Does the CHP want equality for coup plotters?

As the reaction to the idea of "trying soldiers in civilian courts" is voiced, the symptoms of whatever sickness or trouble anyone has with the mentality of law emerge one by one. When the phrase "trying soldiers in civilian court" is torn from all legal practice and philosophy and put in quotation marks, a strange mentality is at work, one that regards justice as the kadı's property and law as a tool that can be used arbitrarily in the hands of the segment that applies it. The civilian's trying the military sets off a language of rivalry and of battle lines drawn between the military sphere and the civilian sphere. Naturally, this language works in exactly the same way when it is a matter of the cases in which the military tries the civilian. In that case, what underlies the trial is not the application of the logic of law or assisting the realization of justice, but putting the defendant in his place.

Does the great importance attached to whether the one trying is a soldier or a civilian not show, at the same time, that courts are very much "preferred" together with the justice they deliver? Does the scandal that Şener Eruygur's wife displayed at GATA, calling some courts "ours" and others "theirs," not show in fact that this is rooted in everyone's mind?

All of our expectations of law thus turn into a perfect scandal. It is institutionally expressed that there is no open trust in the supremacy of law, or in the objectivity, impersonality and transparency of legal procedures. Worse, it is ever more openly acknowledged that certain judicial processes provide privileges to certain people.

The matter has one more dimension, which Murat Belge recalled in yesterday's column (Taraf newspaper). The multi-legalism debates that came onto the agenda because of the Medina Charter were considered grounds for closing down the Welfare Party even "as mere debate," remember? From this reaction to the idea of multi-legalism one could imagine how badly it was received. Yet today we clearly see that we already have a multi-legalism that is in force in fact, in the form of military law and civil law, and moreover with constitutional references. Moreover, this multi-legalism has been established not on a religious, ethnic, cultural or federative basis, but on a basis that answers to the privileges of certain groups.

It is clear that the regulation concerning the trial of soldiers in civilian courts is not without problems with respect to the text of the current Constitution. For that reason, what course the President should follow is a separate matter. But even if there is a problem with the current Constitution, there is no doubt that the idea itself is very much in keeping with the logic of universal law. Moreover, there is no one who does not know that the current constitution itself owes its existence to the greatest crime that can be committed against the whole country, the crime of coup. One must also remember that the legal provision before the President is precisely one of the defensive barricades dug by those who committed this very crime in order to block the way to their own trial.

By contrast, the CHP's treatment of this regulation, which came onto the agenda just when it appears to be waging the struggle to try those who carried out the 12 September coup, is a complete oddity and an example of "not knowing what one is doing." If the CHP really wants those who carried out 12 September to be tried, we cannot even think that it does not know that even their trial will be possible only if these regulations are made.

How can the opposition to the trial of soldiers in civilian courts by CHP leader Deniz Baykal, who really wants to try the 12 September coup plotters, be explained?

Of course, one explanation is, in fact, that Baykal is saying amen to a prayer that cannot be granted, wishing for something that cannot be. We are not even counting the practical impossibility of trying a coup plotter whose age has reached 93.

When his attitudes in all these events are assessed, we understand that what Baykal wants in sum is nothing other than "equality for coup plotters." But this equality is something like an "equality of the right to stage a coup." It appears that Baykal, who has occupied the left lane of Turkish politics for years, understands even equality, as a leftist value, in this way: "Let us try the coup of 30 years ago today. Let us try today's coup plotters 30 years from now, but let us not actually touch their right to stage coups. Because we have no right to deprive them of the rights and means used by those who staged a coup 30 years ago (!)."

Shall we say, then, is the CHP remembering its leftist values again, or what shall we say?