CLEAR THOUGHTS AND SENTIMENTS ON A DISORDERLY COUP

CLEAR THOUGHTS AND SENTIMENTS ON A DISORDERLY COUP

Mustafa Durmuş

19 July 2016
 

On the night of the 15 July, when the first set of information was relayed regarding the military mobilization in Istanbul and Ankara the first thing that came to my mind was that, with the impact of the Nice massacre, the military was holding certain points in order to avert a possible ISIS terror attack. Yet, as a person who experienced the 12 September 1980 coup, I knew that coups were made in the wee hours of the morning during wool gathering (not after peak hour and limited to two cities)

However, the skirmishes in Ankara that happened right within our earshot, the noise of guns, the constant sound of airborne Skorsky helicopters and fighter planes and the bombs dropped over the National Assembly and of course the official and unofficial statements revealed that this was a coup attempt.

As frightening was the curfew, the crowding of all the streets with soldiers, tanks and the rounding up and detainment of people from certain sieged neighborhoods onwards from the morning of 12 September 1980, the low-approach of fighter planes and the bombs they dropped and the fire opened from the tanks which went on for hours on 15-16 July was as frightening too.
Once more, I internalized what people, children and women felt in some of the Kurdish cities in Turkey like Cizre, Şırnak, Nusaybin, Sur or Syria  confined at their homes, shelters and felt the need to confront myself.
The feeling I had due to the terrifying bombing of the National Assembly, opening fire on civilians regardless of the dispersing justification was the same when surrendered private soldiers were beaten, and tried to be thrown of the bridge and one of them having his throat cut and I hated both situations thus once more felt utterly concerned about the future of our people and children. 

My morale came down even more when I saw various online material which tried to justify the cutting of the soldier’s throat by means of saying “this is deserving for someone who shoots at his own people” which is both dangerous and hypocritical.

Because when soldiers kill civilians in the East and Southeast regions of the country who are coded as “enemy-terrorist” they are hailed as “heroes and martyrs” when killed, but when killed in the West they could be qualified as “ traitor, filth”. The notion of not using guns against the public by the soldiers or the police being valid for all of the country was forgotten. 

The Sala’s which were announced from the mosques every thirty minutes to mobilize the public against the attempted coup show how these venues have been functionally politicized. The increasingly authoritarian tone of these mosque announcements is another disturbing issue.  These announcements demanded as follows: “With the command of the President and the President of religious affairs, the public was requested to take to the streets and stay there in order to preserve democracy”.

The ones who took to the streets were coded as the ones who “sided with democracy” the ones who didn’t were coded as the ones who “sided with the putchists”. The identity and the appearance of the people who wished to eradicate democracy was clear, they were all in military fatigue and putschists. What was weird was the ones who would preserve democracy: The police organization which has increasingly become the power tool of the ruling party and the mafioso, paramilitary groups who claim to hit to streets with the a ruling party’s calling.

There is no need to argue “how much of a democracy” was the democracy we tried to preserve but the democracy defenders were not the working class strikes, laborers or left movements as seen in history but were mostly made of mafioso, paramilitary groups and some voters of the ruling party.
Most worrying is that these paramiliter groups – which apparently have been formed after the Gezi revolt – are among the most serious threats to our democracy and our future. Since they act together with the police force  whenever the state needs a helping hand they will not be utilized to build or preserve democracy but will be an important tool for a transition to a fascist dictatorship. 

The statements that the media anti-coup stance started right from the beginning was exaggerated. Most of them were confused but also had a pragmatic approach. If the coup had been successful (happily it wasn’t) the question of “whether the ones – leaded by the media -  who stood an anti-coup ground would have saluted the coup if it were successful” should not be overlooked. Because after 12 September Coup, we did not forget how grateful were newspapers such as Hürriyet, Aydınlık and unions including Türk-iş to the putschist army
Ahmet Şık’s article (http://www.cumhuriyet.com.tr/…/Ahmet_Sik_darbenin_perde_ark…) is explanatory of the reason why the putschits were in haste. This article also gives some clues regarding the reasons of the coup, the unsustainability of a conflict which goes back to the fight between the ruling AKP and Fethullah Gulen feud, a fraction in the Turkish army, some high-ranking army officer’s and Cemaat influenced soldiers who feared for their future and detention lead them to revolt against their superiors and attempt to takeover the administration.

On the other hand, historically coups were brought up by the monopolist capital (and imperialist organizations such as CIA) for the remedy of economic and political crises which no more could be overcome by democratic means. So, soldiers did not make a coup out of boredom. There were economic, social and class connections in the coups they made and military dictatorships they established. A great example for this is the 12 September 1980 military coup in Turkey which was made to overcome the political crisis which could not be managed anymore and the rise of the working-class struggle and the economic crisis which had deepened with the 1970’s global crisis.
The thing that triggered or impelled the 15 July coup attempt, however it is referred to, is the destruction of the social peace and the rapid annihilation of democratic politics and Turkish democracy.  

This coup attempt, contrary to the discourse of the AKP- Palace establishment, shows that military coups in Turkey are not impossible and are still an important threat. As R.Fisk puts it “ this coup attemp has been averted until the next one” (http://www.birgun.net/…/robert-fisk-darbe-bir-sonraki-darbe…).

We once again saw that, as long as the army exists in  this ever powerful huge form, this organization will serve to  destroy democracy as much as it will protect bourgeois democracy.

Also, the prevention of coups and protection of democracy cannot be made by the mobilization of mafioso – reactionist – paramilitary forces. This can only be obtained by a wide association of all the democratic powers in the public. The 15 July experience once again emphasizes the importance and urgency of the need for a “democracy front” to stop the post-coup bad course of events as much as preventing new military coups because, according to the comments, the prevention of the coup should not be fully read as a “win for democracy”. The expectation is that this development will rather be used as a ground for a transition to dictatorship and pressure on democratic powers will increase (R. Cohen, Turkey’s Coup That Wasn’t http://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/07/18).

It should not be forgotten that, whereas the majority of the public did not support the putschist they also did not support the so called democracy defender paramilitary forces that terrorized the streets. The public anxiously waited at their homes. It is this  public – led by the working class and including all labor and democracy forces, all peoples of Turkey, which strikes out as the only force to stop slow-motion civil coups which have been in motion for some time and the military coups (A. Finkel, https://www.theguardian.com/…/j…/16/turkey-coup-army-erdogan )
History tells us that, when problems arise the solutions also arise in a dialectic manner and people put solvable problems on their agenda. The problem has been there from some time and the solution started to ripen. The solution is the “democracy front”. Let us organize the “democracy front”!