Who is on the other side of the asymmetric psychological war?

It is truly a very strange situation that the only institution that has a "psychological warfare department" within its structure is complaining about the results of an asymmetric psychological war. The reasons for the strangeness are not one, not two, but many...

First of all, to complain about the asymmetric nature of a war in general, one has to accept that there is a war and that one is a party to that war, and then that one is a victim of an unfair distribution of power in that war. Psychological war is, whichever way you look at it, a form of war in which the dimension of trickery and intrigue is characteristically decisive. Judging by his statements at the press conference, the Chief of the General Staff apparently sees the TSK as the victimized party of a psychological war.

Let us recall that the first person to speak of asymmetric war, again seeing himself as the victim of this war, was George W. Bush. Does the fact that Bush, who with the war machine he set in motion caused the deaths of millions of people in Afghanistan and Iraq, nevertheless saw the US as a "victim of asymmetric war" perhaps point to the fact that the whole practice of power can at the same time be felt together with a "helplessness"?

When the boundless practices of psychological warfare previously employed to prepare the ground for coups pass before our eyes one by one, the grotesqueness in question turns into a nightmare from which we wish to wake as soon as possible.

The unthinkable, morally intolerable methods resorted to before and after the coup in order to give 27 May a legitimacy or rightfulness in the eyes of the public have been seen better with each passing day.

The methods again resorted to by military circles in the process leading up to 9 (12) March cost the lives of hundreds of innocent young people.

Five thousand Turkish youths had to be sacrificed for the sake of the psychological war waged to justify the process leading to 12 September.

For the military tutelage regime, which was thoroughly entrenched and stabilized after the eighties, to be brought to completion, "30 thousand martyrs" had to be given.

For the immoral economic and political power of 28 February to be sustained, above all a very comprehensive psychological war had to be waged, and for the sake of this war millions in society were discredited and othered. From the Turkish people, at the point we have reached, groups, parties and segments that hate one another were created.

Learning that all the mass events that caused deep pain in the Turkish people were engineered today within the framework of this psychological warfare causes a great psychological trauma. Thankfully, this trauma also enables society to be somewhat rehabilitated at some levels. Learning that the people did not turn on one another with such evil eyes without special intervention surely makes many of the Turkish people say "thank God," and most likely re-establishes, psychologically, the people's own perception of their wholeness.

Even if it had angered many people with the decision he gave in disregard of the rules and customs of law, the very possibility of religiously motivated terror emerging against a high judge in Turkish society (as in the Council of State murder) was frightening enough. The facts that have come out at least offer a possibility of consolation in connection with this event. The only force that had made us believe that in this country there existed a bogey of reactionism, a threat of partition, a missionary or Sabbatean invasion, and in the past even a communist danger, was none other than this psychological operation.

The statements, in the 27 April e-memorandum published right after the anti-missionary propaganda carried on for years through secularist-nationalist circles was brought to completion with the Malatya publishing house massacre, which placed devout masses under suspicion for this murder, had in fact revealed clearly enough what a product of psychological warfare this whole process was.

Is it not truly strange that today a discourse of victimhood is being expressed on behalf of the TSK in the field of psychological warfare, which, with the countless examples laid out from 27 May to 27 April, has been adopted as a form of governance?

Under what symmetrical conditions would the psychological war have to take place for this victimhood to be remedied?

For that, must we not first answer a bit more clearly the following question? If one side of this psychological war is the TSK, who is the other side?

Looking at the language of the document being defended, of the addenda, of the memoranda, one finds that although the priorities of each period change, there is an enemy definition that in sum encompasses the entire people. So, in a psychological war waged against the people, what kind of balance of power could satisfy the soldier's sense of symmetry?

Is there any way other than for the TSK to begin to give up regarding the people as the "other" side of its own war?