Where Does Turkey Stand on the East-West Divide?

The Global System is Shaken, Unable to Solve Crises

In a world order where no country or even NATO, the longest-lasting alliance of countries in history, can fulfill its global leadership responsibilities, each country strives to find its own way. It continues its quest to find its own national solutions against major global economic crises (2008 and now 2022 financial crises), pandemics (COVID-19 and beyond), wars (2022 Russia-Ukraine War), energy crises (oil, natural gas).

Near the end of the Second World War, the world of the victorious states is being established. The new international financial system, established after 1944, continues to stumble despite subsequent regulations, Washington consensus, neoliberal policies even in communist China. Today, there are discussions that the dominance of the West in international financial institutions is declining, and that a new international financial mechanism should be established that really includes the developing countries of the world in the system. The G7, the league of rich countries, the group of free market democracies that powers the global economy, is no longer important, but the expanded version of the G7, the G20, does not seem to be able to fulfill its expected function (to solve the problems related to the global economy, the world's politics and security). The current economic crisis experienced by the Atlantic Basin undoubtedly affects the whole world. It is already crippling the faith of the peoples of the world in the United States, Europe, Western institutions and their future.

US Leadership Cannot Produce Solutions

In the current “multiple crisis world order” where inflation and economic stagnation are in question, we are also in a period where we lack global leadership. The USA could not fully fill the unipolar, hegemon leadership role it captured in the 1990s. With the Russo-Ukrainian War, he is busy encouraging his European allies to form a power that will stabilize the Russians in Eastern Europe. The United States cannot go beyond declaring Russia a threat at the NATO 2022 Madrid Summit, and in fact, it does not make an effort to overcome.

On the other hand, he considers it necessary to make Japan a political-military giant again against the military power of China rising in the Indo-Pacific region. The US is also attempting to establish a domestic route from smaller countries, including the nationalist China (Taiwan), which surrounds China. In the meantime, it aims to stop China in the Far East with this alliance power, by including India and Japan in the future with AUKUS, which it established on September 15, 2021, taking Britain and Australia with it.

However, in our world plagued by so many problems, should stopping China be the only problem?

In the early 2000s, it was said that the increasingly dynamic markets of China, India, Brazil, Turkey and other developing countries would fuel the world's economic engine. But, it was not expected, except for China. India is barely self-sufficient. The economic conditions of Brazil and Turkey are known.

Undoubtedly, China can play a role that can play a role similar to the way America, which emerged on the world stage with new technologies in the 1870s, relieved the global economy until the beginning of the First World War. China seems to have such a vision and resources. While global development and wealth were shifting towards the West with the Roman Civilization, the extreme point of the West had reached nirvana with the USA. Now, it is going back to its original owner, China, through the Middle East, which transfers this wealth and development to the Western world again. shared by futurists seeking answers to their questions.

Can China Save the World?

However, China has not yet said or gives the impression that it does not have such a discourse in the Western world that it is taking an approach that will format the entire world order similar to what the British Empire and later the United States did. Despite its size, scope and innovations, the 'belt-road' project that it has put forward on a global scale is far from being an alternative to the global system brought by the British and the Americans with maritime domination. At most, it is considered that it can claim to be a commercial route opened from land to the West, which dominates the seas.

Could the US Have Left the Global Leadership for Its Own Interest?

In the current world system, where there are many challenges that know no borders, from stability in the global economy to climate change, from virtual attacks to real wars, from terrorism to food and water security, there is a need for a cooperation environment outside the United Nations format that will bring all countries together and benefit from their common energies. It has never been this big.

This cooperation, which has been mostly under American leadership, has now lost its leader. The USA does not have the political-military and economic power it used to have. It signals that it has entered a period of decline. As in the past, it stays away from efforts to overcome global problems alone. It appears that it no longer has the coercive power to coordinate multinational responses to transnational problems.

The sanctions imposed on the Russian Federation with the Russia-Ukraine War cannot go beyond being an American delusion. It is clear that even the Europeans, their closest allies struggling with the natural gas problem, are almost not welcoming to the sanctions, and they would take steps to abolish it immediately if they did not hesitate from the USA. Perhaps in the approaching winter period, the peoples of European countries will inevitably force their governments to do so.

The USA Is Dividing The World Into Two Parts

The USA, aware of its inability to fulfill the global leadership, is in a hurry to divide the world into democrats and autocrats. Thus, an American management approach has emerged that aims to maintain the leadership of the democratic world and marginalize the rest of the countries. In doing so, America is considering voluntary withdrawal and apparently building up the strength to return to global leadership again. It is trying to gather American multinational companies that have spread all over the world back to the US main continent. He calculates that with Industry 4.0, he can replace the need for labor with robotic systems. In the meantime, however, it is understood that he is considering only maintaining his military leadership and staying within a narrower framework in political and economic fields while withdrawing.

The USA Is Not Willing To Allocate Resources To Solve Global Problems!

There is no longer a US ready to spend a fortune on global problems to persuade governments in other countries of the world to take the necessary action. Maybe he doesn't have that power anymore. America is no longer willing to make expenditures that others cannot afford. It does not mobilize its power enough to set the international agenda in every issue. The gaps that the USA needs to fill can only be filled by other power centers that America can encourage. However, even the attempt of the Russians to invade Ukraine has not been able to fully mobilize European countries to take measures against this security crisis that has arisen in their own geographies. Regional powers and emerging power centers are not yet ready to fill these gaps, moreover, they do not want to be a subcontractor of America.

It is not possible for global institutions such as the United Nations Security Council, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, which do not reflect the true political and economic balance of the world, to assume the global leadership in their own fields. Moreover, reforms in these institutions and increasing the role of the rising powers (such as not giving the right to life to the discourse that the world is bigger than five) are not allowed.

Where Does Turkey Stand or Will It Stand in the East-West Divide?

At the moment, in the midst of so many global problems, the only thing left to do is to strive to divide the world. As the global system loses its foundations, the world is being forced to divide into East and West. Over time, countries are invited to choose sides or pursue a policy of non-alignment. Countries like Turkey, which are part of the so-called West, seem too tired to re-determine their course. Maybe I'm wrong.

It is necessary to carefully read the discourses and practices of the West in Turkey after 1990. It is as if Turkey is excluded from the West. Struggling with the dynamics of a Western world that never wanted to allow Turkey, which it had taken in at least on a military scale since 1947, to rise up politically and economically, Turkey was excluded from the Western system, especially by not being included in the European Union. In fact, if there is an opportunity, it may even be possible to remove Turkey from NATO. As a matter of fact, informal discussions can be made in this direction from time to time, and various politicians indirectly reflect this understanding in their discourses. Unlike European countries, Turkey, which developed warmer relations with the United Kingdom and the United States on the axis of security after the Second World War, and received the most support from these two countries in this sense, is now unable to receive the support it expects from any Atlantic country, including the United States, except for a weak British support. The USA, which Turkey thought to be a "strategic partner" in the past, is now adopting a "wait and see" policy rather than being an ally, and does not hesitate to put the relations between the two countries at risk. It is not possible to read the exclusion of Turkey from the F-35 program and the dragging of the feet against the demand for the F-16.

Turkey is too big a country to be kept at the waiting door. Its historical past, its legacy and the responsibilities brought by the high culture of the Turkish nation seem to force Turkey to a new strategic orientation in the Anatolian geography. The global system, which is out of balance, is pushing Turkey, which will celebrate its 100th anniversary in 2023, to new searches.