While the operation foresaw the systematic attack and killing of non-Muslims on the one hand, on the other it planned to detonate secretly placed explosives in the Rahmi M. Koç Museum while hundred of students were visiting. If we were to compare it to another incident, we could say this attack would have been equal to the Sept. 11 attacks that targeted the World Trade Center in New York. The difference would be that the attacker would not be an external ideological movement but this country’s own army. At this point, it’s very hard to say the incident was wanted by an uncontrollable group within the army because not only are the plans that have been uncovered linked to each other but they feature the same hierarchical signatures.Turkey is right in having trouble accepting this reality. For several decades the army was said to be the most progressive institution in the country and the guardian of “democracy.” But the dynamic of change in Muslim society and the coinciding EU process has removed this illusion. Turks faced the reversed reality for the first time and had trouble believing what they saw. However, psychological resistance continues among secularist groups. This segment of society not only “sees” less because the major dailies censor evidence that is against the army but also dislike the political meaning of what they see. After all, each component of the Ergenekon coup attempt relies on the mentality of “coaxing” the secular segment and Western modernist circles. The aim of the Cage plan was to blame the Muslim segment for all the killings that would take place. They believed that in this way they would be able to make the government illegitimate and convince the West about the existence of a “pro-religious danger” in Turkey.
It is not difficult to understand the reason for this kind of a coup delirium. The authoritarian regime in Turkey is falling apart in a way that perhaps cannot be reversed. Steps and reforms to be taken with the establishment of democracy will signal the formation of a new “republic,” causing military officials to lose their privileges.
Nor is it surprising that secularists did not foresee the developments that are happening today. They thought religious people were categorically narrow-minded, against modernism and incompatible with universal rights and freedoms. But this assessment, which was semi-true in the early years of the republic, evolved into an ideological manipulation and concealed the new reality of the changing society. There are numerous signs for those who want to see the new reality, with the most recent one being the message Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan delivered on Eid al-Adha (Feast of the Sacrifice). In between the concrete messages that he delivered, opening an independent, civilian, supervisory Human Rights Institution, setting up a Anti-Discrimination Commission that will handle human rights complaints, ratifying the optional protocol of the UN Convention against Torture and implementing a National Prevention Mechanism and Independent Police Complaint Mechanism against torture were mentioned. These are not common parts of a normal “holiday greeting message.” This was perhaps the first time Erdoğan included democratic reforms in a holiday message.
But Erdoğan’s ideological discourse was even more radical. Noting that the goal is ending terrorism and increasing democratic standards to the highest level, the prime minister said: “We cannot walk toward the future until justice and freedom are indisputable. We cannot continue on our path until beliefs and ideas are freed from pressure.” As for the following words, they clearly showed why the army wants to stage a coup: “Every person in this country should be able to see himself as a first-class citizen, everyone should be able to feel that way. This is a debt and responsibility the state owes to its citizens. … There is no country in the world that has collapsed, divided or dissolved for giving more democracy and granting more freedoms to citizens. … It is no one’s business to try to have the current Turkey accept some unfortunate events that took place in the past and practices that conflict with human dignity and principles of reason.”
It was the first time Turks heard such words from a prime minister. Those who thought these words would never be spoken fear the approaching democracy and are therefore carrying out killings and planning coups.
