So that we do not become a fitna for one another

However clear to the point of leaving no one indifferent the dirty and dark relations that emerge as the Ergenekon case continues, the existence of a considerably large mass that is displeased, even made unhappy, by the surfacing of these relations is also becoming more apparent with each passing day. In an interview he gave to Neşe Düzel after the elections, the former General Chairman of the TKP, Nabi Yağcı, said he was horrified by the election results: “Although the facts about Ergenekon came out, especially with the second indictment, it is very thought-provoking that this base still does not say ‘perhaps?’ about Ergenekon and votes for the party of the one who claims to be Ergenekon’s lawyer. There is an ossified base here, a base that has taken sides,” Yağcı said.

The scale of the outrage displayed when the Susurluk incident broke had made it felt that the “desire for cleansing” reflected very broad social support in society. It was understood over time that even the “a minute of darkness for constant light” campaign carried out because of Susurluk itself was an operation in which the Susurluk people could channel the reactions where they wanted, under their own control and by diverting the target.

The organised presence of the Susurluk people in society never disappeared. The organisation that has been reincarnated as Ergenekon rests on that broad base. A miraculous exposure like Susurluk could be covered up only thanks to a broad base spread across every segment of society and the state.

The Ergenekon trial process is the process of deciphering a structure that has held Turkey’s democracy, independence, human rights, reason and everything hostage through Susurluk-style illegal organisations. Quite apart from the fact that some people are not at all excited, and that it stirs no sense of justice at all in them, that the answers to questions everyone has been dying for years to learn are emerging day by day accompanied by spine-chilling facts, it is truly thought-provoking that it increasingly tends to set in motion a weariness, an opposition, toward this trial process.

If only the problem were about violations committed in the trial process. In that case there would be nothing to worry about; it is not at all difficult to reach a consensus that the trial process should be conducted in a more legal manner, more in line with fair trial procedures. No one can, and no one should, look kindly on acting with sadistic and vengeful feelings toward those arrested within the scope of the case. But unfortunately the problem is that opposition to coups, democratic values and human rights have not become common values in Turkey. It appears that there is no exceptionless consensus even that plotting a thousand and one intrigues for a coup if necessary, and committing murders and pinning the blame for those murders on others, is a crime that must be condemned.

The Ergenekon case did not begin out of nowhere, and it is not progressing out of nowhere. It began because, for the first time so openly, a continuous coup order that has held Turkey’s democracy hostage, and about which everyone ostensibly complains, has been caught red-handed. Unfortunately, the coup has not been an exceptional form of government in Turkey but its principal form of government. The times when we appear to be outside the coup periods have been times when Turkey had a regime in which the possibility of a coup was far more determining and set a tutelage over politics. It seems that this regime has also created its own mass of supporters.

That no dirty relation, no cürm-ü meşhud (crime caught in the act) that has emerged regarding Ergenekon can persuade this mass cannot simply be passed over. Ergenekon has created its own base around a discourse that treats all its actions and modes of operation with understanding and excuses its extra-legal practices within a framework of logic. This discourse is a narrow community discourse, and like all narrow community discourses, it can make subjects that are extremely difficult for outsiders to understand or accept intelligible to its own members.

Because the extensions of this base have an organic reach in society that runs from artists to scientists, from bureaucrats to the business world, a simple hitch in the operations can set off a very organic opposition. It is normal that efforts made for the sake of the realisation of justice do not make everyone happy, but it is necessary to dwell on the fact that this anti-justice stance can find a considerable base. It cannot be said that this factor had no part at all in the CHP, which took up Ergenekon advocacy, not experiencing the expected loss of votes and even increasing its votes, and not by a small measure.

In order for the Ergenekon trial process to win the support of absolutely all segments of society, it is essential that social elements not be seen as a field of settling accounts with one another. For this, the language of the publications on the case needs to be reviewed. Care must be taken that a revanchist, partisan language does not contaminate the publications, and a sensitivity that truly looks to the pursuit of justice must be cultivated more. It must not be forgotten that political polarisation has a very interesting nature. By pressing on people’s feelings of identity and “otherness,” we must not bring them to the point of defending things they would normally not be able to defend.

It must be taken into account that some of those who can excuse even Ergenekonist terror have been drawn into a polar magnetic field of attitude precisely because these feelings of “otherness” have been provoked.

This is of course not an excuse, but everyone has the potential to be a fitna (trial, temptation) for another, and this is the point we should pray about: “May God not make us a fitna for one another.”