Confrontations turned into fistfights and fights with sticks and chains, and then into armed conflict. The youth were divided by bloodshed.
The worst period after the March 12, 1971 coup was right before the Sept. 12, 1980 coup. The conflict surpassed young people, with assassinations and bloody incidents happening in shopping areas. Provocations were planned in Çorum, Kahramanmaraş, Sivas, Başbağlar, and İstanbul’s Gazi neighborhood to incite a Sunni-Alevi conflict. The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) took to the stage as of 1985, laying the foundation for a Turkish-Kurdish conflict. At first we thought we were sides fighting and clashing with each other. We later found out that we were sides being roused to fight and clash with each other. A secret hand was expertly causing an artificial division and clash in the country. It was a large trap set for the entire nation. Our historical experience, our will to live together and a majority of sensible people could not explain the conflict and why people were confronting each other. Everyone with love for their country and every conscious and right-minded person realized the absurdness of the fight. Deep down, they asked themselves: “Why are we fighting? Why are we like this?”
As a significant portion of people on the right and left, whether Sunni or Alevi, Turkish or Kurdish, started trying to find an answer to this crucial question, they started coming to the same conclusion. That is, a certain set of people was making them fight each other and that these people were within the state.
They were ruthless. Looking at the coups, murders and tortures they carried out, it was obvious that they had no love for human beings and that they lived in a completely different world.
The Ergenekon case; the attack on the Council of State, which has been combined with the Ergenekon case; negligence in military outpost raids; allegations of a Heron scandal, over which there is still silence; and judicial processes of the last three years have started to prove those who came to the same conclusion right. The structure that maintained its tutelage over the people by making people engage in clashes and divide up has started to crack.
The most important actors of the structure immediately took action. They virtually deployed all its components to the front lines. People within the judiciary, the media, the bar associations and crony labor unions immediately took to the stage like sleeping agents that were awakened. This confused and continues to confuse the mind of people who consider themselves a part of the “pro-republican, secular, Kemalist” front. The tutelary structure was extremely professional and managed to open a new front over the opposition to the Justice and Development Party (AK Party). It seeks to quell the growing wave against coups and coup leaders. To distort and dilute the situation, it has attacked, saying the AK Party is pursuing a “civilian coup.” Now we have a referendum ahead of us. If the outcome is in the affirmative, the resistance of the tutelage system will break. They may not give up entirely, but they will be extremely weak.
A great responsibility awaits the sensible majority of the nation that does not want conflict in this country on the morning of Sept. 13. The affirmative outcome should not be shoved in the faces of those who supported voting in the negative because a majority of these people have certain concerns and fears for different reasons. Instead of questioning this, we need to empathize and try to understand them. The gist of democracy is tolerance and compromise. We can open a new page on the morning of Sept. 13 for a more advanced democracy. That is because life is going to go on after Sept. 13. It will be the end of the road for those who want to keep the tutelary structure. But those who were brought against each other in the past will have the opportunity to sincerely shake hands for the first time.
The biggest responsibility will fall on the shoulders of those who respect the people’s position and foster love and peace, as the esteemed Fethullah Gülen recommends. The will to live in peace despite our differences will bring peace and harmony to Turkey. A historic opportunity for the sake of social compromise will be utilized. The volunteer movement is the guarantee of peace not just for our country but for all of humanity. Those who will make the people in our society brothers again through a historic move are these people who have no expectations in return. You will see that, God willing, they are going to be the ones who make us embrace each other.
