The country is traumatised, but so far has not really felt the consolation or condolences of world leaders or the international press. The Turkish people need due attention to their wounds, but do not find a sympathetic world. Instead they are faced with an international media and politicians who preferred to immediately focus on what the next actions of the “Sultan” would be.
Turkey has survived the bloodiest coup attempted in the republic’s history, yet the international response has been far from measured
Part One: Turkey’s Attempted Coup*
It was bloody, it was gruesome. At first it felt like a joke; in a social media age and among countless satellite channels, the low-rating state channel, TRT, broadcasted its dull announcement of the coup. Indeed, some even did not believe there was anything much that would come out of it and soon returned to watching their films and soap operas on that Friday night. Yet, as the details still continue to emerge – the horrific videos of tanks butchering people, limbs scattered across Istanbul and Ankara’s main streets among defiant crowds, snipers ruthlessly shooting at innocent masses, and officers’ Whatsapp conversations advising and reporting the killing of dozens in cold blood – it was definitely a horror movie that we have survived.
Yet, it was also epic. The people resisted a murderous military gang’s vicious attempt to take over the whole country against their wishes, with a bravery that already made Tahrir or Tiananmen look like a minor event. They surely beat a coup with their own blood, sweat and tears.
It looks like the attempted coup was amateurish and doomed to fail after all, even if civilians had not been mobilised by the president’s Facetime call televised live on CNN Turk, or the continuous salah recitations blared out from minarets across the country. We had similar desperate attempts, such as that of Talat Aydemir’s 1963 plot. But what distinguished this junta is that it has proven unmatched in cruelty by enacting the bloodiest coup attempt in the Turkish Republic’s history.
The country is traumatised, but so far has not really felt the consolation or condolences of world leaders or the international press. The Turkish people need due attention to their wounds, but do not find a sympathetic world. Instead they are faced with an international media and politicians who preferred to immediately focus on what the next actions of the “Sultan” would be.
In navigating their own dilemma, some European and U.S. officials as well as the media, have already alienated the Turkish public with countless insinuations that they could not care less about the toppling of an elected authority by a more western-friendly junta, even at the cost of a deadly massacre. The warm welcoming of the bloody Egyptian coup, despite its horrifying massacres, had already opened this door. Referring to Erdoğan supporters as “sheep”, and suggesting “they will follow whatever he says”, was definitely not the most respectful way to talk about a people resisting an attack on the government they elected and mourning their dead either. Now when they seem to be concerned a lot more about the post-coup purges, which are now well beyond a simple consolidation of Erdoğan’s power but the beginning of a whole new phase of Erdoğan’s regime, their selective sensibilities about liberties will only bolster the image of a hypocritical west. It was essential western leaders and media did a better job by supporting the people against a homicidal military faction’s violent toppling of a popularly elected president, before they brought up the issues of curtailed rights and liberties.
Was the popular resistance for democracy? The epic defeat of the coup may not have been for democracy, as some liberal or leftist coup resisters claim in their wishful language of “martyrs of democracy.” There were surely many ready to die, perhaps not for democracy, but for their honour, freedom, or leader. When a Kurdish friend, a bitter critic of Erdoğan and his recent campaign against Kurds that victimised his family and his hometown, readily took to the streets, he told me, “I would not be able to live with this sin if I stayed silent; I went out for myself, for our future, for everybody in this country; not for Erdoğan.” It was a “never again” moment. “Tomorrow I can go back to oppose Erdoğan,” he added.
Whatever their reasons, the Turkish public have saved a regime, with their own blood. Putschists in effect turned the Erdoğan regime into a popular revolution, a war of liberation. “We are here for martyrdom,” many were chanting. “Stop calling it martyr of democracy, as our shaheeds did not die for democracy. They died for religion, nation and motherland,” said a popular Islamist figure. It turned out they were not kidding when they were chanting, “Tell us to die, we will die” during Erdoğan’s anti-Gezi rallies three years ago. They earned their regime and they must be given some credit for protecting it. The invincible army-nation is back in full force, and Erdoğan would just as well take these Turks to conquer the world if it were a couple of hundred years ago.
Even if it was not for democracy that the majority shed their blood, it was most certainly the democratic thing to resist the coup. Of course, AKP supporters had the most stakes in the current regime and they were the first to take to the streets for Erdoğan. But we also did not see any crowds of people supporting the coup. Just as Gezi was heterogeneous, yet predominantly secular with a westernised base, this was also heterogeneous with a conservative majority.
The big masses that rally every night are still living through the horrors of the coup attempt in their cheerful and celebratory mood for surviving and defeating it. It will take time for the wounds to heal and the crowds to calm down. Unfortunately, what is lost in this mélange are calls for restraint, justice, and rule of law that are doomed to fall on deaf ears.
* This article is first of a three-part series on the July 2016 failed military coup in Turkey. See part two here.
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