Becoming transparent

 But still, Western democracies did not emphasize transparency in the past. The main subject in theory, that is “the individual,” was turned into “the citizen” in real life, consequently becoming the carrier of a stance that highlights the interests of the state and the nation. The interests in question were much more important than individual interests and considered to be under much more threat. It reached the point where anything considered to be bad for the state was almost naturally considered to be bad for the individual who was a citizen of the state.

 This perception led to the alienation of the individual from information, to information being concentrated in state institutions and to the monopolizing of some strategic information in certain departments of the bureaucratic circle that were unknown to the public. Citizens did not know where information was collected but neither did they react to information deprivation.

 This peculiar state-society relationship that is called “liberal” but is reminiscent of a more authoritarian foundation generated a much deeper political organization in countries such as Turkey, which had no trouble reflecting the authoritarian and fascistic spirit of the period between the two world wars in the understanding of its administration. On the other hand, there was a striking difference between Turkey and Western societies. While the issue in Europe was about individuals being turned into citizens, in the newly established Turkey the issue was that the individual was defined according to the properties of a small intellectual segment of society.

 Therefore, in European democracies the balance between being an individual and being a citizen created a political space for society. In Turkey, however, the state quickly pulled the citizen that had not even become an individualized character yet into its own force. State interest was undeniably presented as the main concern and “proper” citizenship was defined as the person that obeyed the necessities of state interest.

 In Turkey, the state had been dictating how citizens needed to think and talk for a very long time, and those who did not listen could be accused with treason. The cause of the asymmetric power relationship in question was asymmetric information. The issue here wasn't that there were different quantities of information in the hands of the state and society, but that society was intentionally left ignorant and that the entire scope of strategic information was collected in the state, in particular in the military.

 It is obvious that democracy cannot come from this kind of a regime. Perhaps what's more important is that there is a bureaucracy that has taken its own people as hostages. This situation not only explains why coups have become normal in Turkey but also how the military can retreat to its barracks unquestioned after each coup. The military does not have to physically be ruling in power for events to evolve in the way it wants because the official ideology requires that military tutelage be a criteria for “democracy.”

Therefore the events that have transpired over the last 10 years are really an expression of becoming transparent. The regime's anachronistic quality, which has become more evident with the European Union criteria, is an ordinary piece of information today. In Turkey, becoming transparent does not imply the broadening of social information or making rational democratic preferences, it means “uncovering” the government and revealing its true nature.

This is the real function of the Ergenekon case. The issue isn't just about punishing coup leaders; it is about exposing the institutional background of the pro-coup mentality. The real purpose of the steps the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) government has taken to limit the authority of the military judiciary is to prevent the judiciary from protecting this institutional background.

Unlike Western countries, Turkey first learned about how to become a citizen and is now just discovering individualism. The irony is that a significant segment of the secular society is experiencing difficulty with transferring from being a citizen to becoming an individual while conservatives that were secretly opposing being a citizen are becoming individualized much more easily.