ERDOGAN'S COUP

What happened in Turkey recently ? There was a failed coup attempt on July 15 by some of the lower ranked military officers that are allegedly the sympathizers of the Gulen movement. Gulen is a rich and powerful imam who was given the permanent residency status in the US almost ten years ago. It is no secret that his followers were systematically positioned in Turkey's justice system, educational institutions, ministries, government, military and in the police force by Erdogan. In the last fourteen years of AK Party's reign in power, Gulen has been given unconditional open access and full control in all state affairs simply because they were sharing the same goal. Their shared vision was to topple the secular republic of Turkey, and convert it to a quasi-islamic republic.

Gulen's men were from the educated crust, a so-called islamic bourgeoisie that Erdogan urgently needed the kind of brain power to execute his government and silence opposition using the Gulenist judges and prosecutors. In return, when Gulen needed to engulf more power Erdogan gave it to him, favored his men to get government contracts, win bids in privatization of the state owned energy hubs, telecommunication lines, television stations, media channels, papers etc. Their mutual collaboration existed so long as one did not harm the other. The biggest obstacle that could resist or slow down the holy mission of this axis of Islamic alliance, was the army. Even though Gulen was persistently trying to penetrate into the military since the late Ozal era after the 1980 coup, it was never an easy undertaking. The army's established core values in protecting the secular nature of the state was strong and resisting. Nonetheless, they were able to influence the upper ranks of the army to prevent the secular minded Kemalist hardliners to hold the highest seats in the army.

The 1980 coup made a huge dent in Turkey's future. The post coup era has an essential pivoting influence in transforming the Turkish political landscape that has a direct outcome in laying the way to Erdogan's supreme dominancy in 2000s. In the late 1970s, when the south American countries have civil unrest and bloody clashes between the right and the left wing camps, Turkey's situation was no different with a semi-socialist economy struggling to feed its people. Capitalism was on the rise, crushing everything in its way. Even USSR could not stand, and it finally fell. Though, the cold-war era fear mongering toward communism never ceased to exist in the minds of the western foreign policy strategists. They had found a reliable source to eradicate communism completely, the innate power within the society, the religious conservatism in Christian nations, and an invented fictitious moderate-islam notion for the islamic countries. Indeed, when they needed to weaken Russia, they helped the fledgling islamic militia to grow with the help of Saudi capital to arm rebels in Afghanistan. This was not only harming Russia, but also a continuous lucrative business in selling arms to Islamic fundamentalists. The selling of arms was very profitable for the major arms dealers in the US, France and UK that flooded the Middle East with tens of billions of dollars worth war machines and equipments.

The leftist and the rightist divisions in Turkish politics were fighting with each other on the streets, in the university yards, throwing sticks and stones to each other in the late 1970s. There was anarchy and the political parties were not capable of lowering the heat in both camps. The army once again was called upon to establish peace on the streets. The army's punishment of the left was unprecedented and unbalanced compared to the right wingers. The leftist minded university professors, journalists were prosecuted, jailed, tortured and banned from the politics. Some escaped and lived in exile in foreign countries. In this post coup era the youth is ridden off of the political adherence to any parties, the pop-culture was infused into the politics. The parties that have no clear ideologies were established; Mainland Party, Welfare Party, Social Democratic Party were among the major few. The street smart people, mostly construction contractors who wanted to be in the politics that were not motivated by any ideology, but to make personal gains, was populating the seats in the post-coup parliament. The east block cloak of Turkey's closed economy was quickly transforming to become an open market that is flooded with western imports. Turgut Ozal, who was a strong advocate for open trade with a capitalist economy, then president, incentivized imports by state funding as credits paid to anyone who proves the trade with another country. There were imports of tons of unworthy stones but Turkish state paid billions to the crooks based on the weight of the transactions. The corruption in this uncontrolled economy coined the phrase "Turning the corner" in Turkish. The sacred values were forgotten and the society was transformed to think personal gain over anything, including republican principles and secularism.

The societal decline was helping the islamic circles that are so-called "Cemaats" to flourish. "Cemaats" saw the opportunity to expand into political spheres with emboldened ambition and systematic strategy. The situation was all inline with the US's vision for the Middle East, backing the Islamic political movements to eradicate communism and if they fight in sectarian wars, all is better to sell more arms to make more profit. However it was soon to be backfired, not only to the US interest in the region but also in the homeland. Similarly, Europeans were also living the era of blindness, a fluffy liberalism, that failed to see the danger of growing Islamic migrants within its borders. The muslim migrants from the Middle East and Northern Africa were not assimilated by the European values and enlightenment from the religion's dogmatic cronyism. Instead, they were creating in-bred environments in the outskirts of the European cities, joining to the social club membership under the domes of mosques and fall victims to deposit hatred for the very environment that gave them a decent life. They were becoming the warriors of Cihad to eradicate the western world. The tools to achieve the desired outcome was to demand democracy for tolerance even though Islam's way was not only subjugating women but also showing no tolerance to the other faiths. Abusing democracy was simply seen as a practical tool to gain more power while Europeans sleep walk in much of 80s, 90s, and still today. A true muslim can not be a laik or secular as Erdogan himself cited many times in public. Indeed, the west's overlooking the other way, or even helping the political islam, had a shocking revelation to Europeans that Islam had no desire to live in secularism or submit to anything other than Islam.

Erdogan and his own fabric within the growing Islamic pop-culture in Turkish electorate captured secular republic of Ataturk's Turkey hostage. He made an oath to establish Ottoman like Islamic republic in 2023 after 100 years of the secular Republic's founding by Ataturk.

