It is indeed asked, and the stones fall into place

If the process Turkish democracy has been going through since 2007 had to be expressed in a single word, we could say simply 'normalization.' Normalization is everything being as it should be in a healthy society founded on justice; it is everything being in its proper place. The relationship between 'normalization' and 'justice' is therefore a very direct one.

Before 12 September, all the settings of society were disrupted by the putschists themselves. Then those putschists, taking it upon themselves, with a meddlesome zeal, to correct the settings they had disrupted, seized power. Their rule was abnormal; what they did was out of place; they had no right to govern, neither the authority nor the ability. However you look at it, the situation was radically contrary to the principle of justice, and 'indeed' what they did was null and void from beginning to end. It was void, but the power they held made their void deeds valid.

Justice is described as putting things in their proper place. The 12 September putschists had rearranged all the stones of the world to suit themselves, of course deviating leagues away from justice. The first to attempt to move these stones from their places was Turgut Özal. He too took a path of his own: starting from the gaps in the order the putschists had built, he tried to reduce the system of military tutelage as far as he could, and even, as an ultimate goal, to abolish it. It was quite obvious that what he did disturbed, and greatly angered, the architects of that order of oppression. It is fitting to call all of Özal's efforts in this direction a 'quest for justice.' He had already shifted the stones of the putschist order.

Demirel, who became his successor right after his death, would confirm that what he had done was exactly this, as he defined his own mission: the words 'In this country the stones have been moved from their places; my duty was to put those stones back in their places' were enough to describe everything he did during his term of office.

Anyone with a little reason and conscience could see the meaning of those stones being in place or not. Neither the soldier acted like a soldier nor the politician like a politician. Neither did the journalist do his job like a journalist, nor was the business world on the normal path of earning. In an environment where jurists, without the slightest thought for the dignity of the robe they wore, received briefings from the military that they applauded standing, and on the basis of those briefings burned the lives of innocent people, the university professor approached with hatred and hostility the student he was, under normal conditions (that is, in a situation where the stones were in their proper places), obliged to regard with compassion.

Some soldiers looked at their own people with the eyes of an enemy. For some, a few million people in Turkey could be written off in that cause, that is, a massacre could be carried out. For some, the stones being put in place meant such an order of madness.

Naturally, such an order produced millions of victims. With a law passed in a single night, the lives of hundreds of thousands of vocational high school students were darkened in a way that could never be made up for, and they were deprived of their right to education. Moreover, somehow the arrangement of these stones required thousands of people to die in unsolved murders and allowed the country's resources to be siphoned off to certain people. The lost wealth of these lost years of the country is now estimated at close to 300 billion dollars.

Last week we touched upon the accusations of revanchism in the context of the 12 September trials. There we only wanted to draw attention to the contradiction in the fact that those who went to the court trying a coup of 32 years ago as if going to a rally, to the chants of 'they will ask, one day they will ask,' accuse fresh cases like Balyoz and Ergenekon of 'revanchism.' In truth, neither trying 12 September is revanchism or vengefulness, nor is trying Balyoz and Ergenekon. But to curse one while trying to acquit the other is plain oppression.

As for 28 February, it is the missing but greatest link, whose completion has been delayed, in the process of confronting the past and justice that we have been going through for five years. Indeed, even the fact that it has been 28 February's turn last shows that a feeling of revanchism is not the determining factor here. Of course, technically, the fact that the latest attempts are being tried first rests in part on an urgency to repel those attempts. There should be nothing hard to understand in that. Besides, the Balyoz, Sarıkız and Ayışığı attempts and the Ergenekon formations largely overlap with 28 February both in their cadres and in their styles.

That 28 February has now become something that can be tried is an inevitable requirement of truly putting the stones in their places. A military that does not meddle in anything but its own business, and that therefore has a power that inspires more trust, and that is at peace with society, is the result. Universities that are really universities, and a field in which the politician can display all his skill toward using the country's human and financial resources most productively for the welfare, happiness and well-being of society, are a picture of stones arranged in their proper places. And the judiciary naturally reaches a point where, in trying criminals or those who have neglected or violated their duty, it recognizes no standard other than the standards of the law.

Until yesterday we were not unaware of what justice was and what oppression was. But the manifestation of justice is also partly a matter of justice having a power.

When justice has no power, the stones arranged by the one who does have power rise up as justice, but this too lodges like a knife in people's conscience and hearts.

If the trial of criminals is called revenge or revanchism, what is longed for and desired is the order of criminals. In these days when we are normalizing, that remains a morbid nostalgia.