After 28 February: all kinds of coups

Today is February 28. Twenty-one years ago today Turkey experienced a type of coup called "postmodern." It was different from the earlier ones, of course; the military was not taking over the government directly, and soldiers were not patrolling the streets with the declaration of martial law. A government elected by the will of the people and incompatible with the established system was removed from office through intrigue and trickery, the broad segments of the people who had elected it were coded as enemies by the system and excluded, and people's daily lives were very badly affected by this.

We regarded both February 28 and all the earlier coups as military coups. Yet from the other coups or coup attempts experienced in the time that has passed since, we understand today even better that the military and military power are only an instrument for the real coup plotters. The real planners and executors were always circles far beyond the military. February 28 was a scenario in which these circles successfully used the military element as a threat.

The "postmodern" label was given by one of the coup pashas, but the real postmodern dimension was not in what he meant, that is, in a change of government taking place without the military directly taking over. The postmodern dimension of the coup lay in the fact that, by putting forth the most complex form of perception operations, a tremendous distortion of reality was achieved. February 28 took place by creating a dark environment in which the meaning of everything was turned upside down and no value had any validity left.

After the 21 years that have passed, Turkey encountered it again on April 27, 2007 with the e-memorandum face of the coup, on February 7, 2012 by means of the special authority prosecutor operation, in May and June 2013 in the guise of public protests, on December 17-25 in the air of a judicial intervention against corruption, and of course on July 15 in the form that returned to its conventional shape.

Thank God none of these attempts could succeed. February 28 was a coup that succeeded as a coup and achieved what it wanted. But its success does not mean that after the coup it brought the country to stability, even in line with the coup plotters' wishes. On the contrary, as the name says, "blow" (darbe). Like all coups, it is a "blow": destructive, achieving stability only through repression and fear even if it appears to provide it, developing no solution to any problem in society, a "blow" to good things, to stability, to the social benefit. The other coup attempts I listed above too, even if they did not get what they wanted, dealt effective blows to the country's stability and speed of development, and delayed the country's development considerably.

FROM GEZI TO TEMERRÜD: AN UNINTERRUPTED ORDER OF COUPS

Still, if we want to see what our situation would have been had they succeeded, I say let us look at today's Egypt.

Because in Egypt, a military coup came after the Temerrüd movement, which took place on June 30, 2013 in the guise of a democratic reaction and protest against the elected President. In the same days in Turkey the Gezi protests were taking place with the same appearance and with discourses coming from the same workshop.

Temerrüd, the brother in Egypt of Gezi, which could not reach success in Turkey in the face of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's prudent leadership stance, did reach success. The military perceived this Temerrüd as the people's invitation to itself and took over the situation. In response, the real people gathered at Rabia Square, against Tahrir Square, which they had lost to the coup plotters, and declared to the military the invalidity of the people's invitation.

And what happened when they did? After forty days, the coup administration answered the people who had settled in Rabia Square with million-strong rallies by opening volley fire and killing three thousand people. Then it closed all the opposition media and arrested more than sixty thousand demonstrators; from that day to this, all of them are held without trial in the harshest prison conditions. The former president and all the members of parliament they could find are still in prisons. In perfunctory trials, the execution of 850 people was announced within 20 minutes. Some have been executed, some are waiting to be executed, etc.

Here is what happened after a successful coup.

Sisi, who carried out a coup against President Mohamed Morsi, who had appointed him defense minister, went to an election 8 months after the coup and had himself elected President. Of course there was no serious candidate against him, and he got 97 percent of the votes with a turnout that was ten percent on the first two days. Of course, in the face of turnout so low, the election was extended to the third day and turnout was brought up to the forties.

The conditions of coup in Egypt have never ended. Sisi, who carried out the coup on the pretext that Morsi was not democratic enough, established an uninterrupted order of coups in the country. This coup became an uninterrupted blow to Egypt's economy, its social fabric, its future, its stability. Egypt today stands without a proper economy, entirely on the aid of the countries that support the coup.

Of course, what stands is only the coup administration. Otherwise the country is sunk. The coup, as is customary, dealt a blow first of all to Egypt. These days Egypt is going to its second presidential election since the coup.

Ahmed Shafik, who ran against Morsi and was the first to announce his candidacy against Sisi, was put out of the race by a media effort in which the UAE was also involved. Then former Chief of the General Staff Sami Anan was arrested the day after he announced his candidacy. In his place, former head of the Central Auditing Organization Hisham Genena was subjected to a knife attack while preparing to run. He too was arrested on the grounds that he blamed the security forces for this attack. Then Abdel Moneim Aboul Fotouh, again one of the strong prospective candidates, was arrested citing an interview he had given to Al-Jazeera. Thus the fate was shown clearly to everyone who had the faintest thought of running against Sisi.

But still, a man had to be found so that the formal requirement of the election would be met.

At the last minute of the application for candidacy, the candidacy of someone named Moussa Mostafa Moussa, in fact a nobody, was accepted. Thus the election will in fact be a kind of referendum in which only Sisi campaigns. Of course, only saying "yes" will be accepted as the condition for participation in the referendum for those who will vote.

Here is the latest scene of the democracy brought by a coup in the guise of a "people's movement" that began by saying there was not enough democracy.

Although it is not at all heartening, we will look at this scene again later.