Only when the law touches the military...When do you think to say there is no law but only cruelty?
Only when the arm of the law touches coup plotters…
When do you think to say there is no law but only cruelty?
When the arm of the law touches junta members…
When do you think to say there is no law but only cruelty?
When the arm of the law reaches the coup plots of 2003-2004 that aren’t even denied by the chief of general staff, when it reaches the plotters of those coups …
When do you think to say there is no law but only cruelty?
When the arm of the law reaches the Sledgehammer plan, which the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) undersecretary from that time describes as a “coup d’état preparation” coming from the 1st Army…
When do you think to say there is no law but only cruelty?
When the arm of the law touches those preparing social engineering plans by manipulating the news media and those preparing coup plots signed with authenticated signatures…
When do you think to say there is no law but only cruelty?
When the arms of law reach those who staged the bloody attack on the Council of State and threw hand grenades at the Cumhuriyet daily, issuing frantic warnings against reactionaryism to prepare the grounds for a coup in 2006 and 2007…
When do you think to say there is no law but only cruelty?
When the arms of the law reach those circles inside the military who dare name the murders of Hrant Dink and Father Santoro and the missionary massacre in Malatya “an operation”…
But you don’t even think about the law when there are attempts to cover up the Dink murder…
But you don’t even think about the law when the military, in the dead of the night, deals a blow to the sovereignty of the nation…
But you don’t even think about the law when there are attempts to block Parliament’s will in cooperation with the military with a freak of law such as the 367 quorum for a presidential election …
But you don’t even think about the law when the military stages the Feb. 28 postmodern coup d’état…
But you don’t even think about the law when tanks roll through the streets in Sincan to “fine tune” the regime…
But you don’t even think about the law when there are 17,500 victims, mostly Kurds, of unsolved murders…
But you don’t even think about the law when thousands of villages are burnt down in the Southeast, when hundreds of thousands are forced to leave their villages and homes…
But you don’t even think about the law when thousands of Kurdish children are being arrested just for hurling stones…
But you don’t even think about the law when thousands are detained and arrested in operations against the Kurdish Communities Union (KCK)…
But you don’t even think about the law when the ban against the headscarf on university campuses remains in place...
But you don’t even think about the law when a party elected to power with 47 percent of the vote is caught in a closure case…
But you don’t even think about the law when it comes to trying military officers in civilian courts as they do in European democracies…
But you don’t even think about the law when in this country a dual system of the military judiciary and the civilian judiciary continue to exist in a complete mockery of democracy…
But you don’t even think about the law when, for example, Orhan Miroğlu is sentenced to five years in jail for speaking Kurdish on television….
But you don’t even think about the law when, for example, Perihan Mağden is sentenced three times by courts for criticizing songs and video clips praising the murderers of Dink…
But you don’t even think of the law when, for example, a mudslinger who says Baskın Oran was “paid off” by foreign nations is acquitted by the Supreme Court of Appeals…
But you don’t even think about the law when a civilian prosecutor’s powers are hastily stripped after he summons an army commander to testify….
But you don’t even think about the law when Şemdinli prosecutor Ferhat Sarıkaya is barred from the legal profession solely for indicting the land forces commander…
But you don’t even think about the law when a military garrison sets “lowlife prime minister” as its password…
But you don’t even think about the law when the stones were being laid in preparation for the murders of Hrant Dink and Ahmet Kaya…
When do you think of the law?
Only when it touches the junta, the coup plotter…
I don’t know what to say about your thinking!
*This is a translation of Hasan Cemal’s column published in the Milliyet daily on Friday Feb. 26, 2010.
World
