11 May 2012 /MUSTAFA ÜNAL
To be honest, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan surprised people by saying “if the wave of operations in the Feb. 28, 1997 coup investigation are continuous, the country could be overwhelmed.” Erdoğan’s objection to the series of operations inevitably caused different commentaries.
Some people have viewed the prime minister’s words as his way of saying, “The operations should end here,” while others claim that the prime minister is opposed to the 1997 probe. I think neither of these views is correct. Erdoğan thinks the judicial process should move quickly. He isn’t against the main aim, which is trying the perpetrators of the 1997 military coup. His criticism regarding the back-to-back wave of arrests in the investigation should be evaluated not on their own, but together with his previous explanations. A correct commentary about this issue would be as follows: “While making the Feb. 28 coup actors accountable for their actions, one should avoid hurting the judicial process, but this process should move swiftly. In other words, it shouldn’t take a millennium.”