From last nights scenes on tv and the reports it looked as if a revolt by the Army was serious and gathering momentum. The chief of the army had been placed under confinement by the rebels, the airports in two of the cities closed by the rebels and the main television outlet was broadcasting pro rebel information. I turned off the lights, as you do, to let them get on with it.
This morning I awoke to see the rebel soldiers with their hands in the air surrendering whilst in other areas the people who had been called to take to the streets by President Erdogan and were advancing, gesticulating wildly at the soldiers as the gap closed between the opposing groups. It's at moments like this that civilisation takes over. One group is armed the other not and rationally the force of arms wins every time but if the soldiers refused to fire on their fellow countrymen because of some deeply held code of behaviour the game is up and this seems to be the case this morning.
The problem for the soldiers is that they committed treason whereby the traditional sentence within the armed forces is to be shot. I am surprised the soldiers seem so placid as they walk out from behind their tanks knowing that Erdogan is a hard liners and takes no prisoners.
Culture and the seed of democracy seem to have taken hold even despite the fact that there have been 4 army rebellions since 1960.
The scenes in Africa when confrontation takes place and the brutality of the police and army towards everyone is in stark contrast. I suppose it's a question of whether people feel they have anything to loose. If you live in a ghetto and life is cheap then you are more likely to look for violent solutions although this must be tested within the confines of a civil confrontation, citizen against citizen rather than someone from a foreign country invading your space. No one in Turkey was invading anyone's space and the conflict was internally political. The spark had to be ideological and the armed forces in this instance couldn't galvanise that spark to get the populous on its side.
Egypt and the rising there, including Tunisia, Libya, Syria and Yemen, collectively called The Arab Spring were popular uprisings in which again, the full steel of a government response never happened and the troops didn't fire.
Tiananmen Square in Beijing was a confrontation between the students and the government of China where the government had no compunction but to order the troops to fire into and kill a number of people. In this instance it didn't bring the people out onto the street and a show of strength was enough. Perhaps the culture of the people played a part, although Chinese history is littered with uprisings and savage put downs.
We have our unarmed Bobby to stand in the way of violence and it's unthinkable that our government would order the troops out to fire on civilians and, more to the point, would the troops obey. Every society has its norms and we would do well to celebrate our reliance on the democratic process to sort out our differences although Margaret Thatcher came close to breaking our trust when she blatantly used the police to bully the miners into submission.
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