Attended by thousands of democrats from all walks of life and diverse lifestyles, this protest was the best response to then-Chief of General Staff Gen. Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu, who had replaced Gen. İbrahim Hakkı Karadayı during the coup process, saying, “Feb. 28 will last for 1,000 years.”“Early finale: the end of 1,000 years.” Hmmm… That sounds very pleasant to the ears. It creates a sense of relief and happiness. But, to what extent does this slogan apply to our case? Is it really the end of the most depraved, most outrageous, most despicable and most contemptible ever military coup process that started on Feb. 28, 1997? Do you really think that the damage done to our democracy and social life by the subversive pashas and their civilian collaborators who disgracefully dared to fight against their own nation through lies, conspiracies and treacherously plotted scenarios as seen in the Aczimendi and Ali Kalkancı cases has finally ended? Or can it be that this postmodern coup process which we think has been prematurely terminated manages to survive the reform gauntlet and permeates itself through legal and de facto mechanisms implanted in the system as its predecessors, the coup of May 27, 1960, the memorandum of March 12, 1971, and the coup of Sept. 12, 1980, had successfully done in the past?
Let me elaborate on this with an analogy. The impact of military coups on social and democratic political structures is like a giant sledgehammer’s blow on an earthen jug. Such a sledgehammer blow will break the jug into pieces. Even if the violence and terror created by the impact of this blow disappears immediately, it is no longer possible to call the resulting fragmented jug a proper jug.
Moreover, if there are small hammers that shamefully try to break the jug pieces scattered around by the initiative blow from the giant sledgehammer into smaller ones and prevent any effort to repair those pieces by gluing them back into their original place, and if these hammers make the effect of the initial blow be felt all the time, then wouldn’t it be naive to think that the big blow is over?
Also, everyone knows that repairing a jug that is smashed to smithereens will take a considerable amount of time, and it will never be repaired as good as the original. Given the fact that those small hammers continue to make an impact -- that is individually small, but amounts to a great force on the aggregate -- on the broken pieces as the efforts to repair them continue, it is almost impossible to put those pieces together to make a jug which, even if can be restored to its original shape, will not function as in the old days.
Our current democracy is like this jug in our analogy even though our brave democrats have exerted and continue to exert good intentioned efforts to repair it. However skillfully we do try to repair it, it does not look likely that the jug will be restored to its original form -- which was, we must admit, not perfect already and so by original form we mean what it ideally should be -- because of the continuous blows to each of its pieces.
The impact of the postmodern coup of Feb. 28 is like this. If your top judiciary still consists of judges and prosecutors who were “well” trained in military briefings held during the Feb. 28 process and if 17 out of 18 articles of the decision which the impotent prime minister of the time signed during the National Security Council (MGK) meeting held on the date after which the coup is named, i.e., Feb. 29, 1997, are still in force, then we cannot justifiably speak about an “early finale” or “the end of 1,000 years.” Moreover, if every step taken to make Turkey more civilian, free and more democratic bumps into the Feb. 28 postmodern military coup mentality, wouldn’t it be pollyannaish to declare the end of Feb. 28?
If the headscarf ban on university campuses, imposed during the Feb. 28 postmodern coup process and which Parliament attempted to lift with the support of 80 percent of its deputies in 2008, is still firmly in place, who can claim that Feb. 28 has ended? In a country where the Constitutional Court, dominated by judges who were indoctrinated by Feb. 28 overstepped their powers and canceled the bill that lifted the ban with the support of 411 deputies, can we imagine the end of Feb. 28? If Parliament, particularly because of this scandalous decision by the Constitutional Court, cannot wield its legislative power on basic matters, fearing that they might be canceled by the said court, then don’t you think there is a peculiarity whose roots can be traced back to the Feb. 28 process?
And the scandalous coefficient mechanism which was invented by the Feb. 28 postmodern military coup just to finish off the imam-hatip high schools, eventually victimized vocational high schools more than it did imam-hatip schools by stripping students of equal educational opportunities. Could we abolish it so that we can talk about an “early finale” today? Were the rights and reputation of those who were purged from the military on charges of being “reactionary” without any substantial evidence and without due process during the Feb. 28 process instituted so that we can readily refer to the “end of 1,000 years”?
Did the media and civilian collaborators of the Feb. 28 postmodern military coup feel regret for what they did and apologize to the Turkish nation for the injustice they carried out and the victimization they caused and stop engaging in the same scandalous business today so that we can think about the end of the Feb. 28 process? Did the top generals who planed and ruthlessly implemented this coup feel regret and apologize to the nation for what they did? Or is it me who did not hear their apologies or who was uninformed about their trials? The cursed legacy of the Feb. 28 military coup which converted the straitjacket that the military coup of Sept. 12, 1980 had put on this nation to an iron corset, doesn’t it continue to steal our fundamental rights and freedoms today? So why should we deceive ourselves with the argument that the process has ended?
As I said above, every single piece of our democracy jug which was smashed to smithereens by the Feb. 28 sledgehammer still continues to suffer from the blow from the small hammers which aspire to be like that sledgehammer. Of course, positive progress has been made to eliminate the Feb. 28 regime during the last seven or eight years. But this progress has only served to stop the hammer blows on some of these pieces. The solution is to reformat the antidemocratic system, which is the legacy of all military coups, from scratch. And to serve as the handbook of this democratic reformatting process, a new democratic constitution must be drafted by civilians in accordance with the values and needs of our time. Without seeing this constitution, drafted with a civilian and democratic spirit, and its implementation in real life, I will personally never think that the Feb. 28 postmodern military coup or even the military coup of Sept. 12 has ended.
