Becoming familiar with the normal

Although the arrest of retired Chief of the General Staff İlker Başbuğ on the charge of attempting a coup topped the agenda yesterday and the day before, contrary to the mood blowing in the media, reaching this point did not cause serious astonishment. The judicial process that has been under way since 2007 has produced a notable familiarity with the removal of privileges in law.

In Turkey, that a chief of the general staff has been arrested over a charge attributed to him is, on the contrary, now very normal. In a case that had reached this stage, it would have been a great surprise had Başbuğ not been arrested. Because, while everyone connected with the case in which he was being tried had been arrested, his remaining free and never being brought into the judicial process placed heavy pressure on the law, in terms of values such as justice, equality and the independence of the law. So there is not much point in talking about the feelings an arrest of a retired chief of the general staff was expected to create. It would be more correct instead to assess how we came to this stage and whether this situation is sustainable.

First, a correction is needed. Başbuğ is not the first serving or retired chief of the general staff to be arrested. Human memory is truly afflicted with forgetfulness. But under what kind of influence this forgetfulness arose is also worth noting. There is a certain Pasha Rüştü Erdelhun, whom the May 27 junta members retired as soon as they made the coup, stripped of all his ranks and arrested.

That Başbuğ's arrest has not led people to remember Erdelhun as "the first" is probably not entirely a matter of forgetfulness. Because Erdelhun was not arrested as the result of a judicial procedure. He was someone who was acted against as the result of a military coup, itself an illegal act. In this respect his detention can of course not be compared with Başbuğ's. Başbuğ, on the other hand, was arrested by a civilian court itself, within judicial procedures, and moreover on the charge of attempting a coup.

There is no doubt that this is a big step for Turkey. Although society has gradually been made familiar with this "normal" by the previous arrests, this is undoubtedly a step that deserves this much attention. With this action a giant step more has been taken on the road to Turkey's normalization. Even if Başbuğ is to be tried before the Supreme Tribunal, which is afforded to chiefs of the general staff, the outcome will not change. What matters is that, even at the level of the General Staff, it has been read for the first time with this clarity that the military has no duty or right to "stage a coup".

While Başbuğ's arrest over the charge attributed to him is being entered into the record among the ordinary frames of the new Turkey, longing for the old Turkey will remain for some only a helpless nostalgia. Those who live out this nostalgia with sighs, without remembering at all what was done, try to get stuck on the technical details of this arrest and produce a grievance from there. Yet, to recall again what was done, the content of the so-called "internet memorandum" event is full of lies, trickery, slander, intrigue and, in the end, integrated evils in which every means was resorted to in order to reach the final aim.

These evils are not so surprising, nor so alien, nor so astonishing.

From May 27 to March 12, from September 12 to February 28, such actions are present in all the coups, and these actions are a mode of action that sows into society all the hatred, enmity and divisive feelings and elements from which Turkey suffers.

The coup processes that turned an institution charged with defending the country into a source of evil threatening society are the greatest danger Turkey has ever seen and could ever see. Yet the routine to which we have been made accustomed regarding the TSK has itself been this very danger. It is very hard even to think that anything beneficial to the country could issue from a hierarchical order capable of conceiving and carrying out the internet memorandum and other activities bearing on the judiciary.

Yet what the current Chief of the General Staff said yesterday in a statement to the Vatan newspaper showed that another TSK is also possible, and that such a TSK could truly be a source of strength and confidence for Turkey. This is what Necdet Özel says: "Like other civil bureaucrats, we are bureaucrats who are on the side of politics' mernide (sic). We must avoid the feeling that we have a privilege." This is it. This is the standard we need to become familiar with for the TSK, for a democratic society; it is not impossible at all.