Coup bid ‘martyrs’ become new heroes of Erdogan’s Turkey

– ‘A whole mythology’ –

The heroes of the coup night like Halisdemir have been given an importance of historical magnitude by the government.

“A whole mythology is being built around” the failed putsch, said a European diplomat.

“In the official discourse, July 15 has become some kind of second War of Independence,” the diplomat added, referring to the struggle that led to the founding of modern Turkey in 1923.

This is made clear in the large number of roads, schools and parks named after the martyrs of the putsch. The first bridge across the Bosphorus in Istanbul is now called the bridge of the Martyrs of July 15.

“On July 15, these people became heroes,” said Abudurrahman Tarik Sebik, president of the Foundation for the Martyrs of July 15 established after the coup.

“But what were they doing on the 14th? One was a taxi driver, another a ship captain and someone else was an academic.”

– ‘Normal kind of guy’ –

The cult of martyrs has aroused the greed of businessmen who have shown no hesitation in exploiting their names to make a fast buck.

Halisdemir’s widow recently even inscribed her husband’s name in Turkey’s patents register to protect it from misuse.

In the wake of the failed putsch, promises flooded into the authorities in Cukurkuyu to help with development.

“At the start, everyone wanted to build something here,” said Ahmet Ozer, the mukhtar (senior local official) of the village.

“But almost no-one kept their promises,” he added bitterly, with only the cities of Kocaeli and Ankara forking out to build a park and a wall around the cemetery.

At the cemetery, the gardener Ahmet Yesil, a childhood friend of Halisdemir, rummages around in his memory as he digs into the ground.

“Omer had the look of a soldier, he had that sharp look. He often said — ‘I am not scared of anything, just of God’.”

They met for the last time just a week before his death, during a funeral of a friend in the same cemetery. “I liked Omer a lot,” said Yesil. “He was a normal kind of guy.”