If only the coup-makers had that sense too…

A full 60 years have passed since 27 May, the first military coup of the Republic's history. This span of time may perhaps be enough to make the event itself history, but it is a fact that the event remains current in terms of its effects and reflections on our present. In essence, what we call history is not a matter of the past but of our present, even of our tomorrow. That is why it is rewritten at every moment under the influence of the present, accompanied by our intentions and directions for the future and the struggles we wage for them.

The optimism that the past reappears, or will reappear, as clear as day or as it was lived remains merely a romantic optimism, because such a thing does not happen even at the moment the event is being lived. All matters of dispute are, at the moment they are lived, subjects of differing viewpoints or attitudes. No one should expect that those who were party to that dispute at the time will see their history emerge years later in an objective way, that is, in a way that is beyond dispute for everyone.

That is why there is something we always say: If you have a just cause, do not wait for history to give the verdict one day on this matter; that is, do not leave your business to history. Prove your rightness today and look for the way to obtain your right. Otherwise, if it is left to history, there is no guarantee whatsoever that history will treat you more fairly.

The existence of a political power that evaluates 27 May fairly today makes it possible for society to call a wrong a wrong. A government that adopted this perspective in fact existed in 1991 as well, and thanks to this, 30 years after they were executed, their remains were transferred to a monument tomb built in their name in the middle of Istanbul and their honor was restored.

These are magnificent indications of "the days that God causes to alternate among people." The idiom "the wheel turns one day" is a translation of the belief in the content of this verse. When the wheel turns, everything appears to us in a different light, with an entirely different aspect. Even the information thought today to be the most objective or eternal turns inside out under that light and begins to appear to us in a different way.

The 27 May coup is counted as the first military coup of the Republic's history. Yet in this respect it would not be quite right to describe it as a coup that took place 37 years later. Because the single-party rule was in any case carried on with a logic of intervention and tutelage over the national will. Even in the 10-year interval given to this tutelage with the Democrat Party's coming to power, its shadow was never entirely absent. That is why the 27 May coup signified the restoration of this tutelage order. Although on 27 May the military, after restoring the order in a short time and redistributing the roles on the political stage, withdrew, it continued its founding, protecting and commanding tutelage over the system, making felt at every moment the possibility of its return.

Despite this, this tutelage could not be entirely exempt from the functioning sociology and from the world's new balances of power. Even if the coup plotters fell prey to the delusion that the order they established would last forever, this is doomed to remain their tragicomic anxiety. For every human construct has a natural lifespan. Even the orders founded by prophets have not been exempt from this mortality. But the coup plotters' rampant arrogance and their passionate attachment to their criminal power have given them, as a habitual state, the delusion that their own order will last forever.

On the occasion of 27 May, a high sensitivity against coups and coup-mongering once again was displayed by many segments of society. A high sensitivity was displayed in speeches and ceremonies toward forming a shared consciousness and emotionality so that it never happens again.

As for this phrase "never again," it is in fact a discourse that has recurred constantly on the subject of coups for the last 30 years and that, the more it is repeated, evokes the feeling "that's it now, it won't happen again." Yet, from the day Adnan Menderes and his friends had their honor restored until today, we have experienced coup attempts again and again. 28 February, 27 April, 15 July... And at least between the first two, the continuity of military tutelage..

The societal consciousness formed against coups is all well and good, but if only the coup plotters knew and understood it too. You know the story of the lunatic who, considering himself a grain of millet, is afraid of all the chickens. After he is completely cured and leaves the hospital, he comes running back to the hospital in a short time, fleeing from a chicken. He says, "You treated me, but do the chickens know I am not millet?"

There have been many who wrote articles confident that the changing conditions of the world, its sociology, its economy, its globalization would no longer allow coups to pass, and who mocked people who spoke of the danger of a coup. But of course their analyses of the coup were limited entirely to the inspirations they took from their own exclusive worlds. The coup, which in every assessment was seen as irrational, conscienceless, senseless, contrary to the facts, was seen by the coup plotters as quite reasonable, quite justified and possible.

Only one day before 27 April, there were many ready to describe those who spoke of a coup as lunatics. Did we not see these same people, that night, when the government had not yet displayed its historic stance, tuning in to televisions throughout the night, celebrating the coup and declaring how justified, even overdue, it was?

The idea of a coup, as an unjust demand for power, never disappears. For it to materialize, it merely needs to find vacuums and opportunities in politics and in power. And it does not always come as a military coup. Apart from conventional "military" coups, 7 February, the Gezi uprising, 17-25 December and even 7 June were nothing but a coup-minded appetite approaching by infiltrating through vacuums or opportunities in politics.

Thank God, those vacuums and opportunities do not exist today, but their absence does not mean that the appetite for a coup, that is, for theft, that is, for jackal-like opportunism, has completely ended among the coup plotters. May God not give them the opportunity, and let us be vigilant.