The Welfare Party wins the election
The RP comes first with 21.4%. A fragmented centre-right and a corruption-weary electorate bring Milli Görüş to the threshold of power for the first time; the state's "reactionaryism" alarm begins to institutionalise.
The Refahyol coalition takes office
An RP–DYP coalition under Necmettin Erbakan wins a confidence vote. For the first time in republican history the prime minister comes from the Milli Görüş tradition.
The Libya crisis
Qaddafi's tirade against Turkey during Erbakan's visit turns the government's foreign-policy style into a domestic attrition weapon.
The Susurluk crash
A car crash exposes the state–mafia–politics nexus and ignites a regime debate. Public outrage demands a "clean society"; the military–media axis gradually channels that energy into an anti-government campaign.
The Prime Ministry iftar for religious orders
Erbakan's iftar for sheikhs and community leaders at the PM's residence is presented to secular opinion as the emblem of a regime in danger.
The "fake sheikh" operations
The Fadime Şahin, Ali Kalkancı and Müslüm Gündüz scandals occupy prime-time news for weeks. Later debated as steered media operations, these broadcasts lay the psychological ground for the collective discrediting of the pious.
Sincan: Jerusalem Night and the tanks
The Iranian ambassador's presence at a municipal "Jerusalem Night" triggers a crisis; on the morning of February 4 tanks roll through Sincan. Deputy Chief of Staff Çevik Bir will later call it "a balance adjustment for democracy".
NSC Decision 406: the 18 points
In a nine-hour National Security Council meeting the military imposes an 18-point "anti-reactionaryism" programme from uninterrupted schooling to surveillance of religious orders. Erbakan resists, then signs weeks later, his position eroding.
The West Working Group is formed
Created inside the General Staff to monitor implementation, the WWG with no legal basis becomes an extra-legal surveillance machine profiling politicians, journalists, businesspeople, foundations, communities and ordinary citizens.
Closure case against the RP
Chief Public Prosecutor Vural Savaş petitions the Constitutional Court to close the governing Welfare Party as a "focal point of anti-secular activity".
The "reactionaryism" briefings
The General Staff briefs media executives, then judges and prosecutors, on the "reactionary threat". The image of the judiciary taking notes before the military becomes the emblem of the era's damage to judicial independence.
Erbakan resigns
His majority eroded by the media campaign and defections, Erbakan resigns. President Demirel hands the mandate not to coalition partner Çiller but to Mesut Yılmaz; the "postmodern coup" has achieved its aim.
Eight-year "uninterrupted" education becomes law
Imam-hatip middle schools and Qur'an courses for primary-age children are effectively shut. Imam-hatip enrolment will collapse from over half a million to tens of thousands within a few years.
The Welfare Party is closed
The Constitutional Court dissolves the RP; Erbakan and others receive five-year political bans. The base migrates to the pre-founded Virtue Party.
The coefficient rule
The Higher Education Council penalises out-of-field university applications from vocational schools. The target on the board is the imam-hatips; the shot hits every vocational student and Turkey's technical-education capacity.
Erdoğan convicted
Istanbul mayor Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is convicted over a poem recited in Siirt; he serves four months in 1999 and is banned from politics. The case will later sit at the centre of the AKP's founding mythology.
Fethullah Gülen leaves for the US
Gülen departs for medical treatment. The campaign prepared against him in the following months turns the departure into a de facto exile; he will never return to Turkey.
The Merve Kavakçı crisis
Elected MP Merve Kavakçı is prevented from taking her oath in parliament because of her headscarf, driven from the chamber by protest, and later stripped of citizenship. The footage becomes the process's verdict on elected office.
The cassette campaign: Gülen in the crosshairs
Sermon recordings of contested integrity are broadcast with a ready-made "plot to seize the state" framing; a days-long headline barrage follows. With the RP dismantled, the West Working Group's logic finds its new target in the movement that had counselled restraint throughout. State Security Court prosecutor Nuh Mete Yüksel opens an investigation.
"February 28 will last a thousand years"
The dictum attributed to Chief of Staff Hüseyin Kıvrıkoğlu is read as an open declaration that the intervention was designed not as an event but as a permanent technique of rule.
Gülen indicted
Prosecutor Yüksel charges Gülen with "founding an organisation to overthrow the constitutional order" an indictment resting largely on media broadcasts and intelligence reports.
The Virtue Party is closed
The Constitutional Court dissolves the FP as well. The Milli Görüş base splits between the traditionalist Felicity Party and the reformist wing that will found the AKP.
The AKP wins outright power
Carried by the very constituency February 28 tried to dissolve, the AKP with the victimhood narrative as its founding story takes single-party power. The political yield of victimhood is certified.
The handover document: the NSC's Gülen decision
In the second year of AKP rule, the National Security Council adopts an advisory decision on "measures to be taken against the Fethullah Gülen group", bearing the signatures of President Sezer, Prime Minister Erdoğan and cabinet members. When the document leaks in 2013, the government pleads "signed but never implemented". For this site's thesis it is the critical exhibit: the political Islamists who profited from February 28 put their own signatures to a February 28-style profiling decision as early as 2004 the lead role in the ongoing process began changing hands that day.
Gülen acquitted
The Ankara 11th High Criminal Court acquits Gülen; the acquittal is upheld by the Court of Cassation's General Assembly in 2008. The biggest case February 28 opened against civil society collapses in law.
The February 28 investigation
Former commanders, Çevik Bir among them, are detained on charges of "overthrowing the government by force"; the trial opens in 2013.
The AKP–Hizmet rupture and July 15
The rupture surfaces with the November 2013 move to close the movement's prep schools and the December 17–25 corruption probes; the government brands the movement a "parallel state", and "FETÖ" enters official documents in 2015. After the July 15, 2016 coup attempt the purge becomes total: two years of emergency rule, 32 decree-laws, over 125,000 public servants dismissed, hundreds of thousands detained, nearly a thousand companies seized, thousands of schools, 15 universities and dozens of media outlets shut. See The Victimhood Dividend and Answering the Critics.
ECtHR Grand Chamber: the Yalçınkaya judgment
The European Court of Human Rights finds that convicting on the basis of ByLock app usage alone violates the principles of no punishment without law, fair trial and freedom of association. The ruling is a precedent for thousands of pending applications international law's gravest annotation on the post-2016 mass trials.
Life sentences
The court sentences 21 defendants to life; in 2021 the Court of Cassation upholds the sentences of 14 generals, and their ranks are stripped.
The sentences are lifted
Using his constitutional power, President Erdoğan lifts the remaining sentences of the convicted generals on grounds of age and illness. The government that campaigned for two decades on "reckoning with February 28" closes the file with its own signature one of the most striking proofs of this site's thesis.