31 March 2010

Through its explanations, the General Staff verified the ’the Balyoz Operation Plan’ (the military coup plans against the current government) that was allegedly prepared by the First Command of the Army in 2003. However, according to Fikret Bila in the newspaper Milliyet, the military is very cautious on this issue. As a matter of fact, the statement- "this should not normally have happened, but if it exists it does not bind the Turkish Armed Forces" given about the bombings of the mosques and crashing our own plane that allegedly existed in the plan, can be evaluated as the General Staff’s attempt not to deny all these scenarios at the beginning, but to take measures in case they are true. It is obvious that the General Staff does not want to reiterate the difficult situation it has experienced as a result of its explanations about ’the original signature’ and the arms in Poyrazkoy.

The interesting part of this issue is that even though the General Staff’s statement says that this extreme scenario could be real, an investigation has only been started regarding the leaking of information from the First Command of the Army. This makes clear that the method related to this kind of plan is always the same: to refuse until it has been proved and to launch investigations only against the ones who are suspected of leaking the information. At this point, it is useful to simply reason. If these are the claims, which party is guilty: those who provided these dossiers to the prosecutors in order to ensure the examinations of these claims or those who concealed them? Is it not important that this information had been publicly available and the truth had been revealed? Who are the more sinful: those who helped to make the information a matter of common knowledge or those who hid it? Who are the patriots: those who created detailed scenarios to promote segregation within society or those who unveiled these scenarios? It is beneficial to answer all of these confusing questions through a well-known Turkish story.

Fellow travellers bear, wolf, fox and sheep lost their way in the forest and were nearing starvation. As a solution, fox said that it was necessary to sacrifice one of them in order to keep the others alive. They decided that the most sinful one among them would be sacrificed. Bear confessed his biggest sin, saying that he had slaughtered 7-8 cows in a herd and ate one of them. Fox instantly came forward and said, "Brother bear, it is not a big deal!" Then, just as wolf said that he had destroyed 10-15 sheep from a herd, the fox said again, "It is not a big deal bro." Then, fox said that he had plundered a hencoop, and both wolf and bear said,"It is not even a sin," returning the favor to fox. Finally, it was sheep’s turn. After thinking about whether he had sinned, sheep decided to confess his biggest sin to his friends and said that he had eaten a squash blossom. Afterwards, a great trouble suddenly arose. Fox, wolf and bear said, "Wow, gosh! You ate a squash blossom, this is a great massacre! That blossom would have become a squash, and thousands of seeds would have been obtained from the squash and hundreds of thousands of new squashes would have grown thanks to these seeds and the fate of humanity would be saved!" And with that, they destroyed the sheep.

The story above is the story of Turkey. What sins could belong to those who prepared the plans, realized the military coups and tirelessly defended them? However, the one who leaked the information is declared to be the most sinful person, and the General Stuff hunts down those who revealed the plan. All sin belongs to those who published this information, commented on it by taking it seriously, litigated and judged it. In the framework of this plan, the General Stuff announced that it had launched an investigation on the person who leaked the information and preferred to blame those who took this plan seriously.

It is possible that you feel like one of these most sinful people. The most happy and proud people are those who are still able to tell this kind of scenario as a "game of warfare." Succeeding in this could be only a miracle, and such miracles could not happen to ordinary people.

Prof. Dr. Ihsan Bal
Director of USAK’s Center for Security Studies

*This piece was first published in Haberturk on January 25, 2010.