A coup is a more shameful crime than rape

A flippant form of defense often resorted to in order to water down the Balyoz, Ergenekon and other coup trials is the claim that "in this day and age there can be no coup anyway." How far those who say this really believe that no coup is possible is one matter, how much they long for a coup is another, and even how angry they are at the soldiers who somehow cannot manage to carry out a coup is yet another. When we hear all these matters, at least from the flippant mouths of such people, we can sense in them the language of a threat that tells us not to trust at all in "the fact that there will be no coup in this day and age."

That the CHP placed on its candidate lists three names being tried in the Ergenekon case, and then added a fourth to this list, showed that coup-mongering in Turkey has far deeper support than was assumed. As Ahmet Altan pointed out most aptly, the CHP would probably never have hesitated for a moment to leave off its list people on trial for corruption, murder or rape. For people being tried for these crimes, just like the "coup defendants" whose trials are ongoing, are considered "innocent" until the verdict against them becomes final, but those tried for such crimes would probably not be given the slightest chance. From the moment they begin to be tried on the charge attributed to them, they deserve to have a distance placed between themselves and others.

The odd thing about the matter is precisely this. The crime of coup (even if they are on trial) is seen as an honorable crime, and it is clear that even if the verdict against those who commit this crime becomes final, in the conscience of CHP members this crime will carry no real penalty. From the very moment the case began, whatever evidence comes out, the CHP does not so much as think, even as a precaution, of putting a distance between itself and this network of coup attempt and intrigue. Whether unsolved murders come to light, or the Council of State murders, or claims of bombing mosques and killing one's own soldiers through plots and ambushes, whether the bombs in Ümraniye or in Poyrazköy, or links to the Zirve and Hrant Dink murders emerge, all of these are clearly, for the CHP, within the scope of "honorable crimes." The CHP still seems not to have grasped that a coup is the most shameful, immoral crime there can be. Yet a coup is a crime even more shameful than rape, because every coup also necessarily contains rape in one way or another.

When we examine one by one each of the 5 military coups we have lived through, the common denominator of them all is that they were carried out by an extremely organized crime network in which every kind of crime, from the most shameful to the most murderous, was present in compact form. Not one coup came about because things in the country were really going badly out of the blue, because society or the homeland was subjected to a serious attack, and because civilian forces were unable to meet these attacks, so that the army was obliged to step in.

Of course all of them made such claims, but today we know clearly that before every coup, those who carried out the coup themselves stirred up trouble in order to make us say this. For this, people were killed, brothers were made enemies of one another, a rightist and a leftist were shot with the same weapon, Alevi-Sunni, Kurd-Turk, devout-secular people were turned against each other and an environment of chaos was created, and out of this environment of chaos the coup plotters produced for themselves an environment of duty. The essence of our fifty-year history of coups consists of this.

Whichever coup you take up, you will see a blind lust for power that would make one ashamed of humanity, systematic theft, murderousness, treason, treachery, cruelty, torture, usurpation, rape. Be it 27 May, 9-12 March, 12 September or 28 February, or the Balyoz, Yakamoz, Ayışığı, Kafes and Eldiven plans as coup plans that could not be accomplished.

In my view the strongest evidence of the Balyoz indictment is the militarist culture formed by the coup tradition that has existed from 27 May to 28 February and beyond. This militarist culture was never far from us. At every stage it tried to affect the whole of our lives. We lived it to the marrow, through its interventions in education, culture, dress, our identity, our past and our future. We also knew how many murders, rapes, tortures, acts of corruption and thefts lay in the background of these systematic interventions. Let us not go back further: we lived together through how 28 February was completed with a bank robbery, and how 40 billion dollars evaporated and flew away in the 2001 crisis. There was no one who did not know, feel and live that this culture of coup, which was subject to no questioning at all, had already reached its peak in 2002 with the courage it drew from 28 February.

In a country that has a main opposition party that cannot put a distance between itself and the coup and Ergenekon, and moreover makes protecting and shielding the coup defendants its mission, it is certain that coup plotters will always find courage in this patronage.

That they will not be able to succeed in the coup, and that the course of the country and of the world will not give them a chance of success, does not mean that they will not attempt it. And who said that coup plotters have a mind that always calculates well the beginning and end of what they do? Crime is not committed with reason; it is committed with passion, envy, anger, hatred and lust, and most of the time even the highest intellect cannot hold together the crime of such people.