Turkey's offensive on Afrin, dubbed the Operation Olive Branch, should be considered one of the strategic steps in this new era. The operation is a move to subvert all scenarios of sieging and re-seizing Turkey, as well as a historic stance against imperialism that has been trying to redesign the Middle East in line with its own interests as in the beginning of the previous century.
Through this operation, Turkey tells that if any country sees its own people and future under threat, it can use all of its power against this threat - which is a country's self-determination and right of self-defense. Otherwise, those who are the pawns of imperialist powers cannot have their own destiny or future. In fact, all countries that writhed in the grip of underdevelopment throughout the 20th century and that failed to evaluate their own underground and aboveground resources and production potential for their own interests have come to conceive this basic truth. In this respect, the period we are in is a new period. Therefore, it would not be true to say that this major change in politics will not be reflected in the global economy. Moreover, the biggest change is taking place in the field of economy. The monetary system established after World War II in the 20th century is ending. Today, the rapidly emerging digital currency systems are coming up as a search for this end.
With the Vietnam War in the early 1970s, the global monetary system was established on the circulation of fiat dollars. The Bretton Woods monetary system that was created under U.S. leadership in 1944 was not designed as an overall monetary system alone. It was also the beginning of neocolonialism with its own institutions, economy policies, economy theory and "men" in every country. The institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank undertook the economy operations of this system. The World Bank, a seemingly global development bank, was in charge of "retouching" practices that would not kill, but lead to misery in such countries.
The IMF, on the other hand, functioned as an institution to dictate economy policies created in Washington on countries and to make them pay their debts and contract new debts. Certainly, to achieve all this, there was a need for politicians and bureaucrats who were dependent on the U.S., who were disciplined by London and Washington and who even had passports of these countries. They being in strategic positions inspired confidence. With the IMF's gradually declining reliability and respectability in developing countries like Turkey, such managers and politicians with foreign passports came to fall into disgrace and lose respectability. Soon, just like these bureaucrats, the theories telling that economy would improve by further spoiling income distribution and wealth inequality will fall into disgrace. Then, the doors of a new development path for emerging economies like Turkey will be completely opened.
In fact, Turkey has been trying to find and implement a new and unique growth and development economy policy since 2008 when the country got rid of IMF practices. Let us underline President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's insistence on the issue here. The fact that Turkey was not overwhelmed by a vortex of stagnation and inflation in 2017 and achieved one of the most important growth breakthroughs ever has the same historical context as the Afrin operation. Recently, Erdoğan has been reiterating the significance of a new monetary system and trade with local currencies on all occasions.
The political and regional hegemony of the neocolonial system that was established after World War II is falling down. More importantly, the monetary system that is the base of this order is staggering and is on the verge of being replaced by another one.
We know that monetary systems in capitalism are one of the most important dynamics of the partition of wealth. Certainly, the enrichment based on gold-indexed monetary systems or gold or precious metals which emerged as a result of mercantilist plundering and colonialism or as the direct result of this historic development is the fundamental dynamic of invasions, wars and assimilation in the history of humanity.
On the other hand, the fiduciary currency systems that emerged after the gold standard are the basis of attacks and occupations based on imperialist nation-state hegemony, and in this sense, they are the basis of modern colonialism. The Bretton Woods system is, by and large, one of the most recent historical examples of this. And it is in the throes of death these days. In this sense, it is no coincidence that the digital currency systems are spreading in a surprising way.
The dollar, a fiat Bretton Woods currency, and the euro which emerged as a crutch of it, constitute the basic dynamics of the current global crisis. Therefore, these currencies are now unreliable and the elements of crisis, and the system is creating an alternative using the advantages of technology.
Today, electronic data networks and their new electronic exchange tools are a historic opportunity for the creation of a new global exchange instrument.
Today, there may emerge new general exchange instruments that use electronic data networks and technology and that depend on resources and values in developing countries. This may be constructed as a much more realistic and feasible system than the current monetary system, which in fact has turned into global counterfeiting. With these new tools of exchange, global-international trade is now very imminent.