No ordinary weekend : personal reflections on a failed coup

It was a humid, ordinary Istanbul evening. We, as a family with kids and all, were out in Karaköy. On our way walking home my phone rang. It was my dad. I could sense the undeclared anxiety in his voice. “Where are you?” he asked. “Something extraordinary is happening out there. Please go home. Now. Please.” He would not say more other than: “Please go home and then we will talk.” My father is 73. He is a man of strength, togetherness and wisdom. He is a man of experience. He has seen and lived it all in this country. As I walked home with my six-year-old son, I could not remove the tone of his voice from my head. It was calm. It was uneasy. It was profoundly saddened.

By the time we were home, in front of the television, constantly checking our Twitter and Facebook feeds (VPN on, of course), we could hear the jets flying above over our apartment building. I witnessed the fear of my six-year-old son. Even if I could turn the TV off (I was unable to), I could not mute the sound of the fighter jets, helicopters and men walking down my street chanting “Allah-u ekber!” Nor could I dull the sound of the continuing recital of selah from the mosque next to my house, inviting people (more precisely, men) to go to the streets.

I felt and was a helpless mother with nothing but the calm tone of my voice to soothe a scared child. I was six years old during the 1980 coup in Turkey. I remembered how scared I was when armed soldiers came to take my dad from my house. He was 37. I remember vividly how he tried to hide their guns from my eyes. My voice became calmer, sadder, closer to my dad’s.

Today is a humid Sunday in July. That’s normal for Istanbul. But it’s no ordinary Sunday. A long night of an attempted coup from Friday to Saturday morning left hundreds dead, thousands wounded. The heart of Turkish democracy, our Grand National Assembly, was bombed four times by our jets of our own airforce. Awakening on Saturday morning, reaching for and instinctively checking for my phone, all I saw on my social media streams were pictures of the dead. Civilians, police officers and soldiers. Images of long-bearded men killing soldiers with their bear hands on the street.

I am, of course, thankful and happy that this coup did not succeed. What an abnormal thing to be thankful and happy for. I do not, however, feel like going in the streets chanting in celebration. I also do not feel like writing (or, frankly, reading) yet another cunning analysis article about what this was, what this will mean. I find the debates on whether this coup was staged or not dehumanizing, the male chatter on the rolling news channels unbearable.

On Friday morning before all this has happened Turkey was not a human rights respecting constitutional democracy. It has been well reported that journalists, academics, human rights and environmental rights activists (in other words, voices that do not conform to the government discourse) have all been under constant pressure, and at risk of pre-trial detention and imprisonment. The lax use of counter-terrorism laws to curb anti-governmental voices is now routine here. This is a country that refused the request of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights to send in fact-finding experts to investigate the atrocities and destruction that have taken place in towns in southeast Turkey under extra-ordinary curfews since July 2015.

This Sunday, Turkey is still a non-human rights respecting, ballot-box democracy. It is just one that has also, thankfully, survived a coup attempt. The intense chatter about coup making and discussions about whether the attempt was ill conceived or not well executed baffle me. Does it really matter? Members of the Turkish armed forces went ahead and dropped bombs on the Grand National Assembly. Another bunch of men killed unarmed privates. Hours later nearly thirty percent of the judiciary was purged. Two members of the Constitutional Court are under pretrial detention.

What does all this show? What it shows is that our political and legal institutions no longer enjoy sanctity and respect in this country. Turkey is now a place where a bunch of men bomb the Parliament and another bunch of men behead more men in army uniforms. The Prime Minister declares this a ‘feast of democracy’. A significant number of the members of the judiciary (men, dare I say), including members of high courts, stand accused of being members of a terrorist organization.

As a woman, a mother, as a defender of human rights and democracy, I feel deeply alienated from all this. All I have is a deep sorrow. Sorrow for my country. Sorrow for fathers and mothers on a Friday evening stroll with their kids.