On 15 July: "fear and power" and "coups and communities"

Today is 15 July, a day like any other, yet a day written into the history of Turkey as identified with a coup unique to itself. Eight years ago, even when it was announced that the entrance of the Bosphorus Bridge had been closed off by tanks, very few people at first thought that it was a coup attempt. For until only a few days earlier there had been an atmosphere in Turkey in which it was said that anyone who talked about a coup must have lost his mind.

Who was saying that coups would not happen in this age? Of course, it was not the segments that really felt, indeed lived through, the coup or its threat; on the contrary, it was those who regarded their warnings on the matter as a kind of paranoia. There were even those who saw talk of a coup as nothing but a rhetoric of fear that the government had invented and used to silence its opponents. After all, there is an interesting equation between fear and power. Throughout history there has been a way of holding power: inventing probable or imaginary enemies, or imagining in one's opponents a greater strength than they possess, frightening the masses about the potential they carry, and legitimizing in advance extra-legal measures against them. Was the development of Turkish democracy not delayed for years on the basis of imaginary fears of communism, separatism or irtica (reactionism)?

Indeed, the preliminary coups on the road to the 15 July coup came under the guise of the judiciary, through the very insidious use of sensitivity about the fight against corruption. Through street demonstrations and protests, one of the strongest signs of democracy, they had accumulated justifications, grounds, even arguments of their own. After 17-25 December, did not the CHP, which until then had constantly been warning the AK Party against the "F-Type structure," and a host of other opponents all line up together on the side of FETÖ, simply because it had been able to bring the power of the judiciary to its side against the government? It was the CHP Kemalists who raised an uproar, saying the press was being silenced and that we were heading toward dictatorship, just because the television stations of a coup-plotting, insidious parallel structure were being seized.

We witnessed an unparalleled solidarity, between 17-25 December (2013) and 15 July (2016), among the Kemalists who until the day before had regarded the F-Type as the greatest threat to the republic, to secularism and to Kemalism. Was it simply a matter of former enemies suddenly becoming friends under the rule "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? Or did the alliance have far deeper roots, and had it now needed to be made public because the time had come for it?

These days we are witnessing the same Kemalist circles placing excessive emphasis on the threats that all Islamic communities (cemaats) potentially pose to Turkey, because of the Islamic claims or dimensions of the FETÖ coup plotters. What is the meaning of singling out all community formations as potential coup plotters on the grounds that FETÖ used community culture as a ground for its own junta-like, coup-plotting structure by organizing itself as a community?

15 July was, like many evils, an evil that contained within it beneficial developments that no one could see. That Turkey and the Islamic world have been rescued from the threat of a total hegemony of a distorted religion is no small benefit. The structure that had gained a great advantage all over the world thanks to the opportunities offered by the Republic of Turkey had come to the point of presenting itself as the sole representative of Islam. The structure, which almost criminalized and demonized the Islamic experiences or interpretations lived by other countries, cultures or peoples and promoted itself as the sole representative of Islam, was in fact at the same time distorting Islam in exactly the way that would suit Western imperialists. 15 July rescued the entire Islamic world from the danger of this corrupted Islam. The plan to occupy Turkey step by step through this structure was also disrupted thanks to this failed coup attempt, or to the heroic stand the people showed against it.

However, alongside these beneficial developments there was also this bad outcome. An atmosphere arose that turned people cold toward every kind of Islamic community structure and led them to look at them with suspicion. While this atmosphere created a new wave of secularization, it also dealt a great blow to the culture of community formation. Unfortunately, after 15 July, a comprehensive, carefully impact-assessed program in the fight against FETÖ could not be implemented. All the sociological, political, national and international grounds and networks on which FETÖ had relied for 50 years were not taken into account. There was an urgent reflex of counter-resistance against the coup plotters, but the new tutelages and economies that this reflex produced within a short time could not be seen.

The discourse of suspicion and fear produced against Islamic communities by way of FETÖ tried to hide the fact that Kemalists have been behind all the coups, which have become almost a political habitus in Turkey since the beginning of the history of the Republic, or that all of them, in the end, could legitimize themselves with a Kemalist discourse. Yet the situation is very clear: all the coups in Turkey up to now were carried out with a Kemalist tutelary motivation. Behind none of 27 May, 9-12 March, 12 September, 28 February, 27 April, and the countless attempts tried in between, was there ever an Islamic community.

We also saw how all the Kemalists were immediately in solidarity with the 17-25 December judicial coup. Had they been together from the start, or did they, upon seeing the coup, rush and embrace it with longing? That is a separate question. The reality that concerns us, including in this event, is that the juntas that carried out all these coup attempts belonged to communities formed on the basis of a Kemalist culture and ideology. We are not even touching on how intertwined Kemalist communities and Masonic communities or leftist communities are, and how together they have made coup-making a habit.

Today, however, there is no sign that those who bring up this connection are for some reason categorically against coups. Behind their discourse, on the contrary, nothing is read other than the nurturing of coup-making desires once again against the Muslim people. In the scenario of outrage we experienced in Kayseri, for instance, could we not hear the footsteps of past coup plotters?

At the 8th anniversary of 15 July there is no entirely different, new point we have arrived at. As long as this greed for property and power exists in people, the aptitude for coup-making does not seem likely to end completely.

It is necessary to be in a state of strong vigilance against it, and every coup or attempt comes as a test and puts all of us to the test.