Reinforcing the front before the demons spread into the world

Political decision makers, economy circles, the media and intelligentsia need to look at the past and carefully review at least the last 25-year period to ground the current discussion.

What we are experiencing are not things that belong to the present time. They are developments that will have a future like they have a past.The single-pole super world project with the Atlantic at its center, which started right after the end of the Cold War, some center countries objecting to this project, the single-pole world project ethically collapsing in a couple years, followed by the onset of political and economic collapse as well, pursuits of the remaining countries of the world for a more balanced global system and without following or remembering the struggle carried out in this field, it will not be possible for us to understand the problem Turkey is facing.

A big covert war has been ongoing since the 1990s through sources and markets. I personally think the September 11 attacks are the product of this big covert conflict. The covert war was of global scale and it started to turn into open clashes in places. The invasions and infighting in our region are only the tip of this iceberg, they are like the local explosion fields of the deep conflict. For the last couple years, particularly after the 2009 economic crisis, the covert war became inclined to turning into an open war and a power show came to the fore between the U.S., EU and Asian powers.

The absolute pro-US, absolute pro-EU circles blinded us

I am looking at the past period. Especially in the period from 2005 to 2008, I wrote countless articles on the power showdown on the global scale, the Earth’s center of gravity shifting toward the East, countries led by Russia and China challenging the West, Turkey being stuck in a tight corner and its inability to read these developments.Back then there were absolute pro-U.S. and absolute pro-EU circles and in a small area there was the ideological pro-Eurasia circle. They were blinding us so much that they were belittling those who were discussing the answers to questions like, “Where is the world going? What should Turkey do?” The “third worldism” accusations were the first expressions of this belittlement.

Yet, the Cold War was over, a new world was being established, but these circles were hitting everyone who deviated from the Atlantic center. The world’s center of gravity was changing, the technology and economic power gap between the East and West was getting smaller. Asia already had an overwhelming superiority in terms of sources and manpower.

The Western system was blocked and could no longer produce a way out. Despite this, these intellectual terror circles confined Turkey into a very tight corner. According to them, there was nothing other than the U.S. and Europe. Turkey should never lift its head and see what was available elsewhere; they did not allow it to look either. This is how our years passed and we have only now reached a state of being able to make the discussion we needed to make two decades ago.

The US refused to share, World War III started

I tried to carefully follow every summit between Russia and China. Because the clues of the covert war were revealed at these summits. They are standing against the U.S.’s dollar hegemony, suggesting a new rate, they are prioritizing trade with the local currency, they were trying to negate its control over the sources. The sources were in Asia but they were under the West’s control. Because the global economic system was under their control. It was not possible to end the unilateral global sovereignty of the West without this system changing.

Hence the West avoided solving the economic crisis it faced in 2008, avoided structural changes in this sense. The crisis was hitting center countries and its solution was rendering obligatory structural changes in the economic system. This meant sharing. With Russia, with China, with Asia economies, with Latin America or with Turkey. Sharing the economy also meant sharing the global power. The U.S. and EU refused to share this power and this dragged clashes toward open war.

The West is stalling, the old world is getting up on its feet

They are establishing the Shanghai Union, formatting BRIC countries and trying to increase their powers over the sources and markets for this purpose. They were closing their deficits in the field of defense and technology and most importantly, they were displaying a political stance. The statements made at the end of every Russia-China summit ended with the call for a “multipolar world.”The reason for all the tensions we have been experiencing in the last 25 years was this covert global conflict. The showdown sensed in the economic field was actually a geopolitical covert war. It was a world war. It was a struggle to balance the power map, to find a balance in the global economic and political power sphere. This war is continuing and becoming even more intense by the day. While the West was starting to stall, melting down, losing its credit and reputation, losing its common future vision and refusing to share with the world, the East was waking up, the old world was getting up on its feet.

July 15 was the Turkey front of this open war. Our country was right at the center of the East-West conflict; it was tried to be taken under control with the intervention of the U.S. and Europe. Turkey was not going to be left to itself, it was not going to be allowed to turn toward its own pursuits. The path they have been treading on for the last decade was dangerous for them, because those who had been leading Turkey had other plans. Because there were people, leaders and cadres wanting to escape tutelage after a century, wanting to form the great Turkey, wanting to take a share in the global power sphere, and a nation giving them the utmost support.

