The “Wheel Adjustment” [to Democracy] was Apparently Recommended by an American General

When the Sept. 12 [Coup d’Etat] occurred, Jimmy Carter was watching an opera. A CIA official gave the news to Carter by whispering in his ear, “Our boys were successful.” From that day forward, the statement “Our Boys” has become a symbol of Sept. 12.

At the same time, the symbol of the Feb. 28 [Coup d’Etat] is the phrase “Wheel Adjustment.” Look at the coincidence; while tanks were in the streets of Sincan, [Turkish General] Cevik Bir was in the United States of America.

When the news of the movement of the tanks came, the general said the famous sentence which is now associated with Feb. 28: “We adjusted the wheels of democracy.”

Well, did the “Wheel Adjustment” phrase really belong to Cevik Bir?

No…. They weren’t Cevik Bir’s words. Instead, they were the words of an American general.

And this is how it happened:

Cevik Bir was in Washington at a ball. (Let’s not forget that Jimmy Carter had been at an opera.) He attended a private ball in Washington, given by the Turkish American Concert. He was escorted by an American general who was a higher-up in the Pentagon.

When the news of the tank movements in Sincan was passed on to an assistant, Cevik Bir turned to the American general beside him and asked, “Journalists are going to ask about this now. I wonder what we should say?”

The American general did not withhold help from his counterpart and recommended, “General, you could say that we made a wheel adjustment to democracy.”

At the end of the ball, as expected, all of the journalists asked about the tanks in Sincan. General Cevik quickly said, “We balanced the wheels of democracy.”

The witness to this event was a higher-up bureaucrat in the office of the Foreign Minister who attended the ball. This person later became a representative of the MHP party in the parliament.

These details go to show that in Turkey, not only the coup d’etats themselves, but also the sentences associated with them, belong to Americans.

*Editor’s Note: The quotations in this article, while accurately translated, could not be verified in English.