Here you can witness juristocracy and elitocracy being wiped from the pages of history and the results of one of the ugliest campaigns of nepotism and infiltration into the judicial bureaucracy by a certain mindset at the same time. Here you can see the elimination of all dogma relating to the Kurds, Armenians and Alevis and the launch of several democratic initiatives and the alienation and otherization of the citizens of this country at the same time.Quite like a chemical reaction! It is never one way. Today, you think that the fight for further democratization is lost; tomorrow you may see the powers of democracy hitting back.
On Monday I penned quite a pessimistic article about the higher judicial organs. I regarded the interference of the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) in an ongoing investigation about possible links between a chief prosecutor and the coup plots against the elected government as proving that the members of higher judicial organs are not only biased but also anachronistic and suicidal. As the article was published on Tuesday, the lower judicial organs bounced back, and several retired generals and active duty admirals were detained as part of the investigation into the Sledgehammer plot. At the time of the writing of this article, two active duty admirals and seven officers have been arrested by the court, and it is most probable that you will read news of more arrests in today’s paper.
A myth of “untouchability” is being destroyed.
On the day the detentions were made, retired Gen. Yaşar Büyükanıt (I have foregone my customary embargo on using military officers’ names in my column due to the fact that he is no longer active duty, and in fact I am referring to him not as a past army chief but as a possible future arrestee) spoke to his friends in the press and claimed that the April 27 e-memorandum was not a memorandum at all. “It was an attempt to point out the sensitivities of the armed forces about the secular nature of the state,” he said. Büyükanıt further reiterated his respect for the political decisions of Parliament and said that he could have no objection to the personality of the president-elect.
Why now, soldier? Why didn’t you speak immediately before the publication of the poorly written text on the official Web site of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK)? Why didn’t you clarify the position of the army as a “sensitivity” and not interference in the presidential election process? Why didn’t you clarify your position when you spoke to the same “embedded journalists” when you admitted that you yourself wrote that primary-school-level text that made us think it was penned by an uneducated plain soldier?
Don’t answer me, just prepare yourself for these questions. It seems that you have already sensed that your turn to be questioned by the prosecutors and judges has also come.
This is a painful process for the relatives of former coup-conspirators. I fully sympathize with the wife of retired Gen. İbrahim Fırtına, who asked her husband what the policemen who came to detain him wanted from him.
Justice is not something you want. It is something you make. Justice is like a sculpture made of rough stone. You cleanse the excesses and asperities, and you have that statue of Lady Justice.
The April 27 e-memorandum is an asperity that needs to be wiped from our history of democracy and justice.
The prosecutors’ steps are pattering on your doorsteps, general!
