BY: Yasin Aktay*
Turkey is detecting and judging all the criminals of the treacherous coup attempt which targeted democracy and freedom that led to the death of 249 people and to the injury of 2,193 others on July 15, 2016.
First, everyone has to accept and respect that it is an incontestable right. The allies of Turkey must help and support the Turkish judiciary in this process.
Even if they are not Turkey’s allies, those who say they are in favor of democracy, if they are being honest, should at least support Turkey’s decision and its struggle against putschists, terror and terrorists.
Unfortunately, we have seen in this process that many of the countries that present themselves as the champions of democracy and even allies of Turkey, are in a completely different world. We initially interpreted the attitude of some countries, which failed to have a clear stance on the coup during the coup, as a pragmatic “wait-and-see” policy. Even this was shameful and wrong, and it was enough to show the hypocrisy of these countries. But what we faced during the coup was not just a hesitation, but rather a feeling of the embracement of coup-makers who fought in the field on their behalf. I think the places of those who fled Turkey because of the failure to carry out the coup had already been prepared in Germany or in the U.S. within the scope of plan B.
Since the pre-coup period, namely the Dec. 17 judicial coup attempt, Turkey has been requesting the extradition of the coup’s ringleader from the U.S. Let’s say that we have not provided enough evidence to satisfy the objective U.S. judiciary regarding his involvement in the Dec. 17 case. But since July 15, FETÖ’s involvement in the coup attempt through a bloody terrorist organization is obvious. Those who ask for evidence to be satisfied in this matter either have no rationality or mock ours.
The U.S. hastily decided that the Afghanistan-and-Iraq-backed al-Qaida was behind the 9/11 attack, declaring that everyone would either believe it or would be accepted as part of this attack. Bush declared his historical statement that “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists” with the global polarization call he initiated after this event.
What evidence did the U.S. rely on then while it gives no chance to anybody else to be objective, hesitant or ask whether the evidence was convincing? It invaded Iraq on the pretext of possessing weapons of mass destruction and promising to bring democracy to the country – which killed 1.5 million people, injured and displaced millions of others and led the country to an instability that it could easily recover from.
The U.S. relied on no evidence while taking this step that dragged the world to calamity. But it claims that the evidence presented is insufficient to extradite the gang leader of the evident coup.
We know very well what this “insufficient evidence” means, but I think the situation has become clear with the U.S. embassy’s reaction to the arrest of Istanbul Consulate General officer Metin Topuz: what evidence can convince it of the crimes of someone who it itself instigated for the crime-coup? You might as well have presented 85 files of evidence and documents to Gülen himself rather than the U.S. judicial authorities.
While it is clear that the Dec. 17-25 was also a Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) coup, the oddity in the U.S. judiciary’s embracement of the indictments, which were prepared by coup-makers, is disappearing now. Why does an internal case in Turkey bother the U.S. judiciary? Reza Zarrab was involved in a money-gold transaction between Iran and Turkey. While Turkey said that it did not recognize the embargo imposed on Iran by the U.S., why does the judiciary give the U.S. the right to judge a Turkish citizen?
The U.S. judiciary thinks that it has the right to arrest and judge Turkish citizens by processing the invalid indictments prepared by FETÖ members who are known to be fraudulent and putschists. But the U.S. considers it to be a cause of crisis when Turkish national consulate officers, who were clearly involved in the coup and the massacre staged in Turkey, are arrested and judged.
Nevertheless, the U.S. ambassador’s reaction to the arrest of Topuz must be well interpreted. We should not see all these contrasts as a result of the U.S.’s original and unchanging position as a whole.
As President Erdoğan has asked, it is necessary to consider that the U.S. has also been exposed to a parallel structure leak, for these inconsistent policies primarily bring losses to the U.S..
Its cooperation with terrorism against terror displayed in Syria and the incompatible policy that stabs Turkey, its biggest NATO ally, in the back, is the result of such a leak.
This policy serves to bring in enemies, rather than allies, to the U.S.
This policy, which is slowly dragging the U.S. to isolation where it will have no friends to trust it, can only be explained with the mind of a parallel occupation within the U.S.
We should not neglect to make this warning while our official alliance with the U.S. continues.
If there is still a “patriotic” will to save the U.S., it should soon take action to clear this parallel structure in itself before it is too late, or it seems to be at its end.
*Yasin Aktay is a member of the Turkish parliament and a leading figure of the ruling Justice and Development (AK Party) in Turkey. (Published in Yeni Şafak Turkısh newspaper on October 11, 2017)
