If even opposition to coups is not a matter of consensus…

The guest of the talk program organized by the Strategic Thought Institute on the occasion of May 27 was former Speaker of the Assembly Ferruh Bozbeyli, whose name has become identified with the struggle for democracy. In the program presented by Assoc. Prof. Dr. Yusuf Tekin, while recounting his priceless memories of the days of May 27, Bozbeyli touched on typical incidents that shed light on the character of coup periods and could in fact explain why a completely safe situation has never been established against immoralities such as coups.

He spoke, for example, of a total of 400 thousand denunciation letters that reached the Yassıada court while he was serving as a lawyer for the Democrat Party members. If you calculate that Turkey's population at that time was a mere 30 million, 400 thousand denunciation letters is a truly hard figure to believe. It means that when the coup climate, which the great majority of society in Turkey today has come to the point of cursing, occurred, 400 thousand of a country of 30 million could, taking advantage of this climate, attempt to push their nearest neighbor, friend, colleague or work companion into that terrible climate of oppression.

The denunciation letters Bozbeyli spoke of consisted of a barber denouncing another barber, a carpenter another carpenter, an academic his colleague another academic, a teacher his own colleague another teacher. Everyone who had a rivalry or a score or enmity with someone seized the pen and found in denouncing the other to the coup-makers a way of destroying him. Leaving aside the famous rhetoric of "we have lived together for centuries, as one and together, like a forest, as brothers," this story is another matter.

Let us not forget that in the February 28 process, too, with the military's announcing its coming or its occasional probing, a frenzy of denunciation and profiling no less than this suddenly began. Who knows how many ambitious and incompetent academics resorted to this immoral path in order to gain an advantage over their own colleagues. Having been inside it at least, I know it with certainty: we were profiled with the most improbable attributes by our own colleagues.

In those profiling files that came to light most recently with the Ergenekon cases, nearly all of those profiled and denounced were the best in their professional fields, while those who denounced them had abandoned their work and were busy flaunting the airs of the posts and positions that had been promised to them after the coup. This is no joke: until only two or three years ago, there were swarms of academics walking around in universities who had been made to believe that a coup would sooner or later happen and who had been led into expectations about the post-coup environment. Those who did not know the truth of the matter had difficulty making sense of the recklessness, the ignorant boldness utterly at odds with academic ethics and decorum, and the insolent attitudes of those academics who had not the slightest connection with science.

Coup-making is a shameful crime that contains within itself all immoral acts and intentions. In it there is usurpation of authority, theft, betrayal of trust, lying, murder. Unfortunately, this shameful crime still does not bring a blush to the face of either those who carry out coups or those who support them in Turkey. Look, to CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu, who said that those who made May 27 are ashamed, a former member of the National Unity Committee can call out from over there "we are not ashamed." That a consensus cannot form around opposition to coups is truly a serious problem for a society's living together in a healthy and just manner. The way to prevent coup-making seems to lie not only in creating pressure on those who could carry out a coup, but in making those who hope to profit from a coup blush for even letting it cross their minds.

Some of the people in Turkey cannot ethically exclude the possibility of using a coup as a trump card against one another. Because the prospect of an opportunity arising for oneself from a coup climate is enough to turn some people's heads.

Of course it is not necessary to put May 27 or the other black marks of our history into an atmosphere of settling accounts, revanche and revenge. Indeed, the gravity of what was done on that date has still not fully come to light. That May 27 is so much on the agenda 50 years later stems not from the ease given by the coup being 50 years behind us, but on the contrary from the fact that those with coup intentions are still among us. How trials turn out in the coups that those who are being tried today with the fairest trial in Turkish history intended to carry out, on these occasions both they themselves and everyone need to see.

Moreover, what perhaps we should always recall with shame today is the fact that the current legal order, whose real superiority we are proud of, was established with this immoral coup. This is a fact that will never leave faith in justice at ease.