How great you were, Atatürk

How great you were, Atatürk

Quite often I opposed your stance when you turned your face completely to the West. At the point we have reached today, I am saying, “Fortunately you turned your face and our faces to the West,” and I do not have anything else to say.

Quite often I opposed your strong insistence for “unification of education.” At the point we have reached today, I am saying, “Fortunately you strongly insisted in the unification of education,” and nothing else. 
I have said quite a lot in opposition to the secularism principle you introduced to this country. At the point we have reached today, I am saying, “Fortunately you installed the secularism principle,” and I have nothing else to say. 

I had criticized your efforts to form a nation without quite trying to understand. At the point we have reached today, I am saying, “What a valuable effort that was,” and nothing else. 

I was totally unable to comprehend why you never liked the concepts of sheikdom, effendi and followers. At the point we have reached today, I am saying, “I totally get you,” and nothing else. 

I did not quite like why you kept your distance from religious communities, religious groups and religious formations. At the point we have reached today, I am saying, “How well you have done,” and nothing else. 
How great you are, how great you were, dear Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. I am now also among those who appreciate and value you. 

I too will visit your mausoleum, Anıtkabir, in Ankara. I too will hang your poster on my wall. 

And one more issue: In one of the past years, just for the show of it, I had stood up late on a Nov. 10 day, not exactly at five past 9 a.m., the time the entire country commemorates the time of your death. I had also announced it in this column of mine as if it were some kind of ingenuity. 

This year on Nov. 10, at five past 9 a.m., I will rush to be the first to stand up.   


A huge compliment to say ‘like Khomeini’ 

You may or you may not like him, but Ruhollah Khomeini did not arrive in Iran after the cruel and nefarious kamikaze acts of the assassins he infiltrated into the Iranian army. He arrived in Iran following a major people’s revolution. 

Whereas Fethullah Gülen would have arrived in Turkey not after a major people’s revolution or anything like that, but following a major people’s massacre. 

So, please dear Justice Minister Bekir Bozdağ, don’t mention every now and then that “he was planning to arrive like Khomeini.” To be able to arrive like Khomeini is to arrive basing your existence on the people who stopped the tanks. 

For a bully who was planning to arrive by running over people with tanks, to say that he was going to arrive like Khomeini is a very big compliment.


Will be acquitted if innocent 

While journalists were being arrested during the Sledgehammer and Ergenekon cases, all those journalists who said, “Why are you so excited and reactive, my dears? If they are innocent, they will be acquitted,” are all detained now. 

I guess they have now understood the unscrupulousness, the mercilessness and the cruelty of the sentence: “If they are innocent, they will be acquitted.”


Two words for those who lost their lives 

Our democrat and liberal writers are writing long pieces on the arrested journalists. Which is fine, I have no objection. As a matter of fact, I also wrote similar kinds of pieces. 

What I don’t understand is why these democrat colleagues of ours, while they are writing pages opposing the detention of writer/journalist Şahin Alpay, don’t even mention a couple of words on the people who have been massacred under tanks. 

What should we draw from this? Is it that they are more worried about the detention of Alpay? 


A silly or a perfect plan? 

The guys made a perfect plan actually. They thought about the details; they discussed everything thoroughly. However, when they were forced to move the starting hour of the coup from 3 a.m. to 9 p.m., everything went upside down. 

Military officials point out that “a plan starting at the hour it was decided upon is one of the most important criteria for the success of that plan.” 

The dimension of the danger is better understood when you review the incident from that point of view.