"BALYOZ" KARARLARINA TEPKİ- REACTING TO THE "SLEDGEHAMMER" VERDICTS

TÜRKÇE (For English text please scroll down.)

"Balyoz" davasının sonuçlarına halkımızdan tepki geldi. Ama bunun yanında, az sayıda beraatler bir savcının gözüne fazla gözükmüş, "onları da cezalandıralım" diyor!

 Cezaların babalık, kocalık ve hatta emeklilik hakkının reddi gibi aksesuarlarla süslenmiş olması da bu sürece ayrı bir sevimlilik katıyor.

Şimdi Ergenekon davaları devam ediyor. Bakalım daha ne eğlenceler hazırlıyorlar bize demokratik hukuk devletimiz!

 Basından Balyoz kararlarını protesto görüntüleri, Ankara, İzmir ve İstanbul

Göstericiler artık askerlerimizi daha bir yürekten savunuyorlar. Çağlayan mitinginin iyimser havasında söylenen "ne takunya ne postal" sözleri o kadar popüler değil. Hatta 27 Mayıs hatırası "Ordu Millet Elele" sloganı bile naftalinlerden çıkartılmış. Bakın İşçi Partisi ile yakın ilişkili Aydınlık gazetesi ne diyor:

Aydınlık, 23 Eylül 2012

Güzel de atı alan Üsküdar'ı geçti. Aslında bu mahkemeler çok daha hafif cezalar, çok daha fazla beraat verseydi hükümet- ve arkasındaki "cemaat"- yine de iyi bir gol atmış olacaktı. "Darbe" ve "darbecilik" söylemini kamuoyu altşuuruna o kadar etkili bir şekilde yerleştirdiler, kendi "darbe" tanımları üzerine o kadar o kadar iyi bir konsensus yarattılar ki TSK'nın "Cumhuriyeti Kollama ve Koruma" görevini tamamen suç kapsamına sokmayı başardılar. Dikkat ederseniz savunmalar hep "hayır, biz hiç darbe filan düşünmüyorduk", "benim haberim yoktu", "o benim imzam değil", "benim emrim dışında yapıldı" şeklinde yapıldı. (Sakın yanlış anlamayın, sahte delil üretilmediğini söylemiyorum!) Ortalıkta uçuşan polemiklerin net sonucu şudur: siyasi süreçle ilgili olarak askerden gelebilecek herhangi bir hamle, hareket, tavır, söz, ima tabu haline gelmiştir. Bunun böyle olmasının zeminini AKP ve "cemaat"'ten önce aydınlar (ki aydın demek bizde genelde solcu demekti) hazırlamıştı.

"Darbeci" sıfatını artk bir küfür haline getirmeyi başardılar. Bu sorgulanmaz hâle geldi. Siyah pantolon altında beyaz çorap giymek gibi, balık yemeğiyle kırmızı şarap içmek gibi.

Peki, Genelkurmay başkanı Necdet Özel'e niçin kızıyorsunuz o zaman? Tam istediğinizi yapmıyor mu? Yoksa kendinize "darbeci" dedirtmeden darbe mi getirmek istiyorsunuz? İstemediğiniz hükümeti göndersin, siz beş sene sonra, ortalık yatıştığında, onu da "darbeciler yargılansın" diye kurtlara atın, hem de temiz bir vicdanla!

Belki de eveleyip gevelemek, polemiklerde boğulmak yerine kullandığınız kelimelere ve cümlelere dikkat etmek en iyisi. Vaktiyle "inkilap" ve "ihtilâl" kelimelerini "devrim" kelimesinde birleştirerek bir solcu ihtilâli ("devrimi") daha kabul edilir hâle getirme stratejisi vardı. En azından böyle gözüküyordu.

O hâlde AKP ve "yandaş basın"'ın kurduğu kelime tuzağını tersine çevirin, "darbe" ile "askeri müdahele"'yi ayırın.

Bakın 28 Şubat'a bile "darbe" dediler ve o süreçte rol alanlara da "darbeci" yaftası yapıştırtdılar, yargılıyorlar

Darbe kelimesini bir rejimi değiştirmek için yapılan bir  hareket sayarsanız, bir rejimi korumak, ciddi bir tehlikeden kurtarmak için son çare olarak yapılacak bir harekete meselâ askeri müdahele derseniz (bir hastalığa "müdahele"edileceği gibi)

O zaman dabeciler AKP ve arkasındaki "cemaat" olur, asker de darbe yapmamış, yapılmış olan darbeye müdahele etmiş olur.

ENGLISH

The footnote links do not work; you will have to scroll down to to the footnotes for expanded information. Opening the blogsite on two seperate windows and keeping one on the footnotes will make it easier to go back and forth. Sorry for the inconvenience, I'm no expert!.
Other links should work.

There was public reaction to the Balyoz ("Sledgehammer") verdicts. But on the other side of the coin, an attorney for the persecution was unhappy with the 34 acquittals. He feels they got off too lightly.

Another cute embellishment of the verdicts was that the condemned officers lose their conjugal rights as husbands, paternity rights as fathers, and retirement benefits. 

