoning their inhumane, obscurantist and undemocratic ideologies, which leads them to being happy with a coup. For the time being, they have to say that they do not want a coup, but actions speak louder than words. After a successful coup, all of them will enthusiastically agree to form a government. Is Baykal a greater democrat than Turgut Özal? Remember that even Özal had to accept the deputy prime ministerial job as he feared that the economy would totally collapse. Are Baykal, Devlet Bahçeli, Rifat Hisarcıklıoğlu and all others greater democracy champions than Republican People’s Party (CHP) deputy Nihat Erim, who accepted the task of forming a government after the 1971 coup, or Mesut Yılmaz and Bülent Ecevit, who did the same after the Feb. 28, 1997 coup? We have not forgotten who opposed (and who did not) the April 27, 2007 e-memo of the military, which intervened in Parliament’s legal and legitimate right to elect a president and used the threat of a physical and possibly bloody coup? We remember who was very happy back then.
It is easy to see that you are not democrats in essence, but one still expects that you will not insult this nation’s intelligence but at least support anti-militarist, anti-coup, anti-junta legislation and judicial activity. Was 47 percent not enough? Come on, you can do it, as there is no harm to your dreams of forming a government. There is always hope; we all know that legislation cannnot stop a junta if they are adamant enough to shed blood.
