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Duel or ambush in the fight against the deep state
by
ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ
by
ORHAN KEMAL CENGİZ
In the East, however, there were no duels, but ambushes. If you dishonor or insult someone, you could be attacked when you least expected it. The man who felt as though he was insulted by you could be waiting for you behind a hill. While you were travelling on your horse, thinking this was an ordinary day, at the corner, death might be waiting for you.
Our “deep state” has always been very much in love with the technique of an ambush. We have lost many brilliant people in their bloody ambushes. Actually, their ambushes have not been limited only to these treacherous murders. They have orchestrated many different ambushes in which they made different segments of Turkish society fall in their trap. As I wrote in this column before, you could read recent Turkish history as the history of provocations and manipulations.
Just look at this recent “Cage plan.” Some military officers in the naval forces were planning to wage a long bloody campaign against members of religious minorities in Turkey in order to create a false impression that the “Islamist government” allows non-Muslims in Turkey to be attacked. Then, the Justice and Development Party (AKP) would lose its support from the outside world. Just remember the other coup plan that was revealed before the Cage plan, a “plan to finish off the AKP and Gülen movement” in which they were planning to plant bombs and arms in the houses and business premises of members of the Gülen movement to make they seems like a terrorist group. Since the first days the AKP came to power, some circles in the military has prepared different ambush plans to topple this government.
What is the AKP doing in the face of this endless and relentless campaign some circles in the military are waging against it? Is it ready to change the rules of engagement? Can it challenge its aggressors to a duel?
When “the plan to finish off the AKP” was revealed, the government brought a complaint to the prosecutor in Ankara requesting that he find and punish the “criminals” behind these plans. When the Cage plan was revealed, we witnessed an ambivalent attitude from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. First he rebuked the Taraf daily just because they published the plan and then he stated his discomfort with the plan by using some vague words like “no one can put this nation in a cage.” And finally we have this “Sledgehammer plan,” which copied Turkey’s 1980 coup. Erdoğan disagreed with columnists and writers who urged him and his government to take some drastic measures to fight against illegal units within the state. We also understood from his words that the government knew about the “Sledgehammer plan” at the very early stage of its preparation.
My impression is that actually the government does not know what to do in the face of all these plans that were prepared by people working under their direct orders. This government exhibits an attitude of “learned helplessness.” They do not know what to do; they do not have enough courage to directly confront coup plotters, and with their attitudes, they create quite a dangerous atmosphere. First, with this kind of attitude, they create a kind of surrealistic feeling about these incidents. They behave in such a way as if these incidents are not real. In this way, they help the relentless campaign against them which claims that this whole Ergenekon process is just a fabrication of the government to undermine the army. Second, they encourage these coup plotters who see that their actions go without punishment. With these hesitant behaviors, they may be encouraging the hit men of Ergenekon, who were paralyzed with the launch of the Ergenekon investigation, to start their assassination campaigns once again.
The government cannot declare a duel against its aggressors; it cannot face them. It cannot say I recognize your hostility and I declare war against you. Instead, they prefer to play old games of power. They wait for their turn for an ambush. Their hesitation just makes our journey to democracy longer and more painful!
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