The brotherhood of coup-makers

These days, what is happening in many parts of the Islamic world seems to shed light on what is happening in many other parts. Right after the Gezi events, which began as a defense of a tree, turned into a small-scale uprising and moved toward storming the prime minister's home and offices, the first elected president in Egyptian history was toppled by a military coup, following the Tamarod movement that began in Egypt. It was said that this coup consisted merely of the "heroic Egyptian army," unable to withstand the people's intense demands, taking the stage and seizing the situation. That is, nothing was within the army's power; when the people wanted it, the flowing waters stopped. Well, the Egyptian army is a servant of orders; it obeyed the people's command!

Of course, the army did not stop at overthrowing the President to whom it had sworn an oath of loyalty; afterwards it appointed a new president and government, with no basis other than the force of arms. Afterwards it arrested thousands of people, shut down all the television channels opposed to it, killed over 200 people in total and wounded over a thousand through its random fire on demonstrators, and, let alone being held accountable for this, has not even opened an investigation. In return, it still continues to say that what it did was not a coup. That it says so is nothing; what matters greatly is that the whole world is so willing and ready to believe this laughable claim.

Every military coup we know of has been accompanied by the demands of a section of the people who supported it. But this did not prevent them from being military coups. Because the military has no right to intervene in political disputes among the people. The dispute of the people is what suits a democratic society best, but for a section of the people to feel an armed force (an army or an organization) behind them in a way that provides an unfair competitive advantage, and to think they can get help from it when they are in a tight spot, is something that corrupts democracy.

Unfortunately, in every society there can be sections that will aspire to such an unjust gain. This unjust political gain is very tempting. Although you have no chance of coming out of the ballot box, thanks to the intervention of an armed force you arrive at a place you could never have reached otherwise. That is why even the most loyal, fervent defenders of the regimes established come from among such minorities. In nearly all the Islamic countries established after colonialism, the military, and therefore the state itself, has such a tempting role, and often the defense of the coup is made by these tempted sections of the people, in one guise or another. Of course, because of the extremely pejorative nature of the word coup, the defense of a coup is always made by putting it into other guises. No one takes on the label of coup-plotter, but what he does is a coup all the same.

Look, as soon as the possibility that the coup in Egypt had been somehow pulled off emerged, the same circles began to stir in Tunisia as well. But this stirring needed an accelerating effect. As of yesterday, this effect was also supplied by the killing of Mohamed Brahmi, leader of the People's Movement Party and member of the Constituent Assembly. It has been understood that the assassination, calculated to remain at the hands of unknown perpetrators, was carried out with the same gun that shot another opposition leader, Mohamed Belaid, who was killed on 6 February, so that it quickly produced the same result as the earlier assassination. The Ennahda movement was held responsible for this murder out of the blue by some people, and protest movements began immediately.

It has been understood from the first findings that this assassination, which in every respect recalls our Council of State killing of 7 years ago, was committed by a Salafi group. The Salafis, supported by Saudi Arabia, the sponsor of the coup in Egypt, are in fact radically opposed to the Ennahda movement, which is considered Tunisia's Brotherhood. We know that Saudi Arabia's anti-Brotherhood stance is such as to push it to sponsor the coup in Egypt against them. For the same reasons, the assassination that made Ennahda the usual suspect from the outset is a simple repetition of the big game staged many times and being played these days to redesign the Islamic world. The more interesting side of the matter is that even though everyone knows the difference and enmity between the Salafis and the Brotherhood, Ennahda is held responsible for the Salafis' actions. Just as the actions or thoughts that are the subject of the harshest criticisms directed at the Brotherhood in Egypt actually belong to the Salafis.

The most important tactic of the game is to make governments that came to power through democratic means and remain open to being tested through democratic means look like "dictators."

From whichever angle you look, this is a game of illusion. The area in which this game is most ambitious is the distortion of facts. The coup will be made not to look like a coup. The vandalism there will be presented as the justified, bursting anger of innocent demonstrators against police violence. From that aggressive, vandal activism a portrait of a weeping flower child will be drawn, and beads will be sought and found in the filth those children spill. The pranks and foul-mouthed rhetoric there will be presented as examples of high humor. Actions led by finance-capitalists, the most repulsive exploiters of capitalism, will be passed off as anti-capitalist, socialist movements. Looting ("çapulculuk"), living up to its name, will be presented as if it were some accomplishment.

This game is played in the same way in Turkey, Egypt and Tunisia.

When the event is an illusion, the artisans of distorting the truth will surely have important work to do.

And where do those whose profession is artist fit into all this? The advertisement placed in The Times by some artists is not at all an artistic form of distorting the truth. Art by its nature is a falsification of reality, but there is an artistic way of doing it. Where does the political engagement that pushes and provokes them to distort the truth so openly, even deviating from the rules of art, come from? It is worth dwelling on, later.