While I was listening to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's speech at the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) summit in Istanbul this week, I thought about the fact that the moribund political and economic paradigm of the 20th century, on which I have written for a long time, is switching to practice from theory.
The decision made at the Istanbul summit is undoubtedly a historic break. And I believe that this decision has not just opened the doors to permanent peace for the Middle East. It is a historic opportunity for all the developed Western countries, especially the U.S., which are becoming increasingly isolated and producing crises in the crumbling economic and political equation of the 20th century, to overcome their current stalemate in the medium and long term.
The withdrawal of the Ottoman Empire from the Balkans and the Middle East at the beginning of the 20th century and the emergence of the Soviet Union in the period determined the political and economic lines of this century. As an antithesis of the "liberal" world, the Soviets played a role that legitimized the West's aggression. This role played by the Soviets and Britain's discovery of oil resources in the Middle East made the Eurasia region the political and economic center of the world.
The basic lines of this process began with World War I, a war on sharing the region and were finalized with World War II, again a war on sharing territories. Developments that took place under U.S. leadership following World War II were aimed at consolidating these foundations. The emergence of political and economic institutions and the creation of diplomatic and economic doctrines were rapidly introduced. As of 1947, the U.S.'s direct military, political and economic intervention in Turkey and the Middle East started.
It was the year 1947 when Israel began structuring as a terrorist state in Palestine and the U.S. initiated its direct economic intervention in Turkey and the region in line with its own interests. The process starting in 1947 was the implementation of the U.S.'s understanding that "I did it and it is done." Even the U.S. public is seeing today that the U.S.'s interests can no longer be the entire world's interests, and this approach will eventually harm the U.S. the most. The U.S. has never been more isolated and uninfluential before. In fact, this is the final of the process that started in 1947.
From 1947 onward, developing countries, including Turkey, have been condemned to the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) stereotypical economic prescriptions. In the same years, the Middle East came to be reshaped. The Ba'ath governments were also built in the same process in Egypt, Syria and Iraq. What is happening in the Middle East today depends on the complete dissolution of this structure and the subversion of all past balances. The U.S. is now nurturing terrorist structures in the region to maintain the old and is preparing to stick Israel once again like a knife in the region. However, the U.S. is no longer in the post-World War II world.
And the Asia-Pacific region is not just about a Japan defeated by war and a China not knowing what to do after the revolution. China is now another world and possesses the power to disrupt all of the balances at any moment. Also, the U.S. no longer has the Soviets that will compromise with it for the sake of the status quo. Russia's new expansion strategy is based not on permanent detente, but on enlargement by opening up to the world and strengthening. On the other hand, in Latin America and Eurasia, which includes Turkey, there are hardly any countries left to fall victim to the vicious circle of underdevelopment as a regional apparatus of the U.S. After successive crises in the 1990s and 2000s, these countries found that the stereotypical prescriptions posed by the Bretton Woods institution did not work and were the cause of the crises and began to implement relatively unique economic policies.
This flawed order, which was founded after World War II, has been confined to Israel and a few desperate countries that depend on petrodollars in this region.
As for the dollar, it is also at its last gasp. Although Joseph Stiglitz says bitcoin "ought to be outlawed," as it "doesn't serve any socially useful function," Blockchain databases and technologies that ground cryptocurrencies like bitcoin are beginning to replace dollar-based conventional transactions in the world financial system and in capital markets (stock exchanges). This system that consolidates and monitors innumerable encrypted operations without being bound to a centralized authority is a global revolution that goes beyond the Bretton Woods system and the U.S.'s supervision as a central authority.
All countries will soon develop commercial-electronic databases and general and local exchange instruments (bitcoins) that monitor these encrypted transactions. However, the U.S. has to deny its own system. Now, Nasdaq is transacting bitcoin future contracts. In 2018, you will see how the dollar will melt away in the face of both these new technology exchange tools and traditional instruments like gold and local currencies. Currently, the two most unsafe exchange instruments in the world are the dollar and the euro, the two failed sister currencies of the Bretton Woods system. This is because the political and economic system behind them have collapsed.
In fact, considering all these developments and the historic and current dynamics that created these developments, mankind has a new possibility of peace and welfare, both economically and politically. Today, a new opportunity emerges in the East where the interests of all countries will become common, leading to welfare and equality for all people.