They call it “an awkward silence” in social milieu. There are some canned responses to that question. For instance, one can respond by saying “I'm observant” or “I'm an introvert.” A better answer could be “I really enjoy the quiet.”
But you, the United States of America! You should put your proverbial head between your proverbial two hands and think deeply. Why are you still not allowing your friend and ally Turks to get to the bottom of that July 15 coup attempt? Do you still “need time to process your thoughts”? Perhaps small talk does not interest you much?
You the United States of America. You should know that your silence creeps up on you. I have expressed my anger – a fury that still rages on – on almost every anniversary of that fateful evening and night in the country. I tried to give a detailed account of things that happened at the White House at that time; I drew a picture of the then-assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, Victoria Nuland, begging the president to postpone the broadcast of his “support” for the “democratically elected Turkish regime.” She was reported crying, “Our boys may still prevail.”
Ms. Nuland probably communicated with the organizers of the coup attempt. The coup was staged by those who were supposed to replace the “Islamist” regime of the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) as the "moderates." We still have no definite answer to the question of the “go ahead” to topple the government that came from the architect of that notion and organizations of the so-called moderate Islam. That person is Robert Kagan – a neoconservative par excellence. He happens to be the husband of the aforementioned Victoria Nuland, who was representing the State Department in the Situation Room at the White House on July 15. Victoria was successful in delaying the expression of U.S. support for the Erdoğan administration for at least 36 hours. But she and Fetullah Gülen’s boys failed to pull off a coup d’etat that day because Turkish people, answering President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s call to stop the anti-democratic uprising of some military units, rushed to the streets and pushed the military units back to their barracks.
There have been many speculations regarding why the coup attempt began in the early hours of the night when the government officials, military commanders and the people were still either at their office or the dinner table at home.
Türkiye and its military forces had many U.S.-organized or U.S.-supported coups in their history; they usually got out of their barracks in the dead of night. The cult known as “Fetulahçılar” had been infiltrating the armed forces and other government branches since NATO’s “Operation Gladio” had been put into effect in Türkiye.
That somewhat legitimate (but not exactly legal) operation has evolved into neocons’ “Operation Moderate Islam” in response to what is termed “radical Islamism and Jihadism” in the Middle East. The son of an American historian of Lithuanian Jewish descent and born in Greece in 1958, Robert Kagan paid special attention to Türkiye in his Washington think-tank – Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which gifted us with the Iraq War, the invasion of Afghanistan and later, ongoing efforts to dismember Syria and Libya.
As Buddha says, “Three things cannot be long hidden: the sun, the moon and the truth.” One day, somebody in those think tanks will pen down all the dirty secrets as a literary way of absolution. Then, we’ll know why the coup could be crushed by the bare hands of the Turkish people. A total of 251 of our brethren and sistren were martyred and 2,196 others were wounded or maimed. Millions of people were on the streets and at the gates of the military bases. President Erdoğan was also on the streets on the night of July 15; he later said, “We together as the 85 million people once again proved it to friends and foes alike that our republic will live forever on the basis of the superiority of national will.”
The civilian and military putschists have been tried in courts of law and sentenced to several years in jail for their attempt to overthrow the democratic constitutional order with 35 planes, 37 helicopters, 246 armored vehicles and around 4,000 light weapons.
One good conclusion we had that night was that the Turkish Armed Forces were no longer the source of military tutelage that had overthrown governments several times. In the 1960 coup, they even executed Prime Minister Adnan Menderes and his two ministers, Fatih Rüştü Zorlu and Hasan Polatkan. The top brass of the armed forces tried to keep their troops in the barracks, and later helped purge the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) cultists from the ranks of the military.
But the police and the military still uncover nested FETÖ structures and cells here and there; we don’t know the exact dimensions of their sleeper cells because the police cannot question the terrorist ringleader Fetulah Gülen. There can be no honest discussion of bilateral and communal issues or genuine cooperation with the U.S. while FETÖ is around.
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken has been known for attending Robert Kagan’s seminars on “how to become internationally conservative while remaining locally liberal” at the Brookings Institution for which he co-authored articles suggesting policies for the future Democratic president. Perhaps, he knows how valuable it is for Gülen to not to be questioned by the Turkish police; therefore, Türkiye’s formal requests for extradition have not even been answered. A person who held no official position and no job other than a voluntary preacher position, and traveling on a tourist visa, Gülen should not be enjoying any special privilege and protection by the U.S. government. He and his cohort traveling with him should have been extradited a long time ago and tried by the court of law in Türkiye.
The U.S. is neither returning him nor responding to Türkiye’s legal requests. Washington is silent. The democratic victory we embraced the next morning means that we as a people had passed an existential test. This obliges us to plug all the holes in our society to avoid that awful test again. The Gülenist cult has countless things to confess as to their deceiving with religious techniques, and the believers should be aware of those tactics.
Now that Nuland left the government, probably nobody is there protecting those “boys” they have in Türkiye. Time will prove the smiling Buddha right eventually. The U.S. should forgo its code of silence and come clean.
