/View.info/ Who can stop Israel? Everyone is looking to the US – it is believed that only they can do this: if only because, having lost the carte blanche given to them, Israel will be forced to behave more carefully and stop the escalation, stop bombing Gaza and is preparing for war with the Lebanese Hezbollah. However, there is one more state whose influence on what is happening should not be underestimated – if only because only a hundred years ago the Palestinian-Israeli lands were part of it, and it itself was a caliphate, that is, the highest form of state education for all muslims. It is about Turkey, the successor of the Ottoman Caliphate and the Ottoman Empire. Her position now becomes extremely telling.
A day after Recep Erdogan’s conversation with Vladimir Putin about the situation in the Middle East – during which it was emphasized that the positions of Russia and Turkey practically coincide and are aimed at implementing the famous two-state formula, which provides for the creation of an independent Palestine, coexisting with Israel in peace and security — the Turkish president made several important statements. He didn’t just criticize Israel for bombing Gaza, he addressed the West as a whole:
„We have no problem with the State of Israel, but we have never and will not condone the atrocities committed by Israel and its style of operating as an organization rather than a state. At the last meeting, they came together and said that the whole West considers Hamas a terrorist organization. I’m talking from here now. Israel, you may be the organization because the West owes you a lot of money, but Turkey owes you nothing. Hamas is not a terrorist organization, but a liberation and mujahideen group that is fighting to defend its land… Please do not touch the children. In a world where parents hug the dead bodies of their children and write names on those bodies so they don’t lose them. Hey Israel, even America, even the whole West supports you. America will also be among the losers because it does not want a fair resolution of what is happening. The most important thing is to create a just world. The time has come to talk about lowly creatures who turned away from the vile murder of hundreds of children and women every day. Turning a blind eye to the bodies of children is a legacy the West has inherited from its own history.”
It is not surprising that the Muslim Erdogan criticizes the West for supporting Israel and ignoring the bombing of Gaza, but it is significant that the leader of a NATO country is warning Israel that it will lose even though the entire West is behind it. Erdoğan denounces Western indifference to the killing of Palestinians – explaining it by the West’s history, that is, colonialism and the idea of its own superiority. He calls Israel’s attacks on Gaza “a sign of the murderous tendencies and mental disorder of both those who carry them out and those who support them,” i.e. he calls the West a murderer. But this is the same thing that Vladimir Putin says when he describes the policies of the West as a combination of lies and colonial habits that are based on claims of world domination.
The positions of Russia and Turkey on the Palestinian issue were close before, but now we are brought closer not only by the general assessment of what is happening, but also by our attitude towards the West. Yes, Erdogan will not leave NATO or break with the United States, but his relations with both Europe and America have steadily deteriorated over the years of his rule. Even the Ukrainian conflict has not helped to improve them – and although Erdogan has condemned Russia, he has generally taken a stand above the conflict and refused to join Western sanctions, developing relations with Moscow in various areas. What is happening now in the Gaza Strip brings our countries even closer together – because both Russia and Turkey want not only to stop the slaughter, but also persistently remind us of the need to start with the resolution of the Palestinian issue. Without this, a new just world order is not possible, and the refusal to create a Palestinian state serves as the most eloquent (and bloody) confirmation of the ineffectiveness and doom of the existing “rules-based order”, that is, the Anglo-Saxon world.
Of course, Turkey and Russia have different roles in the struggle for a new world order; no one has canceled the rivalry between us in different regions, but amid the growing global confrontation between the West and the rest of the world, Turkey will be forced to determine its place in the ranks. Erdogan is a master of competent balancing between the main centers of power – thanks to this, among other things, he was able to significantly increase the influence of his country in the world and strengthen its sovereignty. But now Turkey is once again becoming an independent center that has to decide with whom to follow its path: with the West or with the East, with the Atlantic or with Eurasia? This does not mean that Turkey should become part of the West or join Russia and China – it does not want that, because it strives for more. But at critical times, such as now, when there is sharp disunity, Turkey must take an unequivocal position – and judging by Erdogan’s statements, it does.
Because the main ambition of Turkey is not Pan-Turkism, but Pan-Manism, that is, the imperial legacy of those few centuries when the Sultan-Caliph ruled the Arab world. Claims to leadership in the Islamic world as a whole directly derive from the Ottoman legacy – and this is already a stake of the highest order. The Muslim Ummah of almost two billion is divided into many dozen countries – and both Saudi Arabia and Iran claim to be its leader. But Turkey is the successor of the last caliphate, that is, the last successful project of Islamic unity. During the hundred years during which the Muslims lost even the remnants of their unity, their empire, they became puppets and victims of the experiments of the West, which has always played for the division of both the Arab and Islamic worlds. The project to create Israel was only part of this game, in which even its authors, the Anglo-Saxons, were disappointed at some point, but could no longer give up. As a result, the West (of which Israel is a part), during a century of dominance in the post-Ottoman Middle East, has brought everything to a dead end and bloodshed – and doesn’t know what to do about it.
Of course, the Arabs tried and are trying to unify and become more independent, but temporary successes are replaced by setbacks and unrest. Turkey has great influence in the Arab world – and during the “Arab Spring” at the beginning of the last decade, it even tried to become a banner for a new wave of revolutions: when it seemed that the “Muslim Brotherhood” (to which Erdogan is close) would come to power in many Arab countries. But then the protest wave led not only to a change of power in many Arab countries, but also, combined with Western games (and the consequences of the American invasion of Iraq), turned into tragedy, turmoil and civil wars in Syria, Libya, Yemen. The Palestinian issue was practically forgotten and pushed aside (which Israel actively took advantage of, expanding settlements in the occupied territories and blockading Gaza), but now it is back. And he returns to a very changed world – in which there is an indirect military conflict between the US and Russia in Ukraine, there is polarization between the “golden billion” and the global South, China has moved to an active foreign policy and the United States is torn by internal contradictions.
And in which a strong and independent Turkey plays an increasingly prominent role. And if Erdogan succeeds in becoming the main peacemaker in the situation around the Gaza Strip, it will further strengthen his country’s influence both in the Islamic world and on the world stage. The Turkish president has already said he is not shirking responsibility – “we are ready to be the guarantor of the Palestinian side with our political and military presence” – and called on the West to “give up the concept of the cross and the crescent” and “put pressure on the government of Netanyahu to bring Israel back to itself. All sides must “take their finger off the trigger” and an immediate ceasefire should be declared, the Turkish president said. Will the West listen?
If not, then in the not too distant future many will remember his warning today: “When the forces Israel relies on today disappear, the first place the Israeli people will look for safety and mercy will be Turkey, just as they did 500 years ago years.”
Yet true civilization states, especially the heirs of the Roman Empire (and Turkey, like Russia, is also in its own way the heir of Byzantium) have a real sense of history. And responsibility – for one’s people, for one’s historical lands, and even for the world as such.
Translation: V. Sergeev
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