On July 15, a group of army officers allegedly attempted to overthrow Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s regime in Turkey. In addition, Erdogan claims he was the subject of an attempted assassination while he was on vacation. After narrowly surviving this supposed attack, he appeared on Facetime from an unknown location to urge people to resist the coup by fighting aggressors in the streets. After flying to Istanbul, he slowly regained his power.

According to many, including analysts, scholars, government officials, and Erdogan himself, most of the soldiers involved in the plot were followers of Fethullah Gulen, a U.S.-based Turkish preacher and entrepreneur of the self-styled ‘Hizmet’ (Service) movement, a highly influential and shadowy religious cult well-positioned in the state apparatus. Once strongly supported by Erdogan himself, Gulen’s relationship with the Turkish President is now rife with conflict . Since 2013, the two sides have been waging an unrelenting war for supremacy where both have enacted the culprit and the victim’s role respectively.

Was it really Gulen? Was Erdogan informed in advance and ready for a backlash that would then give him the upper hand? Or was Erdogan responsible for the staged coup, using it as a power grab? We don’t know. We probably never will. The failed coup attempt on the night of July 15 corroborated my strongest conviction about our country: getting a taste  of the authentic ‘Turkish experience’ is far more thrilling and delirious than being the protagonist of the most sensational Hollywood movie ever made. Here, fiction is de trop. As Robert Walser famously pointed out, “we don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much.” Perhaps a little too much.

In fact, Turkey is one of those countries where one is taught, at a fairly young age, to master the most honorable art of watching and ignoring. “Keep calm, and mind your own business.” Syrian kids living in poverty within Turkey, ISIS bombs exploding in airports, and at open-air summer weddings (the last one a few weeks ago, killing fifty-five people) and an unacknowledged civil war raging in the Southeast in which the state has been continuously disenfranchising and killing Kurdish peoples for the past forty years, do not even crawl into our daily conversations. We’re just like you, except we talk about soccer instead of hockey.

For the past fifteen years, we have been watching our once-democratic, moderately conservative leader mutating into a third-rate dictator: building tasteless palaces, prioritising the financing of projects that could jeopardize the economy, and jailing, persecuting, and marginalizing anyone uttering the mildest, most inoffensive criticism. It would have been uncharacteristic for Erdogan not to follow such a long-established pattern of tyrannical ruling.

Watching one’s country drift into quasi-dictatorship is a curious affair: a regular man rises to uncontested power under the supportive, passive, or despairing gaze of all others. Millions are left contemplating how this ‘chosen one’ became the embodiment of a nation, reformulating and imposing the ‘will of the majority’ onto powerless and subdued minorities; an omnipresent, self-declared messianic figure that gradually invades civilian lives, dictates their mind, and penetrates their nightmares. Weary of putting up a forlorn resistance that will only lead them to jail, people finally give up.  Sarcasm, cynicism, and eventually nihilism prevail, while hope withers away.

July 15 was a dark day, a day when Turkish people were left with a tragic choice: a populist and merciless autocrat or a cruel, cold-blooded military intervention that could’ve led to a civil war. In any case, the only predictable outcome in this highly unpredictable country will be that things are bound to get worse. The recent crackdown on tens of thousands of teachers, professors, doctors, businessmen, journalists, activists, politicians and even athletes and stand-up comedians labeled as ‘plotters’ or ‘terrorists’ will inevitably bring more injustice, which in turn, will lead to more frustration, violence and instability.  

In the meantime, we can seek refuge in Kurt Vonnegut’s words, watching and ignoring the gigantomachy that rages on and threatens our future:

“No matter how corrupt, greedy, and heartless our government, our corporations, our media, and our religious and charitable institutions may become, the music will still be wonderful”

For how long can we keep mumbling cheery, bustling tunes in the dark? I don’t know.

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In Turkey, festivities related to April 24 include a well-established set of rituals to be thoroughly observed each year. First, high-level diplomats and cold-blooded politicians are dispatched to major Western capitals to lobby against the possibility of further recognition of the Armenian Genocide. Reporters from major news channels follow their footprints. Specialists and strategists are invited into heated public debates. Nationals living abroad are mobilized and urged to counter the Armenian narrative at all costs. Well-prepared and ready for battle, we know what to expect from our age-old foes. The only question remaining, then, is what to expect from our ‘biggest ally,’ the U.S.. Thus begins the most exciting part of our venerable tradition: we gather around our TV screens, hold our breath, and turn our eyes and ears to the almighty U.S. president’s annual address on the ‘Armenian problem.’ We nervously ask ourselves: is he going to use the ‘g-word?’

He doesn’t. Geopolitical considerations win over moral ones, as usual. The president follows the path set by his predecessors: he acknowledges the suffering and pain of the Armenian people, talks about horrendous massacres and mass murder – after all, it’s not what he says, but what he declines to say, that matters. He is well aware of Turkey’s position as a ‘key ally of the U.S..’

When it comes to speaking of the dispossessed, even the most unorthodox views are freely expressed by people who think themselves courageous.

The annual thriller ends in victory and relief. Until further notice, Armenians are kindly invited to return to their hundred-year-old mourning while we cheerfully go back to our necropolis, still haunted by their grandparents’ agonizing souls. It is springtime, and the race for the title in the National Football League is closing in. We’ve got bigger issues than acknowledging a genocide.

