Geopolitical Turmoil in the Middle East

This is the title of Immanuel Wallerstein's article dated July 10, 2004. The conflicts in Gaza should be read in the context of the "Belt and Road Initiative" of the ancient Silk Road of energy production and supply centers and the search for an alternative route to it, the "India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor (IMEC) Project". In fact, the tensions in the Middle East are directly related to the Eastern Mediterranean trade basin, and this is the Safavid-Ottoman; It has a historical basis dating back to the Ottoman-Mamluk Struggles. Today, it is important to examine the impact of the Republic of Turkey as a regional actor on the "Belt-Road and Middle Corridor".

Intellectual Task; What can we do?

Wallerstein, one of the most important sociologists of today, who died in 2019, wrote books such as The Modern World-System, Utopian or Historical Elections of the 21st Century, Globalization and Terror, The Decline of American Power, The End of the World as We Know It: Social Science for the Twenty-First Century, Age of Transition: The Trajectory of the World System. There are works. The reason why I follow this thinker with curiosity is that he rejects the North-South or Capitalist-Socialist distinction, as well as the "Developing Countries" or "Third World Countries" theories, and argues that there is a single world interconnected by an intricate network of economic exchange relations.

Wallerstein, who argues that the world system we live in is rapidly moving towards a fundamental change and has become more open than ever to human will through our preferences and choices, states that it is an intellectual duty to analyze reality with a critical and sober mind. He says that the moral duty is to decide what the values are.

We are talking about the historical past of the region, later named as the Middle East and historically called bilad al-Sham, and the Republic of Turkey, which inherited the cultural codes of the Ottoman State, the longest-lasting single dynasty in the world, which ruled there for centuries and kept different languages, religions and races living together for centuries. We say it could be.

Yes, we have the political duty to decide immediately how we can contribute to the possibility of the capitalist world system moving out of its chaotic structural crisis and into a different world system that will be noticeably better than the current one. For this reason, when we look at the historical foundations of trade in the Eastern Mediterranean, the Safavid-Ottoman and the Mamluk States struggle, also called ed-Devletü't-Türkiye, today's Middle East cannot be understood without Turkish values and contribution. This historical accumulation underlies the fact that the current representatives of these states, the Republic of Turkey, Iran and Egypt, are regional actors.

The Middle East as a Region of Permanent Instability

Definitions such as the Middle East, Near East and Far East were strategic and geo-philosophical definitions made by colonial powers a century ago, and the regions were always arranged in a way that was prone to conflict and turmoil. As a matter of fact, with the political withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from the Islamic world after World War I, the region came under the domination of imperialist and colonial powers, especially England. Great Britain dominated the entire Indian subcontinent in the early 18th century. They captured Egypt in 1882 and Sudan in 1889. At the end of the century the Dutch took over the entire East Indies. France captured Algeria in 1835, Tunisia in 1881, and Morocco in 1912. Russians expanded into Central Asia. Italy invaded Libya in 1912. After World War I, the British and French duo took over the Arab provinces of the Ottoman country.

The Islamic world, from North Africa to the Arab Countries, Iran, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and from there to the Turkish States in Inner Asia, the Caucasus and Turkey, was designated as a "cursed and/or crisis area". Since then, there has been a "constant state of instability" either due to internal conflicts or external intervention. As a matter of fact, when we pay attention, it is observed that they are either energy (water-oil, gas and other precious metals) production centers or energy supply centers.

New Naming of Biladu'l-Sham Middle East

Biladüşşam starts from the southern Taurus Mountains of Turkey and extends to the lands of Syria, Iraq, Palestine and Jordan. The name of the capital of Syria is Damascus, Palestine and Lebanon. If we remember that it is called Tripoli so as not to be confused with Tripoli in Libya, it is difficult to achieve regional peace in the Middle East, Tunisia, Algeria and Libya without Turkey, which gathered the geopolitical and cultural power of the Ottoman state. These places, called the Central Maghreb and the Near Maghreb, remained under Ottoman rule for many years. We call Al-Maghribu'l-Aqsa, the Far West, Morocco, because while it was in the region as the Principality of Algeria for more than 300 years, Fes, the important city of Marrakesh, was taken under Ottoman protection.

