Daily Times

Our fascination with Turkey is not new. The assumption that we have a kind of connection with our brothers who live in the East and the West at the same time goes back centuries. Even during the days of the Empire, we venerated the idea of Caliphate, and were willing to go to great lengths to protect its physical and ideological frontiers when they were threatened after the first Great War among nations. The Khilafat Movement did hurt our own freedom struggle though, and sent us at least a decade behind our rivals in the Indian subcontinent politically, but it is still hailed as a collective effort that brought the Muslims of the subcontinent together, and instilled a sense of unity among them.

Fast-forward a few decades, and even as an independent country we continue to reserve our most special considerations for our Turkish brothers. Though never really wanting to be secular ourselves, we as a nation have always admired Kemal Ataturk, and consider him as one of our own — the leader of men, the great reformist and a model if we ever, god forbid, decided to go on the path of modernisation.

But this is how Pakistan is. We like to do things our way. China is our all-weather friend who has stood by us through thick and thin, but we would never really want to adopt its political or economic system. We will remain happy experimenting with our future, and decide on our own what we want and where we want to go.

So one can argue that it is only a coincidence that we find in cases of both Turkey and Pakistan that there exists a history of coups and martial law administrations, where the armed forces decided to step in to steer their respective nations to a path they decreed was best suited for them. It will by no means be fair to draw the conclusion that the adventurous nature of a brotherly Muslim army actually triggered the desire in our men in uniform to also take things in their own hands.

For the sake of clarity, and to be able to blame our generals for what they did we must assume that they were rational men, fully capable of weighing the pros and cons of their actions, and who arrived at the decision of taking over the power unconstitutionally on their own. They knew what had happened elsewhere in other countries, as they were taught all of that at military academies and other institutions of higher strategic studies, but they were not influenced by any of it.

Had they read and understood, their choices might have been different. We can say this of course because we have the luxury of hindsight. But history judges statesmen and usurpers alike, by keeping hindsight intact. Our only living dictator, who came through foul means, cannot run this defence.

In this age though where people are connected in more complex ways than ever, and where information is becoming increasingly difficult to curtail, like we all saw in this latest failed coup in Turkey, one wishes to hope that our generals, or one general to be exact, will decide, for once, to learn lessons from the mistakes of our brothers, and not continue to assume that ours is a different country with totally different set of realities and problems.

No doubt ours is a different country. Should it remain different is for us to decide.

Many in Pakistan thought we had called dibs on the coup this time, and that if a dharna (sit-in) could not trigger it, the Panama leaks would surely do. Some could actually hear the thumping of the boots as they daily warned the rulers on TV shows that their fate was sealed, and that it was only a matter of time when their incompetence would be thrown out. Social media indicated that a certain thank-you hashtag was so popular it was increasingly becoming hard to imagine to whom we, as a nation, would show our gratitude, for whatever good that came our way if a certain person was somehow no longer available to receive it.

Coups have succeeded in the past in our country because people had grown sick and tired of the ruling elite. They might be growing increasingly tired of the current lot of politicians in power, but a military take-over is not an answer. It should never be answer.

The failed coup in Turkey was an unfortunate event as it led to a loss of so many precious lives, but it could not have happened in a more advantageous time for our democrats. The remarkable fight that the common man in Turkey has put up against the rebellious factions of the army shows that people are the true custodians of democracy. More than the politicians and the media and the Internet, it is the will of the people that decides who gets to be in charge of the things.

Hopefully, the Turkish example will ensure that some people in Pakistan will also come out on the streets to protect their hard-earned democracy if they ever see tanks marching towards the D Chowk.

The writer is a graduate of LUMS and currently serves as an MPA of Punjab. She tweets at @hinaparvezbutt