So much for the "Sledgehammer", now on with the Ergenekon trials. Life is so much fun in this democratic state under rule of law.

Photos from the press, demonstrations against the "Sledgehammer" verdicts in Ankara, Izmir and Istanbul. The banner carried by the Istanbul group (below) reads "Army, People, Hand in Hand"

The demonstrators are now defending our soldiers more openly. The slogan "no clogs, no boots" from the optimistic Çağlayan demonstration is now pretty much forgotten.[1] Even the slogan “Army and People Hand in Hand”, relic of May 27th, 1960,[2] has been taken out of mothballs and put into circulation. Just take a look at this headline below, which appeared in Aydınlık, a left-leaning newspaper affiliated with the Labor Party.

 Aydınlık, Sept. 23rd, 2012: 

 "A People without an Army is Nothing"

Great, but is it too little too late? When it gets down to it, even if the courts had been more lenient, even if they had passed out a great deal more acquittals, the AKP and the “community”[3] behind it would have carried the day. They have so indelibly burned in the stereotypes of “coup” and “putschist” into the public subconscious, created such a concensus based on their own definition of what constitutes a “coup”, that it has become a crime for the Armed Forces to carry out its duty of “protecting and watching over” the Republic. Notice that the accused of the "Sledgehammer" trials often sought to defend themselves with expressions like “no, we weren’t plotting a coup”, “I don’t know anything about it”, “that’s not my signature”, “such and such was done contrary to my orders” etc. (Please do not misunderstand me, I am not saying the evidence was not forged because I do believe that this was often the case.) The net result of all the battle of words flying back and forth has been that any action, movement, attitude, phrase, suggestion coming from the military is now taboo! And the groundwork for all of this was laid out by the intellectuals (and “intellectual” usually means “left wing” in our country) well before the AKP and the “community” entered the scene.

“Putschist” is now a swear word! Supporting a “coup” is unacceptable bad taste, like white socks under black trousers, or red wine with fish. It’s just not done!

Fine then, why this rage against Chief of Staff Necdet Özel? Isn’t his passivity just what you wanted? Or do you want a “coup”, without seeming to support it? Do you want him to unseat a government that you dislike so that, when the waters calm down five years hence, you can throw him to the wolves, shouting “try the putschists”?[4] And still have a clear conscience about it?

Maybe you should give up on all the wordplay and say exactly what you intend to say, paying attention to the words you pick, and what they mean.

In the heyday of the leftist movement, the words ihtilâl (“revolution”) and inkilâp (“reform”) were united in one word, devrim[5]. Many suspected, and with reason, that this was a linguistic trick to make the expected leftist revolution more palatable.

The AKP and its press has been using a similar trick of nomenclature to guide our thinking and actions. Just undo it, and split the word "coup" into two, corresponding to two meanings.

Notice that the AKP and its supporting press has even managed to label the 28th of February process a “coup” and the officers involved are now standing trial for it.[6]

If a “coup d’état” is a drastic action to change a regime, a last-resort act to protect it can, and indeed ought to be, called an intervention. Like a medical intervention.

Under the revised definition, the AKP and the “community” behind it will certainly appear as the “putschists”, the ones to have planned and carried out their “coup d’état”. And the public will be within its rights to expect and hope for an “intervention” to remedy the state of affairs.

---

[1] The Çağlayan rally of April 29th, 2007 was the biggest of the monster demonstrations against the rise to power of a fundamentalist government. The AKP was already in power, with Erdoğan as Prime Minister. The AKP was using its parliamentary majority to bring a fundamentalist from their own ranks to the Presidency; making the takeover of the top offices of the Republic complete. The demonstrations were held to keep this from  happening. The government had its way and like-minded Abdullah Gül became president. 

 There are several videos of the Çağlayan meeting, on U-Tube, here is one:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cC9lw3rUF_Ae

 “Clogs” (“takunya”) is a derogatory allusion to the simple footwear associated with a sloppy fundamentalist image; “boots” alludes to military boots. Feeling overconfident in their own crowd, the demonstrators were declaring they did not want a military intervention.

Many organizers of the rallies have later found themselves entangled in the Ergenekon trials.

[2] In the days leading up to the coup of May 27th, 1960, the protesting youth the armed forces, with the support of the opposition CHP, joined forces to bring down the right-wing government of Adnan Menderes’ Democratic Party. Unlike the interventions of 1970 and 1980, it had more the character of a “coup d’état”. The arrmy enjoyed open public support and the slogan “Army and People Hand in Hand” was a popular chant.

[3] “Community”- “cemaat”, the  followers of Fethullah Gülen, spiritual leader of his own sect, based on the teachings of Muslim mystic Said Nursi. Fethullah Gülen is resident in a ranch in Pennsylvania.

[4] Like General Evren, now being tried at 95 years of age for the intervention of Sept. 12, 1980.

[5] Within the framework of “purifying” the language from words of Arabic and Persian origin.

[6] See footnote 6 of my post “War Drums of a Non-Militarist Government”, Sept. 18th.