Çandar: Erdoğan staged the real coup of Dec. 17

The AK Party has been targeting thousands of people and the Hizmet movement since the Gezi protests. In other words, have they re-created the brutal state approach?

I wrote this in my column in Radikal so I have the copyright. They argue that Dec. 17-25 was a coup. I am saying that this was a coup, but a coup staged by Erdoğan and the AK Party. They staged a coup to attain their goals by using Dec. 17 and 25. Napoleon was elected president in the third republic of France. He staged a coup and declared himself emperor. Marx dubbed this the “18th Brumaire of Louis Napoleon” because it was staged on the 18th day of the month of Brumaire [the second month of the French Republican Calendar]. As an elected president, he staged a coup and changed the regime of the country. And I defined our case as the “17th December of Erdoğan.” This was our counterpart for “18th Brumaire” in France. He wanted to create a one-man regime as an elected prime minister and president, so he would need a scapegoat. He invented the so-called parallel structure.

So they had the intention.

Yes they did. And they exploited the Dec. 17 and 25 investigations and the Hizmet movement. They launched a McCarthyist campaign within the judiciary and the security bureaucracy to stage a coup. They argued that the Hizmet movement was staging a coup in order to justify their actions and implement the plans through which they would create a different Turkey.

Excerpted from the interview with Mr. Candar, published on Today's Zaman, 14 October 2014, Tuesday