A Letter to My Brother

My dear brother,

Exactly seven and a half years have passed since the 15 July trap set by the commanders under whose orders you and your fellow sons of the homeland served, commanders who had handed over their will to certain cliques and deep powers.

As I write these lines, we are leaving behind a year in which we have suffered disaster after disaster, in the world and in Turkey alike. We are about to enter a new year that we hope will make our hopes bloom again.

I know you are very tired.

Even though you have stood tall as a mountain for years, even though those who look at you cannot believe their eyes, and even though your friends shed tears of pride while your enemies are driven mad by your iron will, what you have been through is not something every brave man could bear.

I know you had a life that, though not dazzling, rich or lavish, was full of honour and dignity.

You had a loyal wife who endured so much, and little ones who smelled of paradise, who gazed at you with their big eyes, hung on your every word, threw their arms round your neck, rode on your shoulders and held great hearts in their small bodies.

I know you had your mother, whom you loved dearly and who spoke of you proudly wherever your name came up, your father and your brothers and sisters.

I know that on that night you did not do what those who set the trap for you wanted, what they were rubbing their hands waiting for you to do. Though most of the people have not yet understood, for the sake of the homeland and the nation you chose to set aside all your loved ones and your career in an instant and throw yourself into the fire…

One day everyone will understand, my brother. I know you have no such expectation, but sooner or later everyone will one day see what a hero you are and understand what happened in all its clarity.

Sadly, this ancient nation, for which you were ready to die, surrendered without question to the disinformation it was exposed to, and followed not the truth but the fabricated scenarios and slanders laid before it by those in power. And it still does.

And sadly it pays the price for this by living through something worse each day than the day before, as its quality of life falls further, as it loses its social peace and security and its sense of being a nation, and as it searches for justice in vain.

For years we sweated shoulder to shoulder at the Military Academy. At the graduation ceremony you and I took our military oath together. With tears in our eyes we cried out in unison:

“In peace and in war, on land, at sea and in the air, always and everywhere,
to serve my nation and my republic
with honesty and devotion,
to obey the laws, the regulations and my superiors, to hold the honour of military service and the glory of the Turkish flag dearer than my life,
and, when necessary, gladly to sacrifice my life for the homeland, the republic and my duty: I swear upon my honour!”

Yes, you kept your word, my brother!

As you swore, you obeyed the laws and your superiors.

As you swore, you were where you were told to be, and you died where you had to die.

How were you to know that those called commanders would trick you and stab you in the back in a way unworthy of the honour and dignity of military service?

How were you to know that so-called judges and prosecutors, servants of the political power, would sign the verdicts politics deemed fit, in a way incompatible with law and justice?

Even if you had known all this, that night you would still have taken the same heroic stand and still have said, “for the security and peace of the homeland and the nation”.

You are not here now, my dear brother!

In your place are some party-loyal soldiers whom the political power appointed without examination or interview, considering only affiliation, and those who pledged unconditional allegiance to the government in return for your purge.

You are gone, and there is no brave “soldier” left to stand up to the government and cry out about the harm that pointless cross-border military operations can cause. Now puppets who say “Yes, sir!” and sacrifice our soldiers to the government’s political ambitions at election time are running the Turkish Armed Forces, the “hearth of the Prophet”…[1]

Army commanders can no longer even show the will to rush to the aid of citizens dying under the rubble without an order from the political power. Those who, at the cries of hundreds of thousands under the rubble, waited for their “chief’s” order instead of immediately sending their units to the disaster zone now become Chief of the General Staff thanks to these superior services(!).[2]

With you gone, my brother, the country’s foresight in fighting terrorism has gone too.

Those who say “We track members of the terrorist organisation down to their shoe size” cannot prevent the PKK from raiding base areas in the middle of winter, something unprecedented in its history. While their own children do paid military service and enjoy themselves in palaces, they feed our soldiers to the terrorists in the middle of snowstorms, under makeshift tents they call base areas.[3]

In your absence, my brother, the country is being encircled on all sides.

While the neighbouring countries around us fill up with foreign military bases, our borders are being turned into a sieve.

While those who say “Border security is in safe hands!” put on shows on social media, someone has been tampering with the country’s demographic structure. Besides millions of Syrian refugees, thousands of irregular migrants from Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran have been let in across our borders in trucks, free as you please.[4]

After you, my brother, they closed the military hospitals too.

They destroyed that vast military and medical memory, which once had surgeons so experienced that they could say, “Just bring them to the door alive and leave the rest to us.” Those who passed themselves off as patriots, nationalists and secular nationalists (ulusalcı) were content to watch this betrayal. It seems their loyalty to the deal between them required it.[5]

In your absence, the Gendarmerie, the guarantor of public order and security, has been turned into a haunt of crime bosses and their associates.

The Gendarmerie Commander now poses for photographs while socialising with mafia leaders.

As a result, the country has become a place where the world’s mafia organisations feel safe too. Whoever pays gets citizenship. Our streets host armed clashes between foreign mafia groups.[6]

Your place, my brother, was taken by those who do not regard Atatürk as Commander-in-Chief and refuse to wear his badge.[7]

After you, some units were commanded by poor excuses for commanders who raped the soldiers you used to protect like the apple of your eye.[8]

In the new Turkey, Gendarmerie commanders, non-commissioned officers and specialist sergeants responsible for public order smuggle drugs, the prosecutor became a drug baron and the police officer a courier.[9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17]

And while this is the situation, some shameless people come out and say, “The Turkish Armed Forces are stronger than before! The more we purge, the stronger we get.” [18]

Although they expelled you, and are trying you on coup charges, those who say this send you on operations because no competent pilots can be found in the Air Force, and then send you back home or to prison.[19]

There are traces in the country of the atmosphere before the Balkan Wars, my brother.

The Turkish Armed Forces, the state’s safeguard, have become an institution overrun by politics, where the irresolute and the incompetent take command posts, run not according to the interests of the state but only according to the interests of the political power. In public, meanwhile, society is deceived by pumping up the perception that “we are strong, we are getting stronger”, hollow as it is. So to speak, while the political power says, “I am as sure of the Balkans as I am of my own conscience”, the Armed Forces are worn down by being sent on adventurous cross-border operations without strategic aims, or by being put in a difficult position against the terrorist organisation because of incompetent planning.

Take care of yourself, my brother!

This country will need you more than ever.

With your clear mind and pure intellect, your iron wrist and steel will, when the day and time come, it will once again be you and those like you who rescue the country from the state it has fallen into… One day, when there is no choice but to return to the rule of law, your honour will be restored. And those who called you a traitor, if any are still around, will suffer torment upon torment in their conscience.

Not: Bu mektup ömrünü vatan sevgisine adamış, bu uğurda canından ve sevdikleri de dâhil olmak üzere her şeyinden vazgeçmiş ve şimdilerde ülkenin dört bir yanında cezaevlerinde ya da yaşama imkânı bırakılmadığı için sürgünde bulunan tüm vatan sevdalısı meslektaşlarıma ithafen yazılmıştır.