What was it about February 28th?

What meaning does it carry for today?

February 28th was; the militarization of the state’s mechanism, the polarization of the community, a pole’s view on the other in a danger and threat mentality, the blacklisting of the religionists by the military and them being repelled from the public field. It was the militarization of constitutional institutions and democracy towards this purpose. It was the central media’s functioning as a “weapon” with psychological maneuvers in this legal masked military intervention…. It was the reinforcement of the dominant military guardianship order in the country by all of these.

Until just a couple of years ago, we used to talk about the permanent effects of February 28th… For example, the EMASYA Protocol, the product and main mechanism of February 28th, only managed to be removed in 2010.

The military and circles, who couldn’t reach the objectives they desire in February 28th, attempted three separate coup preparations in 2003 and 2004.

However, the point at which we arrived today, especially the “purification after military guardianship” that accelerated since 2007, had reached important results and considerably removed the sediments of February 28th, despite some malfunctions and the new issues created by the process itself.

The overhaul of MGK (National Security Council), rasping of military’s privileged position, ensuring the unity between the state-political mechanisms, the liquidation of coup-minded groups within the military… They are all historical steps in this sense. Today, the military-based blacklisting, exclusion and pursuit worries had come to an end. There is also another side of the February 28th medallion; the sociological side…

This sociological story, which started in the 1980s and extended till the 2000s, surrounds a transformation process, which extends from economic structures to communal structure and the political alliances to the politicization of cultural relations, with various inputs.

The most crucial and natural result of this transformation process is the decrease in the distance between the center and girth of the community, and this decrease becoming visible and active.

February 28th is the quake caused by this distance decrease. This quake edge, with the great transformation process, which reaches to the present time, its state of denominational equality and the reversal of a model, accommodated the clues of the transition to a different threshold.

In February 28th, the Islamic segment, which experiences a rulership experience on top of trauma and disturbance, had formed the main political and communal tissue, which shouldered the transformation in Turkey in the following period.

This state of shouldering had affected Turkey, changed the Islamic segment and influenced it. Without a doubt, every influence has limits; however, the essences are always permanent. It’s important to say that AK Party’s reformist policies are a result of this situation. The heterogeneousness within the Islamic field and perception are also similar results. Indeed, the second part of the 1990s had played an important role in the differentiation of the Islamic segment.

From the conservatives’ viewpoint, the February 28th period doesn’t only represent a victimhood feeling and reaction, but at the same time it surrounds the contradiction formed between the rulership experience, on which faiths are set upon and becoming identified with, and the state of loss, which becomes evident in proportion to this.

This accumulation of experiences forms one of the legs of the “social transformation process” from the point of the Islamic segment. From the point of Islamic communities, the conflicts, which are experienced during the February 28th period, had started a process of an inner differentiation, or to put it better, a process of “perceiving by becoming different” and “existing by becoming different”, and an interrogation process directed in this direction.

The recent period arguments, new issues, new rulership formations and new rulership fights are not removing these realities…

Likewise, the judicial deficiencies of the demilitarization process, which are caused by these rulership tensions and are expected to be removed, cannot harm the importance, essence and the rightness of this process’ direction…