President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's visit to Saudi Arabia, on the last days of 2015, is a very important diplomatic visit that will have consequences in 2016. Turkish-Saudi relations have been rapidly improving and intensifying since King Salman came to power. Saudi Arabia is evaluating its revenues, which will drop due to the falling oil prices, in an efficient way around the world and the continuation of this efficient evaluation is possible with a strategic partnership with Turkey, thus we need to address Erdoğan's visit to the country in this framework. Turkey knows what countries uphold all anti-peace and anti-welfare paramilitary structures in the region and for what purpose they are doing so. So, ensuring peace in the region relies on close cooperation starting from the economy. Based on this point of view, Turkey and Saudi Arabia reached a mutual agreement over the establishment of a High Level Strategic Cooperation Council. Both countries highlighted the importance of further strengthening bilateral relations in economy, trade, energy and other fields and emphasized that they would not remain indifferent to terrorist organizations' exploitation of Islam in the region. Turkey regards Saudi Arabia's initiative of an Islamic alliance against terror as an appropriate step. It is a very important development that Turkish-Saudi relations are becoming institutionalized through such kinds of alliances. A Turkish-Saudi strategic alliance against terror, which pretends to be Islamic but has nothing to do with Islam, is a major response today, as Turkey is one of those countries that is most severely affected by terrorism.

Certainly, the terror that continues in eastern Turkey does not stem from Turkey's internal dynamics, but rather, it is a direct implication of a new war on sharing that continues mainly in the Middle East. This being the case, all terrorist structures in the region are the direct paramilitary instruments of sovereign powers taking part in this war on sharing. During this process, Turkey tried to establish a dialogue in all countries and political formations, particularly the Kurdistan Regional Government, in its region through peace and welfare. We see that the same game as 100 years ago is being played in the entirety of this region today. However, Turkey is no longer the Turkey of 100 years ago. Who prevents the Kurds in Iraq from evaluating their own energy resources and who prevents them from determining their future? Despite all efforts made by KRG President Masoud Barzani's administration, DAESH is trying to seize the oil, which belongs to the Kurdish people. On behalf of whom does DAESH do this? Certainly, organizations such as the People's Protection Units (YPG), which pretend to resist DAESH but serve the same purpose as DAESH, uphold Kurdish nationalism and are actually twin organizations to DAESH.

This is a very old Cold War game. During the whole Cold War period, the U.S. and the Soviet Union acted as if they were enemies of each other; however, they were twin brothers. Now, structures such as DAESH, PKK and YPG are presented as if they are alternatives to each other; however, they are twin brothers, which serve the same purpose.

Obviously, the fact that Kurdish people in Iraq freely determine their future and the Barzani administration takes steps to this end will be one of the major political developments in 2016. Kurdish people should stake a claim on the energy resources they have. Turkey will evaluate these resources within the framework of the southern energy corridor.

Apart from Turkish-Saudi relations, we predict that Turkish-Israeli relations will recover in 2016. Israel should immediately remove the blockade on Gaza, which is the most important request of Turkey, and should recognize the legitimate rights of Palestinian people before the whole world. This will be an important step not only for the good of Turkish-Israeli relations, but also for Israel's security and welfare in the future and for regional peace.

I think that 2016 will be an important year where all developing countries will discuss the alternatives of their economic policies. It has been realized that countries like Turkey will discuss the alternatives of impoverishing neoliberal economic policies which were imposed on them by the Washington Consensus in the 1990s and which urge them to transfer funds to the outside.

This argument does not apply to Turkey alone, but to all countries that produce crises in eastern and southern parts of the world, from Brazil to Russia. All developing countries, particularly Turkey, should abandon monetary policies which just care about the stability of financial markets and consistently produce debt crises, as well as fiscal policies which just highlight non-interest surpluses, push aside strategic investments and further spoil the income distribution through indirect taxes. Actually, developing countries have so many alternatives, which they need to discuss in a reasonable way. The year 2016 will be a year where such a struggle will come to the fore.

May the new year bring peace and welfare for the whole of humanity.