If we go back to the Middle East, Tripoli. It was conquered during the time of Osman, Muaviye settled the Persians (Iranians) and Jews in this city, but after the Abbasid period, a Turkish state, Tolunoğulları (878/264), came here. Starting from 456, Turks, especially Yıva Turkmens, came to the region. If we remember that Kurtbay, the commander of the Mamluk State, also called ed-Devletü't-Türkiyye, handed over this city to Yavuz Sultan Selim in 1516, we can say that the Turkish influence in the region continued from the Tolunoğulları until 1918.

New World Order or Covert Entry into World War III

When the USSR collapsed in 1989-1990, the bipolar world gave way to the New World Order led by the USA. It was emphasized that in the new international system, the East-West division based on ideological and cultural differences was replaced by the North-South division based on economic basis. Other western global powers, especially the USA, carried out operations in the above regions under the name of democracy and human rights, and conflicts were triggered in the region with the Iraq-Iran war and Iraq's invasion of Kuwait. Their legitimacy was tried to be ensured with Samuel Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations and the Re-Establishment of the World Order and Francis Fukuyama's "The End of History and the Last Man" theses.

The new century, which started in 1989 with the dissolution of the USSR, was drawn into Russia to take precautions against political and cultural regulations. But after recovering itself, the USSR tried to preserve its existence by producing policies that are still effective in the political and cultural fields. As a matter of fact, the struggle between capitalist countries (USA and EU) and socialist countries (Russia and China) continues with all its might in energy supply and production centers.

Institutions such as the World Bank, IMF and GATT, under the leadership of the USA, are global institutions organized to regulate the world economy as a whole. Today, the world is witnessing the USA's attempts to establish a global hegemony after the collapse of the Soviets (1991). The USA wants to implement policies in the region where it can control the Middle East in order to gain control of energy resources and energy routes such as oil and natural gas and to be closer to Russia and China. Its main goal is to establish dominance in Eurasia and the Middle East and an oligarchic hegemony in the world with all the elements of imperialist power.

Turkey is at the very center of this conflict with its strategic location and historical and cultural background. Because the subsystems and regions in which Turkey, which is a bridge in both East-West and North-South transitions (a Turkey at the intersection of the Balkans, the Caucasus and the Middle East), have become more volatile, uncertain and important than before. . With Russia and China reemerging on the scene as global actors, the war between civilizations thesis is no longer valid. New designs (Shiite/Salafist proxy wars) were put into effect to provide legitimacy to the constant tension and conflicts in the regions.

When we think in this context, September 11, 2001 constitutes the starting date of new regulations and practices. In other words, we can say that the attack on the US Twin Towers is actually the beginning of a new century, or implicitly, the beginning of the Third World War. The USA is in the foreground, the "common wealht" countries in the background, and especially the UK and EU-based global powers, have begun to intervene in energy production and supply centers on the grounds of democracy, human rights, etc. A situation of "permanent instability" was created in the region, starting from Iraq (once the southern line of the "Silk Road") to Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Since this date, new operations have been organized for the regions. Here, it was said that democracy would be brought to the countries governed by the patrimonial/maternal system, but the regions became even more unstable and internal conflicts were further triggered. Proxy wars have begun with Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Boko-Haram and ISIS/Daesh organizations, which have increased their effectiveness today. Proxy wars, which were initiated under the name of the 2010 Arab Spring, became widespread with the policy of intra-civilizational conflict, that is, pitting Muslims against Muslims.

Conclusion:

No effort that aims to disable the Republic of Turkey, as a regional power and as the representative of the geopolitical power of the Ottoman Empire in three continents and inland seas, can bring peace, tranquility and peace in the region. Because our country is also the cultural heir of the states established on the trade routes of the ancient world, as symbolized by the stars on the Presidential badge.

The domination and spread of the Turkish nation, that is, Turkish world domination, covered an area from the gates of Vienna to the Ganges river valleys, from the Altai mountains to the Atlas mountains, from the Itil tribes to Abyssinia and the Great Sahara, to half of the ancient world. With this knowledge, the Republic of Turkey acts with the awareness that it has to deepen its expansion policies to Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America and Asia Pacific regions.

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