Yaşar Güler recounts the night of July 15 for the first time: The information provided by Hakan Fidan

Yaşar Güler, who served as the 2nd Chief of General Staff during the July 15 coup attempt, has recounted his experiences that night for the first time. In exclusive statements to SABAH, Güler provided information on how FETÖ infiltrated military schools and detailed the organization's general structure. 

The highlights of Yaşar Güler's statements are as follows: 

FETÖ is a truly radical terrorist organization. They have a robotized organizational structure where members cannot deviate from the instructions given in the hierarchy. From a young age, they are conditioned to think, 'My older brother or sister will call me and tell me what to do, I don't need to worry,' regardless of the problem they face. Well, July 15 was the day their 'older brothers and sisters' couldn't tell them exactly what to do! When the time was moved forward, they didn't know how to act. They were left helpless. The moment we invited the Undersecretary of the National Intelligence Organization (MİT) to the General Staff headquarters that night, they called the ringleader in the US. They asked what they should do, saying the coup had been detected. The instruction came from the terrorist ringleader: 'Start the coup immediately.'

One of FETÖ's treacherous plans was to transfer the military school entrance exams conducted by the TSK to ÖSYM. This decision was made with the thought, 'Let ÖSYM conduct the exam, and let the patriotic children who succeed enter military school.' We later realized that the organization members had determined coded candidate numbers for their own members, and that the students on the lists sent to us had been selected by the treacherous organization from the very beginning. They worked like a crypto-network. Almost all of those who came had been raised in FETÖ schools and houses for years. Families of those expelled from military school due to FETÖ cannot say, 'My child was not a FETÖ member; they entered military school and graduated as a FETÖ member.' They were already FETÖ members when they came to us!

THE INFORMATION PROVIDED BY FİDAN

That evening, we were in a meeting for a new operation to be launched in the Southeast. My aide-de-camp said the MİT Undersecretary wanted to meet. Hakan Bey (Fidan) conveyed that a pilot major serving at the Army Aviation Command had come to MİT and said they would be flying helicopters that evening and would then pick up the MİT Undersecretary. I explained the situation to the Chief of General Staff. He asked, 'What shall we do?' I said, 'Let's call the MİT Undersecretary to the General Staff.' We thought, 'The December 17-25 and February 7 MİT crises came to mind. Are they trying to do now what they couldn't do then?' Upon the order of the Chief of General Staff, I called the Air Force Operations Center. I gave the order to the officer who is now under arrest: 'As of this moment, all flights in Turkish airspace are prohibited. Those in the air will land immediately.' Orders were given to Land Forces Commander Salih Zeki Çolak to 'Go to the Army Aviation Command, and if you see any negative situation, do what is necessary immediately,' and to the then 4th Corps Commander Metin Gürak Pasha to 'Go to the Armored Troops School; not a single tank will leave from there.'

A PURGE LIST WAS BEING PREPARED

Preparations for the Supreme Military Council (YAŞ) were underway before the treacherous coup attempt. We had prepared a list to retire 123 FETÖ-affiliated generals/admirals in a way unprecedented in the history of the Republic. They found out about the list through the traitors within our ranks. That evening, the FETÖ scoundrels thought, 'Our plan has been discovered; we must act very urgently, we cannot wait until three in the morning.'

THE ERGENEKON CONSPIRACY

During the Ergenekon conspiracy, we lost very valuable, specially trained personnel, and we suffered greatly from this later on. Because we lost them, the FETO scoundrels and traitors found opportunities to clear space for themselves in the administration. It was all a one-hundred-percent FETO operation.

Around 9:25 PM, about 10-12 coup plotters, whom I recognized as members of the special forces by their uniforms, entered my office with loud shouting and yelling, their faces masked. When I refused to obey the order to 'lie down' and threw one of them to the ground, they all swarmed me, and a struggle ensued. I was subjected to treatment that a Turkish soldier would not even inflict upon an enemy soldier. My aide-de-camp, who should have been in a training course in Istanbul, entered in civilian clothes. He said mockingly, 'Don't worry, Commander, we are conducting an exercise.' The moment I saw that traitor there, I understood what this was all about.

OUR LIEUTENANT SHOT THE TRAITOROUS AIDE-DE-CAMP

They bound my eyes and hands and forced me into a vehicle. A short while later, when the person sitting in the front of the vehicle shouted, 'Open the gate, or I will shoot!', I recognized from his voice that it was my aide-de-camp and realized we had arrived at the gate. After some shouting back and forth, several gunshots were heard. My traitorous aide-de-camp was dead. When they were dragging me out of my office, one of the staff had called the gate and said, 'They are kidnapping General Yaşar, do not let them out.' Our Lieutenant Colonel, the Commander of the General Staff Guard Battalion, lay on the hood of the vehicle and said he would not allow it to leave. The traitorous aide-de-camp shot and seriously wounded our heroic Lieutenant Colonel. Seeing this, our lieutenant from the Guard Battalion shot and killed the traitorous aide-de-camp. The killing of the aide-de-camp, who was tasked with executing me that night, was one of the turning points. After waiting for a while, I was taken by helicopter to a place I did not know. I was locked in a room. I heard the sounds of F-16s. I realized we were at the Akıncı Air Base, the center of the coup plotters. They had waited for me to be taken to initiate the armed, physical phase of the coup.

THERE WAS NO HUMANE TREATMENT

Throughout the night, I remained in a room with my hands and eyes bound. I lived through everything I had experienced in my entire life, day by day, hour by hour, until morning. There was no humane treatment whatsoever. Toward morning, I heard the sounds of bombs. I thought our side was bombing the runway at Akıncı Air Base so that the traitors could not take off with the planes again.

I WAS THE ONE WHO KNEW EVERYTHING

On the morning of July 16, the door of the room where I was imprisoned opened, and I heard a voice saying, 'Oh, my Yaşar.' It was Air Force General Akın Öztürk. When we watched the footage later, he was walking around freely, giving orders, and pacing the corridor of the room I was in until morning, while I was in a situation where I was handcuffed. He had my handcuffs and the blindfold over my eyes removed and offered to let me speak with my family. I realized that Öztürk was on the other side. His freedom in the event and environment we were in was interesting. If he had been on our side, he would have had to be in the same situation as me. I did not get up from my seat in response to his offer of a phone call with my family. If I had walked toward the phone, they would have just said, 'He was trying to escape, so we shot him,' as part of a scenario. I was the problem for them. There is only one man who knows the true face of these people and everything else. And that is me.

THEY TOLD MY WIFE THAT I WAS DEAD

They called my home using the landline at the other end of the room. I called out from where I was sitting to tell my wife that I was fine. On the night they kidnapped me, they had told my wife, 'They shot Pasha Yaşar, he is dead!' My wife did not hear from me until the morning!

THE FIGHT AGAINST FETO CONTINUES THANKS TO OUR PRESIDENT

Minister Güler stated, 'The fight against FETO continues uninterrupted thanks to the upright and resolute stance of our President. As the Turkish Armed Forces, we have neither shown mercy to anyone in this regard nor looked at anyone's tears. From now on, as the Ministry of National Defense, our fight against FETO will be carried out with great sensitivity and without compromise, in light of the information and documents identified.'

IT WOULD HAVE BEEN AN OCCUPATION MOVEMENT

Güler said, 'I have not the slightest doubt that if the FETO traitors had succeeded, they would have opened the borders in the Southeast to the terrorist organization PKK and our border in Syria to the PKK/YPG. They would have brought the FETO ringleader to our country. Our people, who changed history that night, would not have allowed these traitors to succeed, no matter what.'

News Source: 12punto