Our glorious ancestors put on their best efforts to conceal the actions in which they were engaged a hundred years ago. Names of countless villages, mountains, and rivers that could have reminded us of past Armenian presence were methodically changed; hundreds of churches and schools were destroyed or reused as barns or warehouses (recycling alla turca); houses were seized and redistributed among the local Muslim population – the recently abandoned creaky Presidential Palace in Ankara belonged to the Kasabians, an Armenian family that fled Ankara during the genocide. Traces of Armenian heritage have thus been systematically and successfully erased, while streets, boulevards, and universities have been renamed after the main perpetrators of the violence, who were glorified and hailed as national heroes. Nowadays, no one remembers the Pangaltı Armenian Cemetery that once stood near Istanbul’s main square, Taksim. Desecrated and razed, the gravestones have been reappropriated and used to build the stairs of the legendary Gezi Park, the only piece of greenery left in central Istanbul.

The Ministry of National Education has also played its part in forging the ideal, enlightened Turkish denier. At school, we were initially told that we hadn’t killed Armenians (believe it or not, they had killed us). If this answer seemed unsatisfactory or biased in any way, we were told that – sadly indeed – the Armenians had to be exterminated: it was a state of war and they had betrayed us. What else was there to do but to orchestrate the massacre of 1.5 million men, women, children, and elderly people?

Another argument frequently heard in Turkey is that we, Turks, are not racists and are thus incapable of committing a genocide. Racism, a Western invention, did not exist in Turkey: our cordial relations with the Armenian community still residing in Istanbul – also known as “the leftovers” – are living proof of that. In fact, so long as they don’t meddle in politics or mention the g-word, Armenian Turkish citizens are allowed to breathe, walk, and travel freely within our borders. Yes, Hrant Dink, an Armenian journalist challenging national historiography, may have been killed in broad daylight, but a non-negligible number of Turkish or Armenian public intellectuals holding similar opinions are still alive, protected by bodyguards or living in exile.

I conclude with a note on the boundless limits of our freedom of expression. Insulting Jews, Greeks, Armenians, or any other minority group is routinely met with the utmost compassion and admiration from both state and society, and the same goes for assassinating them: the police officers who arrested Hrant Dink’s murderer swiftly got in line to take photographs with their ‘hero’ under the Turkish flag while a famous pop singer composed a song praising the killer’s ‘accomplishment.’ When it comes to speaking of the dispossessed, even the most unorthodox views are freely expressed by people who think themselves courageous. Here is a brief conversation I had with a cab driver in Turkey a few years ago. For some reason, the discussion turned politico-historical:

“Do you believe in the Armenian Genocide?” the driver asked me.

“Yes.”

“You know what, I do too.”

“Really?”

“Yes. And if they come back, we’ll do it again.”

Arda Eksigil recently graduated with an M.A. in Ottoman History. To contact the author, please email arda.eksigil@mail.mcgill.ca.

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The twenty-something youngsters (the ‘Pokemon generation’ as some of its members call it) who led the three-week-long uprising against Erdoğan’s rule knew that the prime minister had the habit of nominating ministers who unquestioningly bow to his command; however, unlike the docile interior minister, this young generation had no intention of putting up with the whims of a condescending, paternalistic politician. Recent regulations on alcohol and the progressive demonization of alcohol consumers, constant threats to limit abortion, the admonition of a couple for publicly kissing in a subway, and finally, the arbitrary construction of colossal mosques and shopping malls – all in line with the personal taste of the prime minister – incited them to react differently. Instead of shutting up, the youth spoke up.

Although their voice has been heard all over the world, it seems that it will pass unnoticed in their own country. The ‘Great Master’ Erdoğan, as his supporters call him, shows no sign of comprehension or sympathy. During the last two weeks, he was busy rallying thousands of his followers in Chávez-style meetings and openly menacing all citizens who cooperated with the protesters (including high-school principals, doctors, and social media geeks). Some of his most enthusiastic partisans were swift to react. They took to the streets, shoulder-to-shoulder with the police, helping them ‘clear the streets’ and giving unforgettable lessons to ‘ungrateful’ demonstrators by beating them up with kebab-knives and clubs in the back alleys of Istanbul and other cities.

Now that the protests are losing pace, all goes back to ‘normal.’ The government has announced that some of the uprising’s “gullible adolescents” manipulated by mysterious “external provocateurs” have been tracked down, taken into custody, and occasionally arrested. Concurrently, a police officer who killed a protester has been released, while other police violence has been justified, left unpunished, or even praised. Everything seems to indicate that we steadily move towards Erdoğan’s ideal: an authentic and indigenous alla turca ‘democracy of numbers’ where his voters will prosper and the rest will have to bear.

This is why the Western media should keep doing what our local media can’t: cover the stories and activities of the people Erdoğan maligns as ‘terrorists,’ ‘vandals,’ ‘looters,’ ‘thugs,’ and ‘extremists.’ Their future might not be as bright as their minds are.

As you probably understand by now, this is a rather outrageous appeal to the world to keep supporting these Turkish ‘terrorists.’

Indeed, they might have dared to question the decisions and aesthetic taste of ‘His Excellency’ (a dignified expression used by the newly-appointed culture minister). They might have invaded a public park that was destined to be a marvelous, dream-like shopping mall. They might have unlawfully established a public library on it. They might have formed choruses, written songs, and invented whimsical, humorous (and occasionally indecent) slogans. They might have danced and cheered in the streets. They might have drank beer, and rumours say that some of them might even have been engaged in licentious acts such as kissing.

Still, even such debauched, perverted and immoral terrorists deserve to live with respect and dignity.

Arda Eksigil is a Turkish M.A. student studying Ottoman History.

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