The Sledgehammer hits back

Once upon a time, a man with big eyes and an endless oratory capability was shouting at every square of the country: “They were going to bomb our mosques … They were going to provoke a war with our neighbor Greece … They were going to provoke martial law … Using the powers imbued by the martial law, they were going to overtake the government … The plan was foiled!”

Those were the times of “thriller democracy,” when through scaring the Turkish public the tall, bald and bold man was trying to consolidate his power, walk towards becoming an absolute ruler. In that march he was using the Islamist Fethullah Gülen fraternity as a multi-purpose swordstick.

The conspiracy system or the coalition of the evil was a perfect one. First, affiliates of the fraternity in police, intelligence, judiciary, bureaucracy – including the military – were collecting or often concocting evidence. Then either through “deep throats,” or directly in suitcases, these evidences were provided to the embedded journalists – who were as well either members of the Gülen clan or had “purely emotional” affairs with the fraternity. Reports in the media were then used by the prosecutors – who were indeed very much aware if not pre-informed of what was developing – as sufficient reason to investigate the alleged crime. Thus, eventually, under orders of the prosecutor, selected policemen ambush residences, offices, military installations and even a museum in the middle of night. If newspaper reports were not enough, then the police intelligence would concoct an alleged tip that a deputy prime minister would be assassinated or such, and using such an ambiguous tip, ambush the top secret military war...