"When an incident occurs, if you want to find the doer, look at who benefits from the outcome of the incident".

I was born to a very disciplined father who was a military teacher and a mother who was a housewife but managed the housework meticulously and disciplined as if she were running a large company. Working was always at the forefront in our family and so was I. I graduated from Anatolian High School in Istanbul and then Marmara University Faculty of Law. It was not easy to qualify to enroll in these schools and graduate, but I worked hard all my life.

When the so-called coup attempt on July 15, 2016 took place, I could not believe it was real when I first heard about it. The reason is that I know a little bit about Turkey's recent history and have an average intelligence. There have been military coups in Turkey's recent history. But in order to carry out a military coup, the conditions were always prepared by those who would carry out a coup. Anarchy would be created for this and people would clash with each other. In this way, the government would be made politically weak, there would be an atmosphere of chaos in the environment and the people would start to feel insecure. Then, when the military took over the administration, the people would relax and say "we are safe now". But there was no such atmosphere in the country before the so-called July 15 coup attempt. There was a powerful dictator leader supported by the general public and there was no chaos in the country.

Also, the method of the so-called coup attempt was too absurd to be true. The soldiers in the administrative ranks in our country are above average intelligence and educated people. If they were going to carry out a coup, they would not do it in such an illogical way and at 9-10 p.m. in the evening when everyone was awake. On the day of the so-called coup attempt, the bridge connecting the Anatolian side to the European side in Istanbul was closed to traffic by soldiers, most of whom were Air Force Academy students, even though it served no purpose in terms of the coup attempt. There were 14 million people living in Istanbul at the time, and an average of 200.000 vehicles passed through the closed bridge daily. People in Istanbul generally live on one side of Istanbul and work on the other, so the bridge is always very busy with traffic and is closed to traffic in the evening, when it is the busiest time to return home. It is very illogical… And many other illogical things that were done…

During the hours of the so-called coup attempt, a hashtag was appeared on Twitter(X platform), as "not a coup, but a theater." People were very intensely thinking that this was a fictional coup. Until people started dying. People thought that so many people would not be killed for a fictional coup attempt. However, what those, who unaware of history, miss that dictators can drag people to their deaths without even blinking an eye.

Following this so-called coup attempt, thousands of teachers, judges, prosecutors, lawyers, civil servants, police officers, soldiers (who had nothing to do with the so-called coup attempt), housewives, merchants, workers... who had committed no crime and were hesitant to harm even an ant, were declared members of an armed terrorist organization by the dictator and his team. Everything changed overnight. None of us had relevance with the so-called coup attempt. The television channels directed by the dictator were showing us as members of a terrorist organization day and night. It was not difficult for them to deceive our people, who were mostly poor in thought and had only read one book in 10 years, with this news. Our law, which was functioning for better or worse, was eliminated that night.

Many of my friends were also fired from their jobs and arrested at the same time. The fathers of some of my friends, who were arrested, had died of heart attacks. The arrested mothers and children were separated, and some children were forcibly given to the Child Protection Agency just to upset their families, despite their relatives wanting to look after them.

A state of madness had begun in the country. Our people were like the German people who believed in Hitler in history. They were closing their eyes and ears to the cruelty because according to them, if the dictator, who is today's Hitler, was doing something, there was no chance of it being wrong.

The law apparently existed, but it was definitely not implemented. Judges and prosecutors were making unlawful decisions under the name of law. In fact, if a judge or prosecutor was really trying to implement the law, their place of duty was immediately changed or an investigation was opened against them for being members of a terrorist organization.

Since the government had been keeping track of tens of thousands of people long before the so-called coup attempt, thousands of civil servants were being fired from their jobs at once with decisions made by the dictator. Thousands of these people who were fired were also being arrested. In fact, according to our laws, it is not possible to fire civil servants with a single decision. However, the dictator continued to do this, relying on his power. The dictator and his team did not neglect to disguise themselves as religious to cover up their unlawfulness and cruelty, and they constantly called for adhan from mosques. However, as in all divine religions, cruelty and evil are great sins in Islam, too.

The dictator at the head of Turkey used the expression "God's grace" for the so-called coup attempt on July 15, even on the night of July 15. How could he use such an expression before it was even understood what was being done? If this man is not a soothsayer who sees the future, it is very clear that he planned everything to be done with his team long before. The following words of Mahir Kaynak, a former member of the National Intelligence Organization, are very true: "When an incident occurs, if you want to find the doer, look at who benefits from the outcome of the incident."

