What did Turkish socialism do on 15 July?

The coup attempt that took place on the night of July 15 placed a rather interesting picture before us. While Turkish society, with its women and children, its cars and its bodies, stood against the coup attempt, shielding tanks, warplanes and rifles with its chest, certain segments watched the developments (sometimes rubbing their hands). Others, leaning on the conformism of "we had already said so," set about looking for how they could hold the government responsible for what had happened. At a time when we should have waited for some time to pass even to make an assessment, the Socialist intellectual immediately supplied all the data needed for an analysis and rapidly scattered into these two pursuits (of course there were exceptional writings or attitudes, like that of Roni Marquiles).

In Turkey the socialist left has in every period been the greatest merchant of opposition to coups and the military, and in periods when the threat of coups and the military was at a minimum it was the usurer of this opposition. When the military boot began to cast its shadow over democratic institutions, we saw that the socialists, who ran into the streets at every opportunity, from the trees in Gezi Park to LGBT protests, stayed shut up in their homes. Therefore the night of July 15 was also a night of shame for Turkey's socialists.

Turkish socialism, too, in past military coups did nothing beyond trading in them and producing a literature of victimhood. For example, May 27 was already a military action that Turkish socialism guarded in the 1960s like its honor and pride. Turkish socialism was a movement that had forged such a bond with this coup that we could perhaps say it sprang from the May 27 coup.

March 12 crushed the socialists, yes, but rather than opposing it, Turkish socialists engaged in usury over the dramas that took place after this memorandum. On September 12 and February 28, Turkish socialists took part in no action that would put into practice the opposition to coups of which they were so proud. For example, we could not see a single socialist intellectual in the front ranks when the military intervened in politics. The socialist intellectual, who yells and screams as if flesh were being torn from his flesh when his habitus is touched, or when he falls prey to such a delusion, we did not see climbing onto a tank or standing before it when the military drove the tank, or at least expressing his reaction in a square.

In the July 15 coup attempt the reaction of the socialists was no different. When the masses whom they generally look down on, whom they believe are ready to be herded by a leader and whom they therefore disregard and even loathe, the people whom they regard as an uncontrolled mob, climbed onto the tanks, they felt no embarrassment whatsoever. What was expected of them was to stand against the coup as much as they talked, but they preferred to analyze "why did this coup attempt fail?"

For example, Murat Belge, the great socialist (!), who takes social movements so seriously (!) that he included the Gezi Park events even in his book comparing Russian Literature and Turkish Literature, made the following analysis immediately after the coup attempt: The coup failed, Erdoğan will get stronger. The logic and method of analysis Belge uses makes the following inference possible too: Belge prefers a military coup to Erdoğan getting stronger.

Or let us look at another socialist intellectual, Tanıl Bora. Bora, who is so sensitive to political and social developments that after the Süper Lig ended he declared Amed Sportif the champion of the season, after the July 15 coup attempt published an article titled "Nezaket" ("Courtesy") on the website of the journal Birikim and, without mentioning what had happened, continued to fire from an ideological position in the context of a debate over whether a HDP deputy should or should not be given the floor in the Parliament. As for what happened on the night of July 15, he chose a conscious silence.

For example, Bora had not given the reactions he gave after the Suruç attack or the Gar attack after the PKK-TAK actions in Ankara and Istanbul. Although one found this strange, it was possible to interpret it as an ideological positioning. But how should the unresponsiveness he is in after the coup attempt be interpreted? Could it be the shame of having been unable to leave his home when he should have been in the very front ranks, or the embarrassment caused by the "masses," of whom he was always suspicious, standing in front of the tank? Or should we interpret it as Bora too preferring a coup to an Erdoğan administration?

Another socialist, Ömer Laçiner, perhaps because he is a Turkish socialist, chooses once again to present the repelling of the coup as his own doing. Look at what he says in his article:

"There is absolutely no need for the segment committed to democracy and the values of civilization, opposed to the AKP, which passed with dignity and success a quite serious "democracy despite everything" test on July 15, to be seized by panic and by the worry that Erdoğan will increase his power on this occasion."

Someone who does not know Laçiner would think that Laçiner was among the people who negotiated with soldiers on the Bosphorus Bridge, entered the General Staff, or took over the TRT building. Yet as to what Laçiner did during the coup attempt, there can be two alternatives. Either he had gone out to look for an open market to stock up on durable goods such as pasta and bulgur after withdrawing a hefty sum of cash from the ATM, or he was following the developments on television while cracking pumpkin seeds.

It is hardly a thing seen or heard that, in the face of a coup attempt, any behavior other than these two modes of action has come from the tense mass of intellectuals among us who attribute themselves to socialism.