From coup to revolution: 15 July

After many historic events, people say that in Turkey nothing will ever be the same again... Of all that has happened, this phrase probably suits July 15 best. Indeed, after July 15 everything in Turkey has changed. The dark organization that had been scheming stealthily for 50 years to seize Turkey, and had accumulated a hard-to-believe power, poured out the accumulation of those 50 years that night in order to take the country captive, and in doing so it unintentionally paved the way for an epic and unparalleled genuine Revolution in Turkey. Of course, what that dark organization wanted, and had stealthily planned with great care for years, was merely a vile coup. But whatever they planned, something else came out of it.

Frankly, what came out was, in its clearest form and in the true sense of the word, a people's revolution. A magnificent uprising in which the people, defying death in the face of armed force, took ownership of the state and filled the content of being a nation in its most meaningful form. People filled the squares ready to die, obeying the instructions of a leader whom they regarded as their own, whom they felt represented them best, and with whom they identified. In only a few hours, not many, they displayed the most disciplined, the most purposeful, the most dignified and the most noble resistance in the world, and carried it through to the result.

Within a few hours, they made the world too narrow for the most unhinged coup in Turkish history, which had set out to eliminate their leader and take the country captive. In doing so they did not use weapons, they did not answer violence with violence, and they did not fall into any of the traps of the coup-plotting terrorists, who had made setting them against one another part of their plans. They all moved so synchronized, in such harmony, that everywhere in Turkey they displayed the same noble behavior, the same examples of heroism, the same scenes of faith and courage.

July 15, together with the series of social and political consequences it has brought, will undoubtedly have changed many things in Turkey. Many things, from civil-military relations to those features of the military institutions, otherwise untouchable, that were the source of chronic problems. But in fact, through its important contribution to our understanding of the nature of revolutions in Turkey and even in the world, it will also force a revision of the sociology curriculum from beginning to end. The July 15 Revolution is an event that will put to shame the Western Orientalist sociology that presents strong society, civil society and the demand for democracy as a merit belonging only to itself, and will turn its entire curriculum upside down.

It is an event that will require re-examining from scratch both the Right-Left language of politics and all the theoretical approaches to historical change. No sociology or political theory that ignores this event and refuses to evaluate it properly will, from now on, have any standing.

We will of course continue to discuss the manifestations of this change. At this point, let me leave you with an account of July 15 through the eyes of a very hard-line leftist, but one with open eyes and an open conscience, circulating on social media:

''I am a 64-year-old leftist and a CHP supporter.

Until now I always felt hatred inside me toward the AK Party and Tayyip Erdoğan.

I wanted Erdoğan gone, and my hatred grew even more after he banned alcohol after 10 p.m.

I always wanted him gone; if he wasn't going by election, I wanted him to go by coup, up until that coup night.

The announcer on TRT said "the army has taken over the administration."

Something snapped inside me.

What I had wanted to happen for years had happened, but I was uneasy.

When I heard the sounds coming from the streets I went outside, and I saw everyone rushing to their cars; hearing the sound of horns and the cries of Allahu Akbar I was frightened, I said, has war broken out, what is going on. Seeing the people's agitation, the anger in their eyes, I was frightened, I said there is something behind this business, and I went back home and kept watching TV.

Erdoğan was calling on the people to come out into the squares, but the people had already come out into the streets before he even made the call, I saw it with my own eyes.

Then I looked at the TV, TRT had been stormed, I saw soldiers firing, the airports and the Bosphorus Bridge overflowing with people, people who stood up to the tanks coming at them, who lay down under tanks, people at the airport pressing their heads against the glass and crying for the president, men who stopped a tank, climbed on it and drove it to the barracks, women who gave the coup plotters no passage, people shouting, people chanting takbir, people who drove back huge tanks and jets; there were as many people in the streets as on the Day of Judgment.

At that moment, right there, a change took place in me. I understood that this was a struggle for the homeland, a coup against the will of the nation, against democracy.

Late as it was, I understood one more thing.

If Tayyip Erdoğan goes, the homeland goes, the country goes, the nation goes; it was true. I swear, comfort had gone to our heads.

During the Gezi events Erdoğan used to call on people not to go out and say "we are barely holding fifty percent at home." And I would say "he is intimidating us, your voters are a bunch of wimps, do they have the guts to go out," and I would belittle those men.

Now I understand that those men went out even risking death. Those men gave 250 martyrs, yet not a single reproach, not a single bad word came out of their mouths.

Ours had burned and wrecked the place for Berkin Elvan, and I used to think our kids were heroes and boast about them.

I swear, right now I would kiss, one by one and without any disgust, the feet of those people who risked their lives in those squares that night and saved the future of all of us.

When those men said "You killed Abdülhamid and we kept quiet. You hanged Menderes and we were not there. You poisoned Özal and we were not there, but we will not let you devour ERDOĞAN," they were very serious.

I always thought they were just saying it and made fun of them. I would say "Pah pah pah, if you were fire you would burn only as much ground as your crime."

That night I understood that these men are strong and determined enough to defy the world, even to burn it; by God, they wrote an epic, by God, they wrote an epic.

Tayyip Erdoğan has his devoted people beside him, but apart from that there is one more very powerful thing protecting him.

The most beautiful part of it was that all of them suddenly came together without saying this party or that party. I think other rightists were there too; their coming together in unity was a beauty of its own. In fact when I watched these events, the heroic struggle of the nation, on TV, I wept uncontrollably; my children are witnesses to this.

There I said, from now on either I side with the Fetö-ists and share my homeland with these dogs, or I side with Erdoğan and the nation and keep living freely in my country..

I now admire someone I used to hate, more than anyone else; well done to everyone :)

From now on I too have no party, I am always with you..'''