The end of the Cold War did not bring much benefit to the Turkish government. Rather, globalization became the primary concern. A state ideology based on isolating the society from the world had lost most of its power. This made the public dependent on the media and introduced a need to create more vehicles to manipulate public opinion. It also forced the state to create a strategy to protect its authority. The Feb. 28 “postmodern” coup served as an example of a successful military intervention in the new period. Thanks to Nokta magazine, we have just learned of an unsuccessful coup attempt scheduled for 2004. The coup leaders wanted to align media organs with themselves, stir up commotion in universities and encourage unionists to hold rallies. However the leaders could not agree on certain issues and decided to cancel their coup attempt. Nokta revealed that the coup was recommended by an admiral who urged until the last moment to go ahead with the action. In fact this individual was so determined that he was willing to carry out the coup by himself.
As a country we’ve become accustomed to such developments. In fact when Nokta published these documents, reactions remained mainly muted. It was like an old story for us, one we’ve heard several times. Turkish people know that there are always a few people in the military who dream of a coup. It is obvious that these people will remain even if society becomes more liberal and democratic. When we look at the issue from the eyes of the authoritarian elite, Turkey is headed toward a very stressful period. Why? Because the need for a coup will increase but planning a coup will become more difficult.
We can imagine just how much this will disturb some bureaucrats and even some civilians and how they will attempt extremely “brave” moves. The documents published in Nokta also helped us understand the level of rationality and intelligence of the potential coup leaders. Take for example the diary of the former navy commander. The most striking fact we see is the lack of knowledge they have about the public. Here we have a group of people that solely associate the public with the term “threat to law and order” and have absolutely no understanding of sociological reform. We also see the level of futility in their analyses, which contained repeated clichés from the official socialist ideology. Their approach was to assess democratic and laic terms with an autocratic mentality, to develop the republic within this faulty framework. It was an approach that had absolutely no association with reality.
We learned of two very dangerous features these people have. First, their ability to fool themselves, and second, their arrogance. Apparently these coup plotters not only lectured each other on the importance of their plan, but believed they were chosen people who needed to complete this “holy” task. Needless to say, a military that functions as an independent social power would be detrimental to society, especially since this elitist coalition holds a weapon-based source of power. It is ironic that the people most distant to the Turkish public are those that are most powerful. Fortunately nothing remains private long enough in our day, and we are able to know the real “others.”
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