If you were to ask me which national day is observed with the liveliest fanfare in Turkey, I would answer Victory Day. Celebrated annually on Aug. 30 to mark the day in 1922 when Mustafa Kemal Ataturk ordered the grand offensive against occupying Greek forces, it is popularly known as Army Day.

In recent years, the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) had declared the last week of August as Victory Week, making it even more prominent. In that week, we always had the colorful graduation ceremonies of army, navy and air force academies with newly commissioned lieutenants joining the TSK, parades in cities, visits to military installations, exhibits to introduce new weapons, concerts by military bands in city squares and shopping malls, and air shows. The TSK used those occasions to boost its visibility and add to its public prestige.

But this year’s Aug. 30 was a dismal, dull occasion. The daily Hurriyet in its Aug. 31 report noted this was the first Victory Day observed in the shadow of the July 15 coup attempt.

Photographs that accompanied news reports were unprecedented. All officers, including the senior ranks, coming to Ataturk’s mausoleum where the first ceremony of the day is always held had to go through identity and X-ray checks by the police, while a heavy presence of special operations police erected a veritable wall between President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the military. No soldiers, apart from the guard detail of the mausoleum, were allowed to carry weapons, and security of the entire ceremony area was provided not by soldiers as usual, but by the police. Everyone noticed the heavy weapons of the police, including shoulder-launched, surface-to-air missiles that are used against, among other things, drones.