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Akile G
- University of Texas Press
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turkey Akile Gürsoy is presently head of the anthropology department at Yeditepe University in Istanbul. She was born in Istanbul, took a B.A. Honors degree in anthropology from Durham University, England, and finished her Ph.D. at Hacettepe University in Ankara. She has worked with UNICEF on projects relating to child health and mortality in southeastern Turkey and has taught at Marmara University . She publishes on migration, child health, and theory in social science, as well as on medical anthropology. Akile Gürsoy akile gürsoy, center Early morning, May 27th, 1960. A date which is to change the course of not only my childhood, but my entire life, as well as Turkey’s political history. I wake up at dawn. There are unfamiliar , unusual footsteps and voices outside in the corridor . Doors open and close. Only later can I offer any meaning for the strange, insistent, and sinister sounds that prevail for hours in the darkness: the sound of tanks surrounding the presidential residence. When I get up and go out, I see that everyone else is already awake and dressed. I look outside to find unusually alert, armed, and stiff-looking soldiers everywhere. The tanks’ gun turrets are directed at us. Someone enters our room and tells us not to go near the windows. We have been surrounded by some members of the army. It is a coup d’etat. In my grandmother’s room, everyone’s face has a distraught look. Nanny Atike is crying. Everyone is anxious. I understand that early in the morning some soldiers forced their way in and took my grandfather away. There were twenty of them; they pulled my mother by the arm and pushed her aside while they forced him to leave with them. They tell me he has been taken to Harbiye, the army headquarters in Ankara. My mother is irate and indignant. I hear her say to the officers at the door, “They cannot do this. We are a democratic country. Who is responsible for this? Who will be accountable for all this? Are we going to be like Iraq? This will only be one coup followed by a chain of others.” My aunt and others restrain my mother and make her return to our residential quarters. Everyone around me is talking of treason. High treason. the coup of may 27, 1960 Akile Gürsoy ^ [18.222.69.152] Project MUSE (2024-04-17 20:50 GMT) Osman Koksal, the recently appointed head of the Presidential Guard, did nothing to stop the coup. Not one shot was fired back at the invaders. Only one soldier of the lowest rank tried to use his gun to stop the soldiers who were taking my grandfather away. “My commander, they are threatening to shoot our president!” Osman Koksal then had him quickly removed from the scene. He was the only soldier, a naive villager, they had been unable or had forgotten to replace the night before. In the early hours of that morning, we have a visitor. The prime minister Adnan Menderes’ wife, Berrin Hanim, comes with her youngest son, Aydin. They live nearby in the same compound garden. Aydin comes into our room with us, while the grown-ups gather in the sitting room of our quarters. Outside, the soldiers who planned the coup have long since taken over the radio station, and since the early hours of the morning, have been broadcasting that there has been an army takeover. Military music and the national anthem are played at frequent intervals. They broadcast that the prime minister has also been captured in the province of Eskisehir. As far as they are concerned, the coup has been successful. All the leading Democrats (that is, all the MPs and governors) and the strategic parts of the country are in their hands. Within hours, our telephones are completely cut off. I do not remember how or what we ate during the first couple of days following the coup. I don’t remember being put to bed either. But I distinctly remember the third day of the coup, early in the morning, when I hear a loud and prolonged cry: “They killed him. They killed him.” I rush out and see for the first (and last) time in my life my grandmother crying in long sobs. “They say he threw himself out of the window. But he was not one to commit suicide. They killed him.” Everyone is crying, and I soon...