On 15 July the harmony of a leader to a nation, a nation to a leader

On the night of 15 July a spirit was, as it were, breathed into the feeble body of a society, and that spirit transformed a society into a nation. The heroes who witnessed that moment of birth through their participation, indeed who served as its midwives, are flesh-and-blood, ordinary people who came out from among us. That night showed that ordinary people too carry a potential for heroism, and that everything depends on a firm call that can bring this potential to light.

The news that this country, this homeland, was under threat of attack formed the first calls of this appeal, and these voices alone led a significant number of people to move.

The salas that were recited, as an irresistible summons that suddenly began to flow from the spiritual roots of this country, made it impossible for people to stay at home in any case.

Then the call of the head of the country, the President, within only minutes brought millions of people into the power of resistance. We saw with certainty that night how the existence, integrity and meaning of a nation can be represented in the concrete existence of one person, and thus how a leader can be possible as an actual fact beyond literature.

The personal story, the life story, of our President Recep Tayip Erdoğan stands out from beginning to end, in a magnificent integrity, as the story of a leader. His life story has an exceptional narrative integrity and consistency, and every segment, every event added to his life makes a contribution to the harmony of that integrity without disrupting it.

He leads a nation that suits him very well. And such a leader suits this nation. This harmony of course arises from the complete accord between the values that fill the content of that leadership and the values that nation seeks.

Normally, for the entity called society, which is a mixture full of the rivalry, conflict, contradictions and tensions of different interest groups, to be transformed into a nation, there is need of a shared lived experience and a set of values that will bring them all together and fuse them, and of a concrete leadership in which all will find their own existence represented. The dominant religious beliefs and traditions in Turkish society nourish this set of values, but it is understood that these values on their own are not sufficient to fuse a nation completely.

Social psychologists speak of how attacks directed at groups, and the resistance shown against those attacks, considerably strengthen group solidarity by turning it into an identity, a belonging. That is why, however bad attacks may be, the effect the attackers did not calculate is the group solidarity and identity they give rise to. The concerns that this identity causes a split and polarization in society are unfounded. These tensions broaden the alliance on which the nation rests more with each passing day and fortify a wider area of consensus. At least on opposition to coups, against attempts to occupy the country through the exploitation of religion, a much wider sensitivity and area of sensitivity, not confined to the AK Parti base, has formed in society.

Indeed, we can speak of the return to the stage of history of a society that on 15 July became a nation with its leader, its people and its maximum degree of shared values. That night we all together witnessed the birth of a nation from a society.

The nation that moved into action that night with all these motivations then showed, through its democracy vigils lasting exactly 28 days, that it would not be seized by the pride and complacency, though justified, of that epic it wrote. Earlier coups had shut people in their homes; the will shown against the 15 July coup, in defiance, kept people outside their homes for 28 days and drilled vigilance as an aptitude.

On the first anniversary of 15 July, participation in the events held to commemorate the martyrs and neither forget nor let be forgotten that treacherous coup and occupation attempt against Turkey was, in a single word, magnificent. The picture of unity and togetherness displayed in events held simultaneously in all the provinces and squares of Turkey showed, contrary to the claims of some, that there is no slackening in the resistance and struggle shown against the coup.

There are of course aspects of the struggle against FETÖ that are going lamely. There are even cases of mixing the horse's track with the dog's track that do harm the sense of justice. However, this should not obstruct the struggle against FETÖ, whose enmity toward Turkey is certified and whose dangerous state, with its insidiousness and hard-to-believe organized structure, has still not been eliminated; it should not harm this struggle.

The CHP and Kılıçdaroğlu, who called it a "justice march" and tried to distort the concept of justice by, as it were, putting it on the tip of a spear against the judiciary that is fighting FETÖ, kept boasting about the crowd they gathered on this road. If the matter is only the number of people, the enormous crowds gathered all over Turkey, beginning with Ankara and Istanbul, at the 15 July events gave the necessary answer, with their actions and words, in the fastest and finest way. These gatherings should be a meaningful warning for Kılıçdaroğlu to give up, at least on the matter of the struggle against FETÖ, on which the nation seeks complete consensus, squabbling with the nation and to try to join this consensus. The stance he displays against this national consensus with bad rhetoric, whether he wants it or not, puts Kılıçdaroğlu on the same ground as FETÖ. I am of course not even taking into account the other fishy things involved.

The picture displayed as a nation at the events of the first anniversary of 15 July is in every respect a source of pride. But it must also be seen that in the emergence of this picture, the seriousness, pursuit, leadership and activity that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan displayed, in dimensions exceeding the capacity of a mortal, also reveal the secret of being a true leader.

Erdoğan, who evidently managed all the details of the anniversary events with great care, nevertheless started in a single day with the events in Ankara, then made it to the march and opening on the 15 July Martyrs Bridge in Istanbul, and from there again to the events at the TBMM and the Külliye in Ankara; the dizzying traffic that continued until 7:30 in the morning also shed light on the dimension of his leadership that leaves no room for coincidence.

May God grant him health, well-being and blessing in his life.