The sociology of 15 July

The reaction that the people of Turkey put forth against a coup attempt on July 15 and the events that followed contain original aspects of such a nature that they require the social sciences to re-examine all their rote assumptions. We had expressed this finding in an earlier article as well. With the democracy vigils that continued for 27 days after the night the coup attempt was made, a social movement of a kind that no one can ignore has emerged.

The indifference that the world press has displayed toward this social movement revealed in Turkey should also be noted as another side of the same sociological reality. In a way, the blindness and deafness to July 15 of representatives of the world press such as CNN and BBC, who had smelled something before the Gezi movement, reveal no new information.

It is not much of a surprise that these press organs, as the voice of the dominant powers, in a country that disturbs the dominant powers, did not run broadcasts that would increase this disturbance further, or even expose the calculations of interest, the ill intentions and the stingy feelings underlying this disturbance.

In a country ruled by a dictator, for the people, instead of seizing the opportunity to be rid of that dictator, to pour into the streets at the risk of death at a single phone call from that dictator, to try to defend that leader of theirs against tanks and planes at the price of death, was a development that would make void all the "dictatorship" lies they had told the world until then.

Frankly, these images were images that upset the applecart (spoiled a sack of figs), so it was best to ignore them. But into which sack would they fit this spear?

With their performance on July 15, CNN International and the BBC showed that they are indeed masters of fitting spears into sacks.

Setting aside the distortion of the event in its news dimension, what happened is in the end a subject of social science. July 15 and what has happened since is an example of a "new social movement."

New social movements

have always been of interest to sociology, and within this sociology there is a generally accepted typology concerning new social movements.

Let us recall

what sorts of literature were poured out on this typology during the Gezi movement.

The birth of a new generation was announced. Would we now call this new youth Generation Y, or X? It was up to them. What eulogies, what analyses, what announcements of revolution came out of this generation literature.

The Gezi event, of course, was not an event that could be ignored. Indeed, it was not ignored.

The attention of Western philosophers and sociologists in particular, from all over the world, was drawn to this event. Discourses of freedom were poured out about this movement, from which vandalism, violence and the lack of any project or horizon for humanity was spilling in every direction.

Yet when you dug beneath that movement, only hostility and rancor toward Erdoğan came out.

It remained nothing but a scene in which it became thoroughly clear that the Turkish left's dream of "a revolution that never came about" had turned into an obsession. In its background, the parallel with the Tamarrod movement displayed in Egypt in the same period, which ended in a coup, and, when you dug a little further, nothing remained but crowds who were thoroughly stuffed up, provoked, and driven into the streets by the FETÖ's police, judiciary and media elements in their own particular roles. The hand that made that game be played and the hand that later made December 17, January 19 and July 15 be played were the same. The event was not based on a social change, on a sociological reality.

Yet the will displayed against July 15 bears all the signs of a strong sociological development, change and presence. In every part of this will and presence, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has a central role as a leader and an actor.

That day it emerged in all its reality that the strength of Erdoğan, whom Westerners, falling under the influence of the black propaganda of the FETÖ members, began to see as a dictator, comes not from dictatorship but from the throne he has established in the hearts of all the people of Turkey.

This was perhaps the coup plotters' greatest error, and perhaps the most important reason the coup was doomed to failure. They had convinced even themselves of the sophistry that a coup attempt against Erdoğan, whom the people should already hate because he is a dictator, would be welcomed by the people as a savior.

Evidently they were astonished at why the people, having caught the chance to be rid of Erdoğan, had not seized it.

Since they had convinced whoever they got the contract from of exactly this, those parties too experienced a great disillusionment. All we can say is: may they have plenty of disillusionment and defeat.

Quite a lot of field research was done on the democracy vigils.

According to the findings that emerged in all of these studies, we truly have before us a new social movement profile. For example, in the Arab Spring movements, which took place only five years ago, people had set out to be rid of their dictators and of the orders that had oppressed and exploited them for a century, to overthrow them.

Yet here, strangely, the movement had people pouring into the streets in order to protect the existing order, the government and a leader called a dictator, to keep it on its feet and strengthen it further.

This was an important sociological finding.

Another finding

was that the vast majority of those who took part in this movement were people with jobs and means, members of the middle and upper classes.

There were of course people from the lower class as well. There was even participation proportional to the average distribution in Turkey. However, the finding in Konda's poll and other polls that the rate of unemployed people at the democracy vigils was very low is quite interesting.

A last finding we can touch on in today's article concerns

Kurdish participation both in the July 15 event and in the democracy vigils that took place afterwards.

July 15 shows that, in the process of being a nation with all our diversity, we have come to an important stage precisely through this sample.

In Konda's research, a Kurdish participation of between 12 and 14 percent was determined, a rate that corresponds to a large majority of the Kurds in Turkey.

Even though the HDP as a party was nowhere to be seen, the Kurds made very good use of the opportunity to show that they were against the coup and one heart, one body with the whole of the country.

Just like the other components.

The sociology of the July 15 process is of course not limited to this, but we have reached the last limit of our space; we will continue later.