Not even postmodernism can save the 17 December process

At this time last year we were discussing the lessons of how 28 February, said to be "a day of God" that would last a thousand years, had failed to last even 10 years. After all, what kind of arrogant, shameless self-sufficiency was it that could not even realize it was already becoming entangled in its own traps? Perhaps it was precisely the doings of the 28 February perpetrators themselves that had hastened the collapse of the order they built.

Today, again only a year later, we realize anew that the spirit of 28 February can resurface at any moment as an evil will that will never die. Perhaps 28 February's failure to last even ten years was not surprising given the arrogant attitudes of that process's actors, but there is one more truth: the will to sedition and evil that organized 28 February really could not have belonged to just a "day of God." Considered as an organization produced by purely military tutelage, it can be said that, since the military institutions have today been drawn back to the limits of democratic legitimacy, 28 February, with all its consequences, has completely ended.

Yet the tutelary mind and will that set the evil of 28 February in motion was a structure too wide-ranging to be reduced to the initiative of soldiers alone. We have to admit that, on the wind of the start of the 28 February trial last year, we were a little early in getting the feeling that every kind of will to tutelage had been buried in history. Even in the case itself no proper distance has been covered.

All responsibility for the event was placed on the Western Working Group and the group's activities. The soldiers were shown as the sole responsible party of the process, but even they, after being held in detention for a while in the scope of the case, were all released to be tried without detention. In the situation we have arrived at, the shameful chain of crimes in Turkey's history, with millions of victims of every kind and theoretically at least tens of thousands of perpetrators, has been severed by a complete dilution.

And yet, with the 28 February trial having begun, what an atmosphere had blown across the country in the name of democracy, in the name of ending the tutelage regime. No one would ever again dare such a crime. But the satanic evil that set 28 February in motion could come to us in entirely different guises. We could not ignore this. Indeed, both the Gezi incident and the 17 December incident are nothing but the attempt at a coup in another guise. Take a close look at both processes. The nations and international actors in the alliance that came together in both are the same as in 28 February, give or take one or two. The method used and the logic are also the same.

One reason 28 February was described as postmodern was that the coup took place by seeming not to take place, that the perception of reality was falsified and destroyed, and that the coup was pulled off within an illusion of democracy. Although that coup was called postmodern, it did in fact also have a "friendship" dimension that had been badly put up for sale. The same "friends," or the community, had played their part in that coup too in distorting the perception of reality.

The ultimatum "you failed, now go" against the Refahyol government, delivered in Fethullah Gülen's voice, was delivered then in the same way from the banner headline of the media that is today an ally. Everyone these days probably remembers and sees the headline of Zaman Newspaper congratulating the coup government that was formed with the words "may it be auspicious." That is, 28 February also did not lack a "friendmodern" dimension, just as today's coup attempt does not lack its postmodern dimension.

The greatest basis of the 17 December coup attempt is the great destruction it aims to inflict on the perception of reality by adding high intelligence technologies on top of a tremendous social or conventional media campaign.

They seem to have succeeded in dictating to certain circles in international public opinion the perception that Turkey is governed by a dictator(ship). Nobody, after all, asks them how, if there is such a heavy dictatorship, they can speak so easily, how the opponents can make their voices heard even more than the ruling power or the dictator. Besides, what postmodern perception management most relies on is the superficiality of the public. Postmodern perception management takes the public for fools and assumes that people are caught by what they hear in the first perception attack and surrender.

The will to evil that set 28 February in motion is lasting; it does not appear for a day of God and then vanish. But this evil, which is emerging again today with the same alliances, unlike in the 28 February days of 1997, has remained at the level of an attempt and has been caught at that level. From here on, however much they try to falsify reality, however much they resort to dirty operations, this time facing them is a reality of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, a reality of the AK Party, that cannot be falsified by its very existence and deeds.

No postmodern tactic will save whoever touches this reality, whoever tries to falsify this reality.