A 15 July after 4 years: let no coup-maker infiltrate

Four years ago today was lived as an exceptional day in Turkish history and was recorded as such. An event that cannot be dismissed simply as a failed coup attempt. A war took place in which betrayals, injustices, lies and evils met head-on with goodness, loyalty and patriotism, and in the clearest, most unmistakable way, goodness, loyalty and patriotism prevailed.

Throughout the four years that have passed, every year on July 15 this clear and unmistakable victory over the coup plotters who attacked the will of the nation, the religion peddlers who tried to distort our religion, and the traitors who tried to open our country's gates from within to the occupiers was celebrated with great enthusiasm and broad popular participation.

Each passing year was entered with the confidence of having taken steps that consolidated the state and the nation ever further against the occupation order the coup plotters tried to establish in Turkey. Immediately after July 15, when an army nearly more than half of whose command echelon had been purged because treason had been discovered was thought to be in a state of weakness, Operation Euphrates Shield was undertaken and great success was recorded. It was shown to the world that the army in Turkey had, only now, freed from the chains of treason, reached its strongest condition.

With the distance covered at top speed since that day in the counterterrorism process, in which not a step could be advanced for years, the plague of terror, which has become one of Turkey's most chronic problems today, has reached the point of being dried up. Now the 4th anniversary of July 15 is being entered with a complete cleansing operation (Yıldırım) begun in Cudi.

Had the coup attempt succeeded, God forbid, the result of the coordination and plan existing with the owners of those terrorists would have been the partition of Turkey. Forces ready on the Syrian border were about to enter Turkey, and on the Turkish side too there were militants of trench terror waiting ready. The state into which terror against Turkey has been driven in the 4th year of the coup attempt is one of the finest answers given to July 15.

Undoubtedly, that the 2nd anniversary of the coup attempt was entered with the Presidential system was also one of the most meaningful answers given to that attempt. The successes Turkey has recorded afterward, especially in the operations it has undertaken abroad, were all counter-attacks that eliminated the targets of FETÖ. Turkey now sets up its defense not within the country but everywhere the threat may come from.

FETÖ's coup was not only against Erdoğan's person. It was against the new Turkish politics represented in Erdoğan's person. Indeed, in that politics FETÖ stands in a place parallel with all of Turkey's enemies. In the cause of Jerusalem and Palestine we clearly see it not on the side of Turkey or of Muslims but on the side of Zionist Israel. In Libya, in the processes of the Arab Spring, it is not with Turkey but with BAE and the coup plotters. From morning to night it carries ideas, material, arguments and "service" to those who are hostile to Turkey.

We no longer have any difficulty in distinguishing who is behind the one who stands before us as FETÖ with its ample treachery. Because it is the readiest, most convenient material that those who are enemies of Turkey can use against Turkey, it can turn up before us everywhere.

In return, Turkey continues to give them their fill of answer and defeat. After the agreement made with Libya, Turkey's repelling the coup plotters there and driving them out of the places they occupied is an account to be written to this total. With this account, all the calculations of the forces that dreamed of cornering Turkey in its own field have been upended.

The decision last Friday to revoke the Hagia Sophia's museum status and restore its mosque status can be recorded, on the 4th anniversary of July 15, as the finest possible answer to these forces. This decision is the strongest indicator of Turkey's true independence and of its people and state having united in a common spirit and ideal.

It is a manifestation of that strong will that was targeted and that they tried to take captive on July 15.

July 15 is a day on which the awakening, the resurrection of a nation took place, on which a nation stepped onto the stage of history in the strongest way.

July 15 is the name of an epic in which the integration of state and nation was lived.

July 15 is the manifestation of a beauty in which the nation suits its leader and the leader suits his nation best.

July 15 is a day on which all the rules of sociology were canceled and a people mobilized to protect its government. Familiar theories of social movements always classify social movements as opposed to their governments. Yet that night the people mobilized wholly against a threat to the government and protected their government at the cost of their lives. An event so tremendous as to be unbelievable was lived as a reality. Perhaps because of that, that is, this tremendousness makes it easier, as time passes, to form doubts about it.

Could all this have happened? Had it been asked beforehand, we would have said it could not, but it happened, we saw it with our own eyes, we lived it feeling it to the marrow of our bones. People marched upon the tanks with no weapons in their hands.

The epic splendor and effect of the event caused it to be said abundantly that from now on nothing in Turkey would be as before. Even that the age of coups was closed. But we have to say that this inference, perhaps under the influence of the event too, was a decision made more hastily than necessary.

Coups do not always come by the same paths. Perhaps in Turkey there will not be another coup of the conventional type, but it is not entirely out of the question that, even if the coup enthusiasts cannot carry out such a coup, they will not stop working toward weakening Turkey and obstructing its will, and will from time to time record successes in this direction. We cannot know from which side of us the devil will approach us. Coup attempts are anyway not made by those who put the name "coup plotter" on themselves.

Politics does not tolerate a vacuum; we need to close ranks, so that devils, coup plotters, do not infiltrate between us.