Under normal circumstances, it was not possible in a state of law to fire more than 125,000 civil servants with one decision, to label thousands of people as members of an armed terrorist organization and to hand out punishments. And our country, although it functions slowly, used to be a state of law. Suspending the law with such a devilish plan and running wild was a very clever plan for the dictator and his team. They had caught a few people in their net and their plan had worked perfectly. They had left no law or brain in the country. In total, they had victimized nearly 1.5 million people, including their families. Many people committed suicide because they could not stand the injustice they experienced during this process. Many people, their spouses or parents had cancer or died of heart attacks due to the difficulties they experienced. Some were killed by the police under torture, some were kidnapped and their fates are still unknown to their families.

Starting at 22:00 on July 15, 2016, when it was not even clear whether it was a coup or not, a list was published about nearly 1500 judges and prosecutors and they were all fired and then most of them were arrested. Because judges and prosecutors mean the authority that will make arrests. Since the presence of people who will not listen to the dictator and will implement the law will prevent them from imprisoning people as they wish, so they started by first arresting the judges and prosecutors. So when did they prepare these lists? Did it all happen on July 15, when the dictator learned about the so-called coup attempt from his brother-in-law?

Afterwards, hundreds of thousands of people were left to starvation in the country, as some politicians described it, "don't even give them water, let them eat tree bark". For this reason, the Social Security Institution added termination codes to the records of those fired from their duties, which would be visible to those who want to hire them, and thus they tried to prevent them from finding jobs in the private sector. Despite this record, if there were people who gave them jobs, they sent the police to their workplaces and the police told them, "You are employing a fired officer, you will get into trouble." For this reason, the fired people had to work unregistered, that is, illegally, for low wages and without any insurance.

During this process, more than 120,000 civil servants were fired, 6,000 academics from 93 different universities were fired, nearly 3,000 institutions and organizations, including schools, newspapers, magazines, foundations, associations and television channels, were closed, thousands of people's bank accounts were blocked, businessmen's companies and assets were seized, more than 230,000 people's passports were canceled, and more than 500,000 people were banned from traveling abroad.

Due to all these injustices, some of the people who were sentenced to civilian death drowned in the Meriç River (river Maritsa) or the Aegean Sea with their children while trying to flee the country.

We went through very difficult times, we were subjected to discrimination in our own country, we were left to starve. Like thousands of other people, I was sentenced to 6 years and 3 months for no reason and without any real legal justification. I was either going to be imprisoned for at least 5 years, or we were going to escape the country with my husband and daughter, risking our lives because we were forbidden to go abroad. If I had chosen to go to prison, my child would not be able to come with me because she was over 6 years old and I would only be able to hug her once a month in open meetings. Some situations are worse than death for a person, so we fled the country risking our lives. We crossed the Meriç River (river Maritsa) with my daughter and husband in a plastic boat. Out of the group of 24 people, including a little baby and several children, only 7 people, including us, were able to cross the Meriç River. The rest were caught by the Greek soldiers and deported to Turkey, and unfortunately all of them were arrested.

After being subjected to so much discrimination and cruelty, we came to the Netherlands, as a safe country. The reason we came to the Netherlands was the helpfulness and kindness of the people, that is, their true humanitarian qualities. I had friends who cried while giving their statements at the police station in the Netherlands because they had experienced such bad police, judge and prosecutor treatment in Turkey that seeing the police here speaking politely and behaving humanely made them cry. Thank God, this was not a cry of sadness but of joy.

When we came here, we met people who worked voluntarily during the camp process. They were all very good people and when we told them our problems they felt sad with us. I liked the people of the Netherlands the most. Even our relatives seemed to care about our troubles, but as if they had to, they supported the dictator by voting for him.

It is not surprising that the dictator and his team have brought our country to this point. While 1 dollar was 2.89 Turkish Lira on the evening of July 15, 1 dollar exceeded 33 Turkish Lira in 2024. Now, people in our country are paying (part of) the price of applauding cruelty by struggling with economic difficulties.

The point that justice has reached is also remarkable. In the 2023 World Justice Project Rule of Law Index, Turkey ranked 117th out of 142 countries.

I hope that one day wisdom and morality will return to our country. Then the law will come back and our country will return to normal again…