If you live by the saying to keep your nose out of other people's business, you will probably most likely live longer, but I doubt you will sleep comfortably. Especially when journalists in your country, shamelessly and without one iota of proof, claim that your country is deeply and dangerously divided – you can hardly keep your nose only in your own business.
A case in point is the MİT (National Intelligence Organization) trucks issue, which became the subject of renewed interest when an opposition member of parliament, a Republican People's Party (CHP) Deputy, Enis Berberoğlu, was sentenced to 25 years in prison. The court arrested him as soon as it reached a verdict. It might not, and wait until the end of the appellate process, but since one defendant in the same suit fled the country and is not attending the hearings, perhaps the court wanted to play safe this time. In any case, it is a court decision and there are myriad ways to object to it. However, the claim that this decision is going to be the final straw for the country, which, as has been argued, is already deeply and dangerously divided, is not true. CHP Chairman Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu has already started a long march from Ankara to Istanbul to protest the court decision.
We have to keep in mind that the case Berberoğlu was involved in was a plot not against the ruling party or President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, but organized to have the country tried in an international court of justice as a rogue state providing arms to a terrorist organization. In January 2014, a convoy allegedly carrying arms to the Daesh terrorist group was raided by the gendarmerie, and some people working for the country's intelligence organization were arrested. An unusually large group of photographers and cameramen were present during the raid. Later, these recordings surfaced in the government offices of certain countries. However, people soon learned that the raid was illegal and the trucks were headed to the besieged Syrian opposition.
Now we all know that the whole incident was part of a heinous plan of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ). The perpetrators had their allegations published in a Turkish newspaper and this parliamentarian was accused of providing the pictures of the raid and the fake news of the Daesh arms shipment. Three years later, FETÖ tried to topple the government with a bloody coup attempt.
Not only is the country not divided, as it is similar to any democratic society at the polls, but the coup attempt unified the country and the people in an unprecedented manner. FETÖ members are now being cleansed from the government institutions they have been infiltrating for decades and the public want peace and tranquility following these foiled FETÖ plots.
If the country were deeply and dangerously divided, as some columnists claim, Kılıçdaroğlu's march would have attracted thousands of people. What those columnists are writing about is their own wishful thinking.
