A story of the wheel turning: 28 February

Twenty-four years have passed since February 28, dubbed a "postmodern coup." In one respect, this means that every year for twenty-four years this shameful day in Turkey's history has been commemorated. Since the first year was an event actually lived through, it means that in total this black day has been tried to be understood 23 times, lessons have been tried to be drawn, its victims have been remembered with blessing, and its perpetrators have been tried and convicted, if only in conscience.

Not one of these 23 years was lived just like the others. Serious differences arose, both for those who commemorated and for those commemorated, among the first few years, the following five or ten years, and of course the later years. Even the differences among these 23 commemorative years alone actually provide us with sufficient data for drawing lessons.

The first 6 of these 23 years were the days of absolute power of the February 28 coup plotters. Of course, the years of their power were at the same time years in which all their weaknesses, their wretchedness, their incompetence, their inconsistencies, their corruption and their worst intentions and feelings were laid bare. Being in power does not mean, as is supposed, enthroning oneself in people's hearts in every respect. The February 28 power is one of the best examples showing that power obtained by force and legitimized by arms has no counterpart in hearts.

Even in just the first six months, the first half, of the Refahyol government, a serious recovery in the economy and society was witnessed, and a serious improvement in the public expenditure balance, with the hoses of corruption cut off. In fact, this was the most important reason why the coup was being carried out in such a rush. Had it been delayed a little longer, the Welfare Party under the leadership of the late Necmettin Erbakan, with the great satisfaction it would create in society, was delivering a performance that would ensure it never again relinquished power and guarantee it won the following elections as well.

Secularism was the most despicable pretext of the whole affair. Secularism was like an idol made of halva, made to be eaten whenever desired. Now it was time to eat it as a relish for a coup.

February 28 quickly turned into an attempt, with a Pharaonic reflex, to destroy a generation extending from headscarved women to Imam-Hatip schools, Qur'an courses and even vocational high schools, because of the threat it created for them. The measures to be taken against these newly urbanized generations that had become the alternative to a crumbling power were no different from Pharaoh's fear of Moses, who would be born and unseat him from his throne, and the precautions they took were no different from Pharaoh's precautions. A genocide mechanism that excluded hundreds of thousands of Imam-Hatip, vocational high school and headscarved students from the school system was also a sign of what kind of claim to divinity February 28 had. This claim to divinity, this arrogance and disdain, enabled this power to utter with ease the claim that it would last 1000 years.

The saying that February 28 would last 1000 years was the most pithy summary of the despotism displayed against a society hoping for a softening in these irrational practices. The period in which this saying was uttered was a period when the excluded and suppressed segments, the feared generations, were on the verge of bringing upon their heads what they feared. Indeed, on November 3, 2002, precisely the thing they feared came upon them. They had prophesied that if no measures were taken, these generations (that is, the parties for which graduates of Imam-Hatip and vocational high schools vote) would seize power within 15 years at the latest. Thanks to the measures they took, this period was shortened to 6 years, and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the pioneer of the generations they had banned, came to power alone with his party. A perfect example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.

However, in the first years of this new government, the February 28 supporters continued to exercise the power they had received from the roots they had cast. Indeed, for a while they were in power and the AK Party worked as an oppositionist within the government. During this time the anniversaries of February 28 were also lived through. Slowly, with no one left to claim it, until after a while the days when the coup plotter did not recognize the coup plotter.

From 2010 onward we came to the periods when the trial of February 28 and its coup plotters was being discussed. In that period, those who carried out February 28 rushed to shift to one another the crimes arising from the coup. Meanwhile, the coups of which we said "never again" were wanted to be repeated in other guises, under other pretexts and through the doings of other institutions and actors. February 7, 2012, the Gezi Events of 2013, the December 17-25 Judiciary-Media coup and lastly the failed coup attempt of July 15 soon made the "postmodern" label attributed to February 28 obsolete.

Of course, it must now be time to talk about the benefits or functions of a commemoration repeated for 23 years. Such irrational, such inhuman, such anti-Islam, anti-Turk, anti-nation practices were lived in this country, and those who made us live them are still among us, active subjects of politics, and are trying to give us lessons in democracy and human rights. Shamelessly they try to act as if what happened did not happen. They try to put the February 28 practices on the same scale with the judicial proceedings conducted today over an overt coup attempt and affiliation with armed terror.

Such evasions of theirs are the typical behavior of shameless criminals; is it possible to say, then, that those who were themselves the victims of those cruelties in the February 28 days, or their children, have drawn sufficient lessons today from the gravity of the event?

The events they themselves lived through are history now for their children. But should the consciousness that lived experience bequeaths be only this much?

The 24 years that have passed since February 28 are full of scenes in which the revolution of God's promised days can be seen in the clearest, most miraculous manner.

That the primary target of February 28, Erbakan, passed away on a February 27 (skipping February 28) and was sent off to the eternal realm on a February 29 with the participation of millions of people, with extraordinary esteem, is a lesson. The death scenes of the perpetrators or supporters of February 28, which no one remembers, are an entirely different lesson.

"February 28 was a day," the late Necmettin Erbakan had said; he had said it as a fleeting moment among the divine days, and passed on.

May his abode be paradise and his station full of light.