Fast forwarding to July 15, a month later, ninety thousand civil servants got fired, more than eleven thousand were prosecuted and put in jail from judiciary, military, public services and universities with the charges of high treason by being a member to the Gulenist movement. Even the artists, singers and performers, who did not vehemently criticized the coup, were indicted for not being vocal enough against the coup. The travesty continued arresting atheist journalists and activists, and military officers as members to the Gulen's movement who were known to be opposing to the Islamic AKP with no possible association to Gulen whatsoever. They have constituted quick laws to apprehend security threats as police force deems necessary without requiring to submit a court order, to appoint temporary administrators to various institutions such as the lawyers and judges unions, newspapers and media outlets under the broad charge of Gulenist involvement. They have quelled the Army by closing military schools and war academy where the elite commanders of the Turkish army have been trained. To make it even more shameful for the military school cadets, all students including the seniors were sent to civilian religious schools. The first lieutenants were discharged from the military just months after their graduation.

If the coup had not happened, these were nearly impossible even to consider. However, thanks to the failed coup attempt, Erdogan carried out all these actions so swiftly and virtually against no opposition. Even the main opposition party did not show any resistance. They too were happy to see the cleansing of Gulen's supporters from the public services. Erdogan held a rally for democracy that he spoke before over a million supporters in Istanbul, and among the cheerful, there were also the secular people of Turkey, artists, journalists, and even the leftists. All were blinded by the failed coup attempt and even though many thousands were jailed, still no one knows exactly who was behind it. Most pointed fingers towards US backing the alleged coup attempt by Gulenists without evidence. The Turkish people regardless of their political inclinations like to jump into the band wagon of accepting conspiracies as de-facto whenever they face with similar troubles. One big well deserved excuse for this rationale, is the West's reputation meddling with the affairs of the nations in the Middle East. They have an undeniable role in creating a chaotic environment for sectarian and religious wars that left Middle East in blood and disastrous human tragedy. Surprisingly, it was Trump who suggested to impeach Bush and his cabinet for the mess we are in in Syria and Iraq today.

Turkish people should understand that Erdogan and Gulen were both the products of the Turkish society. The less advantaged masses living in the suburbs and the poor pious Turkish folk empowered these two Islamists. They were not made in the USA. Gulen was probably faired by the US in his affairs to open schools in post Soviet republics for the hope that the ailing imam might instigate reform in Islam, and the spread of religion might also disintegrate those ex-Soviet republics causing the same kind of chaos it had inflicted in the Middle East. It is also true that if it was possible to indoctrinate Islam with tolerance advocated by Gulen became successful, it would be the convenient lie affirming the US foreign policy makers' position stating to have accomplished the lacking enlightenment reforms in Islam. These all proved to be utterly wrong causing only human drama and unending conflicts. Regardless of the US interest backing either Islamists in the past, the current reality is that the Turkish people need to pull themselves out of the slanting slope towards Islamic fundamentalism. The unjust arrests of teenager Facebook users, discharged Kemalist army officers with false accusations, tens of thousands of civil servants that have no ties to Gulen but considered to be in opposition to AKP, the witch hunt still continues today and it could randomly hit home to anyone tomorrow. Not Americans but the Turks will rescue the Turks, they need to put secular values above all else and fight against erdo-cracy.

Now, after one and a half month over the failed coup attempt, Erdogan has swept any threat in front of his dreams to convert Turkey to an Ottoman-esque autocratic Islamic country. For the sake of a logical exercise, If we forget the Gulen's involvement for the coup, one could easily argue that looking at what Erdogan accomplished in such a short time, he could have easily staged this coup. If we continue to this hypothesis, there is actually no evidence to disprove the possibility. The coup was designed to be a failure from the beginning. The timing was particularly bad (no coup was attempted at the busiest hours at night time), the pilots who were given the task to arrest or kill him, inexplicable did not even know about his location. They showed up in front of his Marmaris residence three hours late after he already escaped with another aircraft. The TV stations and telecommunication hubs were not cut off from broadcasting. He was able to instruct his mob to go out on the streets in front of the tanks to defend his presidency via FaceTime broadcasted by CNNTurk. Is this a serious coup or a joke, one would legitimately ask. Yet 250 people perished, and thousands were wounded. His palace stood tall when air force mis-guided its bombardment over its perimeter fence when they had the ability to pinpoint the shot in 10 meter accuracy. Similarly suspiciously, the bombardment of the parliamentary building did not make any sense other than the fact that it created an overwhelming consensus across the citizens in all party lines to see the coup instigators against the country's democratic institutions. The head of Turkish national intelligence organization, Hakan Fidan, still keeps his jobs even though he should have been fired due to his shortcomings to be unaware of an oncoming coup.

A more logical explanation is that when Erdogan voiced his desire to Fidan to find out the possible ways to expedite the Islamisation of Turkey, instead of patiently waiting for the political process, Fidan might have given him the advise as a rogue coup that would not only eliminate his rival Gulen but also remove the Army's resistance in his way. The fact that he was neither resigned nor fired from his position backs this diabolically cunning theory. They just needed a few provocateurs in the lower ranked personnel and attract others who were already willing to take Erdogan down without knowing about this ill-fated attempt destined to fail. They make sure that the risk would be minimal and the end result is guaranteed to be a total victory for Erdogan's actions following its failure.

No one still knows, but it sounds equally convincing for either Erdogan himself staged the coup or Gulen was allegedly behind it. Regardless, the Turkish people need to wake up for what is really happening and to realize that the end of Ataturk's secular republic is very near.