By ABDÜLHAMİT BİLİCİ
There are many unanswered questions about the July 15 coup attempt, which lead many independent obsorvers to conclude it was not a real coup but a staged one like Hitler’s Reichstag fire that gave him the excuse to wipe out opposition and create one man rule.
Questions like how Chief of Intelligence and Chief of Staff preserved their positions, even promoted if they were unable to inform Erdogan, who claimed to have learned about the coup attempt from his sister’s husband?
Or Erdogan replied with 4 different versions about the first time he learned the coup was on that evening? Or how the general who was praised for his role in preventing the coup attempt was later portrayed as the leader of the coup?
Or what was the logic behind starting a coup at prime time on a summer evening when people are chilling all around instead of an early morning when people were deep in their sleep ( universal and Turkish coup time).
Or what was the rationale behind closing one way traffic at one of Istanbul, bridges while leaving all media intact?
Or what was the sense of bombing the parliament building if coup plotters reported the aim was to restore democracy and especially doing that after it bacame clear that attempt failed? Or why and how can a political leader describe a coup attempt targeting himself as a gift from God?
Or why Erdogan’s Intelligence Chief and Chief of Staff rejected to respond to questions from members of parliamentary commitee investigating the attempt. Or why Erdogan abruptly stop this commission from completing its investigation?
Or why did the incomplete report of that commission disappeared?
Or why whoever questioned the official version of the coup attempt were silenced like jailing opposition leader Selahattin Demirtaş who described July 15 as the conspiracy of century by Erdogan and critical journalist Ahmet Şık who found himself in jail after questioning the official July 15 narrative?
Though each of these is a very critical question mark, they are still less mind boggling compared to the question at the headline of this piece: How could a failed coup destroy a democracy?
If July 15 was a real coup attempt and failed, why did Turkey lose its democracy instead of celebrating and strenghtening it?
Turkey was never a full fledged democracy and it has always been hard for anyone not considered loyal to the regime under the ultra secularist and nationalist ideology of previous establishments, but destruction of democratic rights were not crashed even after previous ‘successful’ coup attempts to the extent of the July 15 failed coup.
I was an editor at Aksiyon weekly during the February 28 post-modern coup, which forced the elected government to resign as a result of immense pressure and threats from the Turkish military.
Generals who were behind that attempt had categorized our media group in the enemy camp, but their suppression had been limited to condemnations, some minor court cases and revoking our accreditations to cover any military event including press briefings of Chief of Staff and military maneuvers.
In total contrast to the July 15 failed coup, which shutdown my newspaper, news agency, our news magazine, tv and radio stations altogether. Just 8 days after the failed coup, the Erdogan government, not generals, raided the homes of reporters, editors, designers, columnists including mine as the last editor-in-chief of the banned Zaman daily and arrested them with the claim that they supported the coup attempt by their publications, which were taken over by the same government 5 months before July 15.
I left Turkey after the Erdogan goverment occupied and silenced my newspaper, so their attempt to arrest me fortunately failed, but most of my colleagues who were arrested in that raid have been in prison for the last 5 years.
Even Erdogan’s kangaroo courts were not able to establish any evidence linking these journalists to the failed coup but that did not prevent giving long prison sentences, even life time punishments, for some articles or tweets of journalists.
The media group that I was part of had two big sins. First, it was accused for being affliated to the Hizmet or Gülen Movement, which the Erdogan regime blamed for the failed coup.
Its second sin was to be an outspoken critical voice exposing the corruption of government and opposing its Islamofascist political ideology. In contrast to widespread perception, suppression of the media under the Erdogan regime did not start after or in reaction to July 15 and it was not limited to Hizmet affliated press.
On July 21, six days after the failed coup, instead of celebrating the relief, Erdogan’s ruling AKP approved a bill declaring a state of emergency allowing the government to rule by decree. On the same day, Erdogan suspended the European Convention on Human Rights. On July 27, the government published a decree to shut down over 200 critical media outlets, which had nothing to do with the coup or the Gülen group.
As a result of these policies, Turkey has become the worst jailer of journalists in the world, even worse than China and Iran. The Freedom House put Turkey into the category of ‘not free’ countries. According to the Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom index last report, Turkey ranks 154 in 180 countries after Venezuela, Honduras and Bangladesh.
Silencing critical media was a vital component but was not the limit. With the excuse of July 15, Erdogan purged the judiciary by firing or jailing more than 5.000 judges and prosecutors including two members of the Supreme Court and several judges of the highest level courts. The new regime also used July 15 to change Turkey’s political system from parliamentary to presidential, which eroded the controlling power of the legislative over the executive branch.
As a result, Erdogan established his one man rule by eliminating the most crucial three check and balance mechanisms of a normal democracy: parliament, media and judiciary. Currently, Turkey has a political environment where 95% of media, judiciary, parliament and executive is controlled by one man. This may be the answer to the questions why and how a failed coup destroys a democracy and why a political leader names a coup targeting himself as a gift from God. The TRuth