The open file on the process "meant to last a thousand years"

Thesis / 01What this site argues

The standard narrative frames February 28 as a showdown between the secular state and political Islam, and crowns the political cadres of the Milli Görüş tradition as its victims. This site argues something different, resting on four propositions:

• The most lasting damage was done to society, not to politics. Banned parties were refounded and banned politicians returned; but for the generations blocked by "uninterrupted education" and the university coefficient rule, for blacklisted tradesmen, purged officers and headscarved students expelled from their schools, restitution never came.
• The second wave of the process targeted civic religious communities that had always kept their distance from party Islamism. Once the Welfare Party was dismantled, the machinery turned on the Hizmet (Gülen) movement a network opening schools at home and abroad, running interfaith dialogue, and counselling calm throughout the crisis. The June 1999 cassette campaign, the State Security Court investigation and years of prosecution were the West Working Group's logic extended into civil society.
• Political Islamist cadres converted February 28 victimhood into identity capital. For over two decades the AKP government used "we are the victims of February 28" as a wellspring of legitimacy; yet the same government turned the coup's toolkit profiling, media engineering, purges by judiciary, mass dismissal from public service on its own opponents, most brutally on the movement that had itself been a February 28 victim. The bridge is documented: as early as the National Security Council meeting of 2004, a "measures" decision against the Gülen movement carried the signatures of the civilian government. Victimhood became dividend, and the dividend became a new February 28 the beneficiary of the coup became the lead actor of its sequel.
• The final invoice was issued not to one community but to Turkey itself. Whoever the victims were, what was interrupted was the country's ascent: the education chain was broken, capital was frightened off, the rot that led to the 2001 crash deepened, bright minds emigrated, and those who stayed learned to keep away from any form of civic association for fear of being profiled trust and participation, a society's most valuable capital, were poisoned for generations. When a high-potential country is halted by an intervention roughly every ten years, asking who benefits from this cycle is part of this site's job: alongside the domestic architects of tutelage, it is evident that external actors who do not consider a strong, self-standing Turkey to be in their interest were not the least advantaged by these interruptions posed here not as a conspiracy claim but as a question of beneficiary analysis.

Files / 02Sections

Summary / 03February 28 in three minutes

Start with the timeline, or jump straight to February 28 in 100 Questions.