“They're provoking our people. Isn't there a way to stop this?" asked one of the coup soldiers to his accomplices on the night of July 15. As much as we learned from the Whatsapp correspondences of coup plotters, this question remains unanswered. Of course, we all showed them there is not a way to stop this. The people were neither provoked nor ordered to take the streets. From the moment they heard about this attempt, our people were willing to give their lives in order to stop this cruelty. Just as people were trying to understand what was happening, we heard from President Erdoğan. He asked people go out to the streets and own their destinies.
People going out to the streets to stop the coup is a dynamic which FETÖ members can never understand. The reason why they can never understand this and why they thought people would support them when they made a coup attempt is hidden in the structure of the organization. This organization recruits its members by gathering people from society and then cuts these people off from the rest of the population. Members are at school during the day, and they only socialize with the other members of the organization in the evenings. They return to the houses of the organization when their work "outside" is done. While this is their daily routine, other social relations are also based on the organization. The members get married to other members when the time is appropriate. The "service" mentioned in the organization's propaganda is sanctified as an action which should be opted instead of family bonds, friendship, and human relations with other members of the community. Socially imprisoned by the organization, FETÖ members cannot reach any of the channels normal people use to form social bonds with others. Parents who have school-age children can socialize with other parents via messages, parent meetings and school trips. However, this is not possible for FETÖ members whose children attend the organization’s schools. For FETÖ members living within a parallel structure, and with restricted communications with the outside world, "people on the outside" are not social companies. Rather, they are targets who need to be recruited, persuaded and transformed into sympathizers and/or members of the organization.
Instruction Substituting the Truth
The destroyed reality is replaced with another one: instructions from above!
The recruiting process of the organization does not end when, in order to be included in the organization, individuals are cut off from their social circles. On the contrary, it accelerates. FETÖ members are always subjected to "in-service training" via conversations, camps and events within the organization. Having both a hierarchical and ideological structure, there is always an ongoing indoctrination process in the organization. At the final phase of indoctrination, the members of the organization code everything they know as useful information which will help them survive in the "outside world" and cut their connections with reality.
The coup plotters taking action with instructions from above could not understand Turkish people's will to go to the streets. They thought people in the streets were only the ones supporting President Tayyip Erdoğan and the AKP. They assumed they were "provoked" crowds opposing their "legitimate" actions. It was incomprehensible for them that people can stand up for their country, nation, freedom, and most importantly for themselves. It was even more incomprehensible that some of these people did this with the guidance of the President who is the leader of a political movement they did not support.
FETÖ members who synchronized the reality and their lives to the organization could not understand that people can take action for something other than an organizational affiliation. FETÖ members and the coup plotters who lost their ability to recognize reality thought that the Turkish people are just like them. However, the Turkish people carried out what was required of them by going out to the squares to suppress the coup attempt and to guard the rights of the national will on the night of July 15. Since there is no higher political concept than the direct will of the nation, the fact that people went out to the streets should be interpreted as "doing what is required of them" rather than "proving their adequacy." This is what is required of a nation. "The nation" crowding the squares and "the squares" crowded by nations are not two different things. They are only two different manifestations or forms.
The Nation's Manifestation as “Squares”
This extraordinary manifestation had consequences other than preventing the coup. All the well-intentioned or malevolent doubts and discourses stating that Turkey has become an authoritarian regime heading towards a dictatorship or that Turkey can be dragged into a civil war have disappeared completely. The will of the nation represented in the squares showed that this is not possible. This will has proved that it can overcome all who dare to establish a cruel order, just like it overcame coup plotters in the military.
The people proved that they will not be partners in crime when it comes to cruelty, they will oppose and go to the squares if necessary to establish justice. The people showed that they are the owners and the real and primary protectors of the state, of constitutional order and public authority. This is also an internal message for the nation, as well as an external one. For a long time, the Turkish nation has been alienated from the state which actually belongs to it. The state was alienated from the values and preferences of the nation, and it saw the nation as a threat. Thus, it tried to restrict the will of the nation by various bureaucratic guardianship instruments including military coups. A significant part of the nation faced the despotic side of the state, from their daily lives to their identity formation processes, and from their political preferences to their worlds of meaning. Society inevitably developed its self-defense reflexes against the state and therefore, the nation and state fell into a loop of alienation. The Turkish people who crowded the squares to prevent the coup attempt of coup plotters who are also FETÖ members on the night of July 15, also showed themselves that this separation between the state and the nation is not a rooted and genuine separation. Rather, it was a "defect" fixed by the nation itself.
From this aspect, the fact that the nation has been manifested as "squares" is more than a process preventing the coup. It is also a founding process. The nation fixed its problems and reconstructed itself. We are now faced with a new story, entirely written by the nation. Social polarization has been eradicated. The new story is the story of a civil nation not dictated from the outside and whose members can take part without the slightest discomfort - the nation who crowded the squares to oppose the coup on the night of July 15 is called the Turkish nation.
