Long live Kenan Paşa!

Since I first heard that he was hospitalized, I have been really praying for his health. I hope the 92-year-old man will have a life long enough to stand trial for his crimes against humanity.

I wish him not only a long but also a healthy life, so he will not be able to escape the trials. If he will not be healthy when judgment day comes, the people of this country, whose hearts always relent, may feel pity for this relentless man.

A man whose hands are covered with the blood of at least 221 persons. I wish just like Lady Macbeth he saw his bloody hands not only in his nightmares but even when awake, but I don't think that he has a heart for that.  

Of his victims, 50 were killed by his or his four friends' direct order. One of them was just 17 years old, a high school student. In order to hang him, by the orders of Evren and his friends, the court decided that his bones were actually older than 17, so he was mature enough to be killed.

The other 171 people were killed by torture. Some of them so regretted what they did that they threw themselves from the windows of police stations! Some of them were shot to death while running away, but since they were running away backwards, their wounds were not in their backs but in their chests.

I wish him a long and healthy life so that he may stand trial for his crimes and can try to empathize with the almost 230,000 people who were in court at that time by his order.

But I don't want him to be judged with the demand of the death penalty, as he demanded for 7,000 people, since in principle I am against the death penalty. By the way, 517 people were sentenced to death under Evren's reign, but they stopped executing after the first 50.

I wish he was questioned on the 14,000 who were stripped of their citizenship, and all the 1.5 million who were recorded by the state as traitors and so were not able to find jobs anywhere.

I wish a long and healthy life to him, so that he can explain all these provocations which took place at that time and made the public almost beg for a military coup; I really hope he explains how all those provocations and clashes in the streets could end within one day: is it because the perpetrators finally seized power?

I was just 10 years old when he and his friends orchestrated a coup. Aside from being subject to his brainwashing campaigns to create a militarist, undemocratic generation, I don't have a personal problem with him so I am not after revenge, but if his victims want that, I can easily understand it.

The reason I want to see him standing trial is to be sure that criminals like him know that even if they have constitutional immunity they cannot carry out military coups whenever they want.

I strongly believe that to make laws preventing coups or to improve democratic rules and the rule of law is not good enough as long as the accountability part is missing. If Evren was standing trial for his crimes, if some people were not praising him even today, there would not an Ergenekon gang.

But on the other hand I have to say that to see posters on Internet forums wish him physical pain or wish that he drown in his own blood disturbs me greatly. Because I strongly believe that even hardened criminals like military coup leaders deserve a fair trial in which their dignity is preserved, since I believe that those kind people are so gifted as to contaminate others with all the evil that they have and there must be a difference between them and the good people.

My God! I believe in your justice, I am sure none of the crimes will remain unpunished in the “other world,” but please grant a healthy and long life to Kenan Evren so our life here in this world can be better and more democratic.

Long live Kenan Paşa, long enough to stand while your victims can look into your eyes; isn't that better than the destiny of your Chilean counterpart Pinochet? Remember, he also died while about to stand trial, and some Chileans spit on his coffin at his funeral.