They are perfectly aware of who is serving what purpose. Everything is developing on a course mapped out in the coup diaries that led to the closure of the Nokta magazine as the cost for having revealed them. Everything is occurring exactly in the direction of the phone calls and correspondence intercepted by police during the investigation into the Ergenekon gang. Everything is happening so blatantly right in front of our eyes.
Just as it is highlighted in the notorious diaries and the records revealed by the police, some so-called civil society organizations led by retired generals are unsettling society through well-planned virtual fears. All manner of evil actions meant to further polarize society are ruthlessly and brazenly being committed. All manner of paramilitary methods is being employed through all sorts of illegal formations possessing a veneer of legality. All the prerequisites of the psychological warfare needed for an "open coup" -- not a direct military coup, though -- are being carried out one by one. To this end, they hurl hand grenades at certain places and commit political assassinations. One segment of society is at loggerheads with the other. The leading role, as always, is assigned to those media organs with certifiably pro-coup identities and which are still not ashamed of calling themselves mainstream. The neo-nationalist and fascist media organs founded under the control of these barefaced coup-lovers are also being utilized along with all of their facilities.
After going through a number of direct military interventions, military memorandums, a post-modern coup and an electronic coup, what Turkey is witnessing this time is an "open and transparent coup." The only difference in this process from those preceding it is that everything is taking place openly, in view of the public. However nobody is able to stop this course from running openly before our eyes. And here lies the success of this anti-democratic process, as a matter of fact. It's impossible for you to change the direction of the process through legal means since the judiciary, which has committed so many contraventions of the law, in a way shaking people's trust in it, is being used like a weapon at the disposal of this "open coup process."
What's more, the voluntary perpetrators of this coup process appear to be as democratic and civilian as everybody else on the exterior, and they suddenly become defenders of the law. In brief, the plot of this open coup is running quite smoothly. The black and the white, the good and the evil, the legitimate and the illegitimate are skillfully mixed together through all sorts of trickery. They perplex people's minds. They try to eliminate the public conscience through public denigration and unjustly and unfairly filed lawsuits (as in the Justice and Development Party [AK Party] closure case and the Gülen case). Fortunately, this is the only field in which they have failed so far. Yet there is no indication that this failure bothers them in any way.
The universal principle of "rule of law" is somehow perceived as the "despotism of the judiciary" by the judges and justices of this country. We have a legal system such that not one single prosecutor is able to take legal action against retired generals found to have devised coup plots. But on the other hand, the article of the Turkish Penal Code (TCK) about "inciting hatred in society" is enforced on those who read out poems but cannot be imposed on the so-called civil society organizations led by retired generals that have been inciting fear and hatred in one segment of society against the other and portraying the "other" segment as an enemy, nor upon the media organs that air broadcasts in line with the instructions of these generals. The prosecutors who don't take legal action in relation to open and clear crimes are so brazen as to file a closure case against the ruling party on charges that fall far short of convincing the public. As a result, the faith of the Turkish nation in the judiciary and the principle of supremacy of law are damaged. Social confidence is shaken. The glass vase is broken.
A news article in Yeni Şafak's Monday edition that probably went unnoticed was very important in this sense. The hero of the story is former prosecutor Sacit Kayasu, who has been put through terrible things like the disbarred prosecutors Ferhat Sarıkaya and Gültekin Avcı, whose only crime was to discharge their duties based on the power granted by law and the moral responsibility incumbent on them. Kayasu's words are enough to reveal the vehemence of the situation we are in: "I have been truly saddened. … If it is possible to file a lawsuit against a president who is in office, then it was much more possible to file one against a former president."
Kayasu was relieved of duty as he prepared an indictment against Kenan Evren, the leader of the military coup of 1980 that shelved the Constitution and democracy, and on the coup itself, which was staged on Sept. 12; and he was also disbarred by a decision of the Supreme Board of Prosecutors and Judges (HSYK). Today Kayasu says, "I did not file that legal complaint in relation to events of that time period when Evren was president; it was filed in relation to the time when he was the chief of general staff." He was rewarded for his courageousness with disbarment. I will not go into the details of the economic and social ordeals he has gone through, just like his colleague Ferhat Sarıkaya, since he is even unable to work as a lawyer now. "Now I live like a parasite whose hands are tied. I'm powerful enough to squeeze the water out of a stone, but I am unable to do anything. They have imprisoned me in my house, and it feels like being clapped into a cell," he says, which further elucidates the situation.
I heard Kayasu is not sitting by idly despite this calamity. He is studying for a master's degree in law. The subject of his thesis is "Freedom of speech of judges and prosecutors." Is this not tragicomic in terms of the pitiable state of the judiciary in Turkey, which is allegedly "impartial" and "just"?
I dedicate this article to those double-faced, intellectually corrupt and immoral people who use the judicial positions they occupy and their influential newspaper columns to lynch real men of law such as Kayasu and Sarıkaya and who, regarding the ongoing closure case opened on preposterously unsubstantiated charges, are saying nowadays, "The judicial process and the chief prosecutor of the Supreme Court of Appeals cannot be criticized."
