More than a month after the July 15th coup attempt, Turkey’s leaders are still slamming the West for failing to understand the severity of the threat faced by their nation.
Addressing a delegation of Islamic NGOs at the Presidential Palace on Thursday, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has extended his criticism to “most of the Islamic world”, too.
The lack of understanding of the true scale of the violence and of the continuing severity of the threat posed by the coup attempt has been exasperating but not altogether incomprehensible.
Looking from afar, trying to get a grasp of events is not so simple. If anything, what has been happening in Turkey seems more than surreal.
The two Islamist-nationalist powers, the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) and a cult-like movement led by a Pennsylvania-based cleric Fethullah Gulen, suddenly breaking into a violent power struggle having been in close alliance for more than a decade is not an easy situation to digest.
With more than 40,000 people detained, 80,000 people removed from public duty, around 4,000 companies and institutions shut down since the coup attempt, and 60-80% of officers in the military identified as having links to the Gulen movement, much of Turkey’s bureaucracy, military , education and business structures seem to be infiltrated.
What is more, all of this has mainly happened under the watch of successive AKP governments.
So, when the President says, “Unfortunately, we have made serious mistakes [in the past on Gulen.] May God forgive us!”, he may find a sympathetic audience in Turkey but a foreign audience would find it unfathomable.
When the AKP government decided to empty Turkish prisons of convicted criminals to make room for mass detentions of those accused of being Gulen supporters, the outsiders were confused. When they realised that none of the self-confessed “deceived and fooled” officials would ever be brought to account and nobody would resign or be reprimanded, they were practically dumbfounded. When the oblivious military Chief of Staff or the head of the intelligence that failed to detect the mutiny remained in their posts, the plot further degenerated into a farce.
There was no sympathy for those responsible for flying fighter jets and helicopters over cities, attacking civilians with tanks and machine guns, killing 240 people, mostly civilians, and wounding 2,000 on the night of the botched coup attempt. These actions deserve the heaviest of punishments in any country, but how do you explain the detention of scores of journalists, shutting down dozens of news outlets, and blocking websites?
Oh, by the way, can anyone explain what exactly the President meant when he said the coup was a gift from God?
The outside observers want to know where else the Gulenists might have infiltrated? If they were everywhere, right beside the President and in the office of the military’s Chief of Staff, practically in every government department, every university and hospital, did they also hide in the government inside the party in power?
If, on that dark and bloody night, they could have achieved their goal, what would have happened? Who would have been the leader of the post-coup Turkey?
Until we get credible, responsible and transparent answers to these questions, the rest of the world will go on watching Turkey as the bizarre set of a surreal movie.
More crucially, until the dawn of that day, Turkey will not be able to wake from this real nightmare.
This post is also available in: Turkish
bulent says
Firdevs are you Turkish ? Why is your last name Robinson ? You like to eat kabuklu fistik ?
and an advice to you genius ,The usher in the movie you went to see, is culprit
Alastair Macdonald says
Shades of McCarthy. Say it, write it, point a finger and it becomes a fact. The question here is – what are those facts?