The 21st century was a century of high expectations for humanity, in other words, the history of human civilization. But considering the tragedies, violence, blood and tears in the past 19 years, the possibility of a century that will carry humanity to a "brighter future" has been rocked. However, in the post World War II era, the Western civilization and the Atlantic Alliance claimed to have placed democracy, freedom and human rights in the center and dedicated themselves to a future that would be more divine, where human values would be made more powerful.
Therefore, in this century, it was desirable that human beings turned toward complex problem solving, critical thinking, design and innovation, the culture of doing business together, emotional intelligence, negotiation, empathy, and mental flexibility and developed and improved their skills and capabilities in different areas. Sadly, however, the 21st century witnessed a 19-year-long period in which the Western world declined in terms of empathy, mental flexibility, emotional intelligence and culture of doing business. More alarmingly, it saw extreme right and fascist tendencies rise to frightening levels.
So much so that since the Cold War, it has made a country like the U.S., with a troubling track record of direct interventions in the internal affairs and politics of many countries, hope it would benefit from cooperation with terrorist organizations, leaving the rest of us in a very scary situation.
The biggest contradiction, however, is while on the one hand the Western scientific, intellectual communities and nongovernmental organizations carry out projects for the benefit of mankind, structures deep within the civilian and military bureaucracies in the Western capitals, together with a group of like-minded politicians, have executed numerous operations that went down as black marks on human history.
Today, they are trying to silence and repress the criticism and reactions toward their policies, starting from their own countries before expanding to the entire world – making an even more serious error, insisting on their 40-year-old fiasco.
The question of Daily Sabah columnist Hilal Kaplan to U.S. President Donald Trump revealed the 40-year-old fiasco of the White House. It is a grave situation that a state like the U.S. is going through such an abdication of reason and such incompetence that disregards all humanitarian values to host the representative of a terrorist organization in the White House.
The fact that both the U.S. and the EU have completely lost their empathy, mental flexibility, emotional intelligence and the culture of doing business together points to darkness. Turkey’s responsibility as a country that can hold Asia-Pacific and the Atlantic together and can change the fate of Eurasia, for the future of the world, is quite heavy. And, as long as the civil and military bureaucracy that sees being in contact with terrorist organizations as a strategy remains in power, both the world and Turkey have a very difficult job.
Neoliberals shot themselves in the foot
With the end of the Cold War, the neoliberals set out to take the world economy captive with their ideas and methods in the field of economy. The 30-year-long fiasco they oversaw was the major cause of three major global economic crises. The first is global debt exceeding $250 trillion, tripling world income. The second problem is deepening injustice and inequality in the global economic system. The third problem is the severe imbalance between the real sector and the financial system.
The neoliberal understanding allowed capital owners in the global system such an opportunity to multiply their wealth that the world has been dragged into a system of injustice that is difficult to explain. On a global scale, profitability in the real sector has shrunk, especially for small and medium enterprises (SMEs). And, at all scales, businesses, corporations have borrowed more to invest, or even keep their companies alive and today the entire global economic system is stuck in an insurmountable debt spiral. Moreover, they marketed borrowing to the real sector and governments as if it was ingenious.
As if that wasn’t enough, they made neoliberal adjustments to monetary and fiscal policies. They transformed the tool independence of central banks into the independence of purpose. Covering up the central banks' responsibilities for the country's production, growth and employment, they enforced a monetary policy model focused solely on independence.
Such a monetary policy understanding nothing but borrowing-based growth to country economies. The vaults of the financial institutions got full but the financial situation of the real sector has weakened further. Moreover, they completely diminished the financial power of the real sector with the high-interest rate helix based on the independence of purpose.
Today, the destruction they caused on the global economic system and the 30-year fiasco have escalated trade and exchange wars between countries. The reactions of President Erdoğan and President Trump are aimed at stopping the destruction caused by the neoliberal understanding, the architect of the 30-year fiasco.
The neoliberals have shot themselves in the foot with reactions to the destruction of global growth and global trade caused by the global economic understanding that they led. Prioritizing a new model that minds out for production, growth, employment, efficiency and the real sector is the only way out.