It was going to be punished, made to kneel and surrender. This was going to be done at the cost of civil war, at the cost of street clashes, at the cost of being divided and destroyed.They wanted to prevent Turkey from making its own preference before the big showdown. All the intelligence apparatuses on the inside were activated, wanting to stop an independent Turkey. In this state, July 15 was more than just a Fetullah Terrorist Organization (FETÖ) issue, it was a part of the global, systemic conflict. Hence, the discourse developed through national economy on fighting against the dollar, going local, led by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, is a systemic struggle that has a multinational dimension like the July 15 coup attempt. It is a struggle that has a historical foundation, that has future plans.

It is the continuation of the restructuring, new stance and position-taking that started with July 15. It is the reflection of the deep fracture the world is in within Turkey. This is why there is actually a kind of world war happening.

I saw especially in the last decade that personally I was not wrong about the tendencies in the world. Looking at the history of the global economic conflict, I saw that I wrote many similar articles since 2005, that many of the determinations and assessments I made happening in these days. Unfortunately back in those days these were perceived as fantasies.

For example, this sentence is from April 12, 2005: Open your eyes Turkey! There is a world outside the U.S. and it is growing prodigiously. The EU alone is not enough. The sharpest actors of the 21st century are rising from Asia. We need to expand our horizon not only to the Caucasus and Central Asia, but to Far Asia. We need to strengthen a boom aimed at Europe and the Middle East/Africa with an Asia strategy. There is no longer a single-pole world, neither is the U.S. any longer super. If we become doomed to the world of Wolfowitz and his spokespersons, we are going to be left out of both the East and the West. In other words, we are going to lose.

“It is a reality that the U.S. is not going to be able to eliminate its financial problems, manage world economy as it desires, that it is going to lose its determining power over sources and markets, and that the political control power ensured by this indisputable privilege is going to melt down in a parallel state. As Turkey, sooner or later, we are going to have to face these realities. (This is what we are facing these days.)”

“Russia is going to use local currency in trade. It is going to use its own currency in trade with China, Brazil, Malaysia and African countries. Russia is switching to using common currency with the countries in its close surroundings. Developing countries, also including Turkey, are expected to rapidly increase their significance in world economy.

The change in money, the change in the economy, is going to lead to extremely serious power shifts in the world of the 21st century. Turkey must mobilize. It should not turn a blind eye to rising values to establish a new world. It should at least not remain distant from this process. These countries are really determined to change the world.” (June 18, 2009)

‘The West is dying’

The Turkey front of World War III was going to open on July 15. Turkey prevented this. That resistance was a resistance against a world war. The economic struggle is part of this war. They are still trying to open that front. Hence, in the strict sense, this is not an economic, but geopolitical fight.We need to carefully assess power tendencies in the global scale. We can achieve this by escaping prejudices, presuppositions and what we have taken to memory. Former German Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister Joschka Fischer was strongly against the invasion of Iraq. He was saying, “I don’t understand a hundreds of thousands-strong Western army settling in the heart of Mesopotamia.” He was implying that this was a geographical invasion. The same Fischer had an article published. He was saying the EU would collapse, that it would not be able to remain standing, that the West is about to die and drew attention to the threat of racism. He added: The lid of the coffin has opened for the people of Europe. When the time comes, the demons are once again going to spread to the continent and world.

We are going to give unlimited support to this political will

Saying “the world has gone off the rails,” “the West’s axis has shifted,” “a new and more different world is being shaped,” while struggling for an extraordinary fight for existence, we are obliged to carefully watch the deep fracture in the world and power activity and re-establish ourselves.And this is what is being done. This is why we are talking about a history-making role, leadership and mission. Our duty is to give unlimited support to those putting up this tough fight and act with the independence war spirit. Those running Turkey today and the generations supporting them will be remembered as the architects of that historical change. What we call “ruthless resistance,” “the last War of Independence,” is a struggle for “re-establishment.” Everything other than this great plan is detail.

*Ibrahim Karagül is a Turkish writer and journalist. He is the editor-in-chief of Turkish Yeni Şafak newspaper.

(Published in Yeni Şafak Turkish newspaper on Friday, Dec.9, 2016)