We are currently in a time in which the cruelty toward the Rohingya Muslims, whose population surpasses 1 million and who live in the Rakhine state of Myanmar, over the last 70 years has turned into a genocide. The United Nations and leading nations are silent on this heartbreaking massacre. Turkey and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is calling on the entire world to mount emergency missions for this humanitarian tragedy and is carrying out "human rights diplomacy."
In last week's article, I talked about the "Southern-Southern" Alliance's - representing the BRICS group - call for collaboration with Turkey. BRICS is a group of emerging national economies, namely Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The world is still paying the price of the humanitarian, political, and economic destruction caused by the colonialism of the "Western-Western" Alliance that reached its peak in the 19th century. After colonialism's end, regimes from Thailand to Myanmar and the Philippines seized the power in Eastern and Southeastern Asia, and built a geography of cruelty for the benefit of the Buddhist majority, and the detriment of the Muslim population. It is very sad that, within the last 10 years, there has been no serious reaction to this humanitarian tragedy from the member countries of the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) other than Turkey.
A "lower-intensity" third World War has been going on between the "Southern-Southern" Alliance and the "Northern-Northern" Alliance, and it has reached such a point that the global clash is turning a blind eye to conflicts in critically important regions with underground resources and in regions that are crossroads to land and sea corridors, even genocide-scaled regional massacres. Turkey and its leader Erdoğan is persistently emphasizing that the world is being dragged into a huge disaster.
Last week, Chinese President Xi Jinping, who gave a speech at the BRICS Summit in the Chinese city of Xiamen, emphasized that the development of the rising economies target not just small scale collaboration, but growing the global economy pie, and stated that the "Belt-Road" initiative is not a means to carry out a geopolitical agenda, but rather a platform of practical cooperation.
Myanmar's army commander general Hlaing, on the other hand, defined the atrocity in Rakhine as "unfinished business" from World War II.
The colonialist fibers of the "Western-Western" Alliance are trying to disrupt the unity in the Islamic geography and are fostering the clash of civilizations and a geopolitical, geostrategic, and geo-economic war by brainwashing people living within the borders of the "Western-Western" Alliance, and by spreading cancerous structures onto continents through "lab-manufactured" terrorist organizations such as al-Qaida, the FETÖ, Daesh, and Boko Haram. President Erdoğan's message that the "World is bigger than five" shows why the 2018-2019 period is historically important for Turkey.
Messages from the Xiamen summit
We have witnessed once again, at the summit of BRICS countries - which are now positioned as the most important core of the "Southern-Southern" Alliance - in the Chinese city of Xiamen since their formation in 2009, following the Davos Summit, the call of the Chinese president to protect and support the "global economic system." In the last 10 years, the total GDP of the BRICS countries has risen by 179 percent, whereas their volume of foreign trade has increased 94 percent.
This is why at the last summit the BRICS leaders have stated that they will boost their efforts to eliminate global economic inequality and to contribute to the elimination of current inequalities. I leave it to your judgment what a great dilemma it is that, following the latest global financial crisis, while the calls and statements towards "trade restrictions" and "protectionism" from countries such as the U.S. and France that make up the "Western-Western" Alliance intensified, the BRICS - forming the core of the "Southern-Southern" Alliance - called for the protection and improvement of regulations that render global trade free.
An encompassing reform request to give more of a voice to BRICS in the U.N. and the Security Council and to developing countries quickly catches the eye on the 43-paged summit declaration. Moreover, a joint harsh demeanor is recommended against terror groups. In addition to this, we see that an intense fight is suggested against climate change with regards to President Xi's finding that some countries were reluctant on the subject. In the declaration where Xi, Modi, Putin, Temer, and Zuma have reflected their wills, BRICS, as a whole, refuse protectionism in order to establish a rationalist and just economic order. China has also strengthened its position on the "One Belt, One Road" project in the last summit. Developing countries should do well to utilize their increasing weight in the global agenda of political economy.