Dear readers, Exactly 10 years after writing my last editorial in the Turkish Daily News (TDN), I am now back with a column in the Daily Sabah.

I was forced out of the press scene 10 years ago just as the Justice and Development Party (AK Party) administration was picking up momentum to change the face of our country and create a "New Turkey." Those who did not want a new Turkey and those who wanted to preserve the status quo were behind the campaign to oust my family and I from the TDN, a newspaper that my late father İlhan Çevik and my mother Nurten Çevik had cofounded as Turkey's "first and only" English language daily on March 15, 1961.

The "Old Turkey" stood for the plunder of national wealth by the elite who had ruled the country for decades. The Old Turkey also stood for corruption, nepotism, authoritarian rule, lack of true democracy and a lack of freedom of expression.

It was based on the notion that the state was the "provider" and the big brother and the nation served it. People had no right to challenge the state or what it stood for. They should shut up and suffice with what the state offered. The elite founded the banks and used them to fill their own pockets with no proper regulation or discipline. Hence, the collapse of the financial system and the banks were inevitable.

Human rights were a joke. For the administration, there were no Kurds in Turkey, and Turkish ambassadors serving abroad had to go to pains trying to convince their colleagues abroad that this NATO member country did not constantly violate human rights and that those Turks "who called themselves Kurds" did not exist and that this was a foreigncreated notion to divide our country. If you called yourself a Kurd and tried to demand rights, you simply went "missing."

In the Old Turkey, the country was run by a secularist elite who had the habit of using the good name of a great leader and statesman like Atatürk to justify their actions.

They had put the nation to sleep, and Turkey was popularly called a semi-democracy or as some Western observers put it - "a military democracy." The military had the final say in everything through the notorious old National Security Council that was dominated by generals and that was in essence even above the Turkish Parliament.

Around 30 percent of the elite representing the so-called secularist order herded 70 percent of the nation who they said should never be allowed to have a say in the way this country should be run. When this was challenged, some way or another the military organized a coup and order was restored in the Old Turkey. Thus, Turkey was notorious, a NATO country that endured military coups every decade.
The new generation today is hardly aware of what Turkey endured for several decades and the brave fight given against the Old Turkey by a handful that included those at the Turkish Daily News. We challenged all this, and in the end, we were driven out of our own newspaper by the so-called "deep state." The brave fight of the TDN remains in the memories of the people. Happy birthday Turkish Daily News. Thanks to your brave stance against military rule and injustice, things are changing in Turkey.

Nature ran its natural course, and this artificial system could no longer be sustained in a modern world.

It installed the AK Party rule and insisted in placing Recep Tayyip Erdoğan as its prime minister despite efforts by the military to initially block him.

Erdoğan set off creating the "New Turkey" and initiated democratic and economic reforms that lifted Turkey out of decadence between 2002 and 2007, but the shadow of the military and "Old Turkey" remained above him. In 2007 the Turkish nation gave him a clear mandate to create the New Turkey he envisages and effectively put an end to military dominance in Turkish politics.

Today, we see the fight between those who want to restore the Old Turkey and those who want to usher Turkey into a new era.

But there are all sorts of complications. The AK Party needs internal cleansing and a new fire to help Erdoğan achieve his goal. We will discuss all this next week.