He occasionally even underlines that they are facing asymmetric psychological warfare. But he refuses to accept the essence of the issue. In his most recent statement to correspondents from the Hürriyet daily, Başbuğ said: “The army is a large organization. There can be people inside who sometimes make mistakes. But unfortunately personal mistakes are blamed on the institution.”Why are mistakes that are considered personal blamed on the institution? The answer to this question is related to the crux of the issue. We need to look at it from three perspectives. Firstly, mistakes that appear to be personal are not actually personal at all. Are allegations that the highest level commanders of the gigantic 1st Army met to discuss coup plans personal? The discovery of weapons and ammunition that could pierce armored vehicles, bombs, thousands of bullets, coup plans, assassination plans against admirals, meetings to discuss how to infiltrate the army, sex and drug traps set up against lieutenants and the arrest of retired generals and active duty military officers are not actions that can be described as personal mistakes.
Secondly, the institution is being blamed for mistakes because it has failed to display the attitude that it is expected to display toward everything that is transpiring. Not even a single military officer has been suspended for the sake of a sound investigation and a healthy judicial process. A colonel who is facing nine life sentences if convicted for 20 counts of extrajudicial executions is still working as field commander with the Kayseri Provincial Gendarmerie Command.
Even though the Council of Forensic Medicine (ATK) recently reaffirmed its finding that the signature on a plot to illegally undermine the governing Justice and Development Party (AK Party) belongs to Col. Dursun Çiçek, no administrative actions have been taken against him. Again, if the highest commander of the institution picks up an empty light anti-tank weapon (LAW) instead of one of the loaded ones and says, “Look, it’s just a pipe; I don’t understand why it was buried underground,” won’t the institution’s dignity be impaired? Can’t all of these attitudes be evaluated as the institution protecting wrong behavior? Finally, we are not talking about personal mistakes. We are talking about a regime of military tutelage that has been going on for a century. We are talking about how it protects the status quo with constitutional arbitration and makes democracy merely symbolic. We are complaining about a mentality that takes away an entire nation’s determination and will to live freely and protect their country and that seeks to control everything by saying, “We saved the country, so we own the country.”
Someone please explain to me how coups, which have repeatedly happened for 60 years, have anything to do with personal mistakes? Within the chain of command, democracy has been interrupted and the prime minister and state ministers have been executed. Parliament has been locked up, parties have been closed down, thousands of people have been tortured and people who have admitted to murder were acquitted by the Military Judicial General Council. During the period of martial law, the murderer of Abdi İpekçi was able to escape from the brigade. Please, enough is enough. Let us focus on the essence of the issue and not on just removing a few “wrong people.” With everyone aware of the facts, these attitudes are not compatible with serious management. In today’s world and in a Turkey where democratization has become a social calling, no one can keep the status quo alive. Now is the time to remove this weight from the people and democracy’s shoulders. A mentality that disregards the nation’s will doesn’t stand a chance of living. Do not make this nation suffer any longer. Do not weaken our country and people further. Let us expend our energy and strength on peace, tranquility and humane living.
There are no personal mistakes in a constitutional institution. Rather each mistake is a result of a structure that does not depend on the national will. Neither the Constitutional Court’s decision to close down parties and ban the headscarf in universities nor the Council of State’s decision to order a stay of execution for the Higher Education Board’s (YÖK) decision and leave young people distraught are personal mistakes. Nor is the TSK’s lack of dependence on the prime minister, let alone its lack of dependence on the Defense Ministry, a personal mistake.
The mistake is with the tutelage system. The mistake is with the mentality that treats the nation with disdain and disregards the nation’s will.
