"Coups of the age", or where does a coup come to us from?

What we encountered on 15 July was neither the first nor the last coup attempt we have faced in recent years. But it was an attempt that opened the eyes of the great majority of those who, until that moment, had insisted that "there are no coups in this age."

I say "the great majority," because even in the face of this blatant coup attempt, there were those who could call the event theater, fiction. Yet a coup attempt can be defined simply as the whole of the efforts to use illegitimately the means one has obtained in order to overthrow a government by non-political ways and install another government in its place.

We had worn out our tongues explaining that the Gezi incident that preceded it was also a coup attempt. We saw and lived firsthand how the most legitimate right of democracy to demonstrate, protest and oppose was turned into a well-studied, systematic attempt to overthrow a government by abnormal means.

Moreover, right next to us, in Egypt, a parallel process was underway with the same scenario, the same discourses and symbols, which ended in the most savage, most inhuman coup our age has seen. There too, "very clever, very modern, very brilliant-minded, very witty and cheerful youths" were accusing a President who had not even been elected a year earlier, "but who was elected," of being too authoritarian, almost a dictator, and calling the people to "tamarrud" (rebellion). Tahrir, which three years earlier had truly become a "square" for democracy and freedom, was this time stolen by the coup, and became a "square" for trampling the will of the people and making the elected regret having been elected and the electors regret having elected.

A coup is like the devil. When we said "do not suppose it always comes in the same guise," we said without hesitation to those who found us overly conspiratorial: "yes, in the face of what has happened, we regard those who say they do not see the existence of a conspiracy as nothing but partners in the conspiracy."

Of course, those who take part in a coup as extras are not always aware that they have taken part in a coup. Indeed, 90 percent of those in Egypt who had been deceived with the promise of more freedom began, only two months later, to strike their heads, saying "oh, what have we done!"

How were those in Gezi, who thought they were exercising their right to protest with their heads in the clouds, to know, amid the allure and intoxication of the commune-like practices that emerged in Gezi, what kind of conspiracy they were part of?

And were there not those who showed up with their fury at Muslim capitalism? They had read, learned and known the verses of God, they had become aware of many things, supposedly... Then how had their eyes been so blackened that they failed to see what it meant to wage war against Muslim capitalism under the management of the world's most savage finance capitalism and its Turkish branch? What kind of war was that, which had taken from them the awareness of whom they were friends with and in whose name, whom they were enemies with and in whose name?

So there are no coups in this age? Here is for you a coup, so disgusting that it ruined into the ground all the good intentions you had nurtured and grown about this age within a short time. If Gezi was not enough to open eyes, 17-25 December should have: an operation carried out by a structure whose ties in the judiciary, police and media were obvious meant nothing other than a coup, but many people did not call that a coup either. Because a coup is like the devil. It comes by giving its bribe to the segments, other than those who take part in the coup directly, that are likely to support it.

That day the opposition took the coup's bribe as the trump cards it had gained against the government and took its place on the side of the coup. The secret organization that it had for years called "F type" and had accused the government of turning a blind eye to, and about which it had boasted of being aware, had found and paid the price that would buy it too. And it had swallowed it. It had not shied away from cooperating with an organization that it had itself said for years it knew to be secret and dangerous.

So there can be coups in this age? 17-25 December showed that as long as there is an opposition that falls for the coup plotters' bribe and cooperates with them, a coup can very well happen.

Between 17-25 December and 15 July, too, the coup plotters did not sit idle. They tried every way of pushing Turkey into economic or security instability and influencing the election results through it. The process in which the HDP was supported by the whole opposition as a battering ram on 7 June showed sufficiently that the same coup-minded will was extraordinarily active.

15 July was a return to the most traditional style of coup, the one left in hand after all the coup styles of the age, whose coup nature was not understood at first glance and which approach like the devil from left and right, had been tried. This was a result of its desperation. All the ways had been tried and all had come to nothing; what remained was the best-known but the shortest road. With this road, the coup nature of all the previous experiences also became certain.

Now, with the indisputable victory won against the 15 July attempt, there are those who say that the era of coups has completely closed. This is a conclusion reached somewhat hastily. It is an excessive optimism that takes into account neither human nature, nor human history, nor our social reality. The will to a coup never disappears as long as this ambition, this determination to do evil exists in human beings. It just does not find a sufficiently wide field of opportunity for a coup.

In the near term, the possibility of a coup of this kind has been eliminated for Turkey. But we must now know that the next "coup of the age" will come to us not from outside but from ourselves. Almighty God Himself commands us to seek refuge in God from the evils of our own selves, from the wickedness of our deeds. Especially at the end of great victories, the greatest risk awaiting a society is the intoxication of victory, arrogance and the state of taking the credit for this victory upon oneself…

Yet this state too is a test, and in this test, forgetting one's origins, forgetting the covenant and fidelity to the covenant is the greatest coup a person can carry out against himself.

Being subjected to this coup is very likely. That is why, thinking about it again and again, pausing, questioning ourselves, let us pray: We seek refuge in God from the evil of ourselves and from the wickedness of our deeds.