Mass circulation Turkish daily Hürriyet has done it again. A few days ago the newspaper ran a banner headline on the front page that suggested the military was unsatisfied with the actions of the government and on the inside page, it ran a huge headline screaming "the military headquarters is unhappy."

The newspaper has been notorious for supporting military interventions and coups in the past and is known to be a champion of military involvement in politics, yet in recent years, it seemed while the paper remained a staunch opposition publication, it had abandoned the idea that it was normal for the military to be involved in politics. Yet old habits seem to die hard.

The paper listed a series of grievances of the military and said generals at the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) headquarters were its sources.

In the old days the military used to dictate several newspapers including Hürriyet to run stories against elected governments and usually, they were disinformation used to defame the administration and lay the groundwork for military interventions. We saw this in the 1980 coup, we observed it in the 1997 post-modern coup and the 2007 e-memorandum that was an attempted coup.

It seems some people never learn. The people displayed their opposition to coups on the night of July 15, 2016, when they flocked to the streets of Turkey and braved tanks, armored vehicles, helicopter gunships and F-16 fighters. They were unarmed and gunned down by soldiers and yet they managed to foil the coup attempt with their flags. Those running and publishing Hürriyet should have had the common sense to realize that the coups in Turkey are now things of the past and all they are doing is actually alienating the Turkish masses and creating unnecessary enemies for themselves.

What the newspaper has done is coup mongering and should be condemned by everyone who believes in democracy and the power of the people. If some people in the military tried to feed them such nonsense they should have never published it.

However, if the story is true and some people in the military have used Hürriyet, then this also suggests that there are elements remaining in the military who do not believe in democracy and have a lust for coups. This is no surprise for we suspect that there are those so-called Kemalists in the military who hid behind the terrorists of the Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) in the TSK, who staged the coup and while they supported the coup they pretended they were not a part of it and are still roaming in the military ranks. The banner headline in Hürriyet may well be their doing.

It seems some forces in Hürriyet are challenging the publisher of the newspaper who went to pains to meet President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to mend fences with him. These forces seem to serve notice to the publisher that they run the paper and not him. These people seem to entertain the view that Turkey should be run by juntas and not by those elected by the people.

It is time to put an end to this charade. The people who went into the streets to defend democracy expect the authorities to put an end to this farce.

This can be done when our authorities properly punish all those involved in the 1997 postmodern coup where civilians manipulated by the military were also used. It can be done when those who support juntas in the military are weeded out and punished. It can also be done when the people who defended democracy on the night of July 15 once again rise to the occasion and approve the constitutional changes that will end the order created by the 1980 junta and install a system based on the will of the people. The "yes" vote in the April 16 referendum will be a good first step for this.