Exercise and reality

The statement by the General Staff concerning the Sledgehammer, Beard and Chador plans presumes that all these unthinkable plans and activities should be dismissed by being treated within the concept of an "exercise" or a "seminar." The scenarios designed in military exercises are carried out in a field through staged scenes between hypothetical friendly and enemy units. Everyone knows it is an exercise; besides, who will win the contest between the blue forces and the red forces is known in advance. In the end there are no surprises. It is all like a game of chess played against oneself, and in fact there is no creativity in it either. Exercises surely have a place, an importance and a benefit in military training, but the final training and development of an army cannot be achieved through exercises alone. Because in no exercise is real death at stake. Any exercise played out on real death, whatever its purpose, is murder. An exercise that puts real lives at risk has no legal basis whatsoever.

In a sense, for this reason the best exercises take place in wars or clashes fought with real enemies. It is also a fact that many armies have been willing to risk small-scale wars with other countries' enemies for a more productive exercise. The dogfights that occasionally take place over the Aegean between Turkish and Greek aircraft are exercises quite close to reality, and are more productive than exercises conducted by distributing the friend and enemy roles within the same army. Because they know this, the dogfights between Greece and Turkey are often carried out, kept within limits that will not let the matter escalate further. In other exercises not even real bullets are used. Frankly, one is just playing a game.

The problem with the Sledgehammer exercise is that everything is real. The names of the friendly parties are real, and so are the bombs and the bullets, the field of war, the definitions of friend and enemy... In an exercise carried out entirely with real persons and in real settings, the enemy becomes the people themselves. The Fatih Mosque is real... The persons who were envisaged as planting the bomb in this mosque are true to their names, that is, real... The spot where the bomb would be placed is real... The Beyazıt Mosque is real too, and the lives to be played with there are real... The intention to shoot down our own aircraft in the Aegean has also been voiced as a reality and is there on record.

There is no scenario that deals with measures that could be taken against the possibility of an external enemy threatening the country. The scenario envisages from start to finish that the TSK itself will initiate the creation of chaos in the country. Even with no threat of reactionism, the aim is for the TSK to create the appearance of this threat in a convincing degree. Even with no terrorist violence, ways are proposed to create the appearance of this terror most effectively, again in a convincing manner. While all these ways are proposed, real names and places are cited in every detail.

These criminal plans, which an ordinary human mind cannot comprehend, were presented without meeting any reaction or objection in a setting where more than 160 officers of every rank were together inside the TSK, the institution the Turkish people trust most. This is one of the gravest dimensions of the affair. So many people can come together and entertain such a horrifying scenario in their minds and on their tongues; that is not enough, they put it into writing and brainstorm on it. Now that it has come out, at first they own it as if it were a perfectly normal thing, then they notice how it is received by the public and immediately turn around, declaring that it is despicable even to let such things cross one's mind. Just as with the other plans. In those cases too, they are first caught with the ease of those who have no doubt about how normal what was done is, and only later do they realize its gravity, awakening to the truth that anyone with reason and conscience could not accept.

The diagnosis is clear and plain... They live in an entirely different way of thinking, in an entirely different world of reality. In this world the perception of reality has diverged immensely from that of ordinary people. Like Don Quixote, they see things that cannot exist as "dangers," they see people who cannot exist as enemies, and they set about preparing for war. But there are a few differences.

Most important, Don Quixote is entirely alone with his perception of reality. Everyone is aware of how detached he is from the facts. His companion is aware that he lives in a dream world, but puts up with him in order to cure him and pretends to share his dreams. That is why he is a schizophrenic minding his own business. In our case, however, such a large crowd shares this detached perception of reality. As this perception of reality is shared, the feeling that it is real grows firmer still and takes on an authoritarian and oppressive character. Carrying out a coup is seen as the most routine activity of the military profession, and it is thought to have a quite separate law of its own that is subject to no rules.

Moreover, the weapons Don Quixote uses are imaginary, while those used by ours are real, and this makes them very dangerous. By aiming real weapons at the imaginary enemies they proclaim, they can cause catastrophes.