"They will ask, one day they will ask": look then too

Every event is a test for everyone. Every event is a lesson for everyone. Every event becomes an occasion for everyone to reveal their own quality, their own world of meaning. The extreme speed and intensity of the agenda in Turkey puts these trials, these occasions, these lessons before us in abundance. That is why Turkey's political and social agenda is a veritable school for those who want to learn a lesson, a veritable observation laboratory for those who want to study the diversity of human quality, an endless set of opportunities for those who want to take warning, and a veritable field of fitna for those who shut their eyes and ears to warning.

Sometimes it is possible for someone who has passed one test successfully to fail the next. Fitna does not always appear before a person in the same guise; it can change its disguise, and recognizing it requires a distinct language of insight, and one must know that language too. That is exactly why life is called a test. A little vigilance and sincerity can undoubtedly suffice to recognize it, whatever guise it may be hiding behind.

Bringing the 12 September putschists before the judiciary is a historic event. Even in the face of the 12 September referendum that made it possible, people kept turning and twisting through all manner of changes of heart. Remembering or reminding of the stance, in the referendum test, of those who have turned the front of the courthouse into a rally ground on account of the trial may be unnecessary, even in a way inappropriate. For people's turning back from their mistakes is a virtue, and change is part of the ontology of having a heart.

Some, because they do not take into account that people can change, may hold a generally "essentialist" attitude toward human beings. Essentialism manifests itself as racism, as nationalism, as class-ism, and each of them plunges the human being into feelings that strip him of his humanity. That is why one must not be an essentialist. To assume that a person can change, and to be able to accept the one who has changed as he now is, is a separate virtue.

But bless anyone who can find the slightest crumb of this virtue of change among those running at the front to try 12 September. Outside, a banner reads, "The morning has an owner, they will ask, one day they will ask." The association whose signature is beneath it is the very association that, in the 12 September referendum that made possible the repeal of Article 15 of the constitution, which allows the 12 September people to be called to account, ran the "no" campaign with fanatical insistence, that is, left nothing undone to keep this account from being demanded. What virtue is there, and where, in that same association appearing today, as if nothing had happened, as the hero of this whole process of inquiry?

Of course, "they will ask, one day they will ask" is beyond a dry, slogan-like romanticism: what will you yourselves be doing for this inquiry to take place? Perhaps, truly, as in this sloganized phrase, others will again demand an accounting for the oppression done even to you, and you will again just stand there looking on.

Should we say there is a serious problem of fatalism in this outlook, or should we proceed from the cynicism of the Turkish left, fed by arrogance and aloofness?

REVANCHISM AND JUSTICE

Isn't the meaning that some attribute to settling accounts with the 12 September people truly interesting? Doesn't it catch your attention, with what hatred and desire for revenge those circles who raised a clamor, accusing government circles of "revanchism" over the trial of fresh, present-day putschists, approach the putschist of 32 years ago? This confusion obviously stems from their drawing a distinction among coups between a "good coup" and a "bad coup." But don't mind my calling it confusion; evidently their minds seem perfectly clear to themselves. They have not the slightest complaint about the contradiction they have fallen into. For while protecting their own putschists as "victims of revanchism," they will have no objection if the opposing putschists, regardless of their age, are brought and hanged in the square. Whoever calls that revanchism, they would slap him on the forehead.

In truth, even while watching the process of justice and accusing it of revanchism, they have neither the standard nor the ability to analyze correctly. Perhaps it is because they insist on remaining spectators that they do not understand this. Otherwise what they need to understand is quite simple: seeking justice and revenge (revanchism) are two events that, viewed from a certain distance, are very easy to confuse with each other. Yet what is being done today to the 12 September people as well as to the Balyoz, Ergenekon and 27 April people, and what we hope will be done as soon as possible to the 28 February people too, is only justice. It is a process that must be completed so that these coups do not happen again, so that it never again occurs to anyone to carry out 12 September, 28 February, or any coup.

Trying those who attempted or carried out a coup is not revenge; above all it is justice.

Justice is not something that comes about without punishment either. Trying today, by producing half-baked dramas, to make people pity the putschists whom this justice is trying is both futile and an act of oppression. The trial of putschists is not vengeance; above all, it is the inalienable right of the millions of innocent people whom possible future coups might oppress.