Turkey's political vision must treat West and East in conjunction

As World War I ended, the Western colonization, fueled by the Industrial Revolution, reached its zenith. At that time, not a single Muslim area was left unoccupied by Western colonial powers. Beginning with the occupation of India, the colonial journey of the British Empire concluded with the occupation of Istanbul, the capital of the Ottoman Empire. In Saraçhane, a district of Istanbul, British soldiers shot at and murdered unarmed civilians. It is a curious coincidence that 17 people were killed in the same place last year during the failed coup orchestrated by Fethullah Gülen, who presently works as an agent of the Western colonial empire.

Thanks to the bipolar international power struggle of the Cold War era, many countries succeeded in gaining national independence, except for those in Africa, which has openly been ruled by colonial interests. By monopolizing first the raw materials and then industrial goods, a neocolonial age has begun. In the post-Cold War era, countries with the potential to compete against neocolonialism have been weakened by design through chaos and civil war.

Since the 1970s, the oil money accumulated in the Middle East has been transferred to the West through the bloody channels of war. During the Iran-Iraq War, Gulf Arab countries gave arms to Iraq worth $600 billion.

After the end of the first Gulf War, while the future of Kuwait fell into the hands of the United States, Saudi Arabia paid $400 billion to the U.S. administration to overthrow Saddam Hussein. At that time, the impoverished Saudi Arabia could not pay the salaries of its civil servants.

The U.S. occupied Iraq under the pretext of Saddam Hussein's ownership of chemical weapons of mass destruction. In order to cover the expenses of the Iraqi occupation, then U.S .President George W. Bush demanded hundreds of billions of dollars from Gulf Arab countries. The prince of Abu Dhabi paid the price for his opposition to the U.S. with his life. Finally, U.S. President Donald Trump recently concluded an agreement with Saudi Arabia and other Gulf Arab countries over their purchase of arms worth $250 billion.

Unwilling to pay the price for U.S. protection, Qatar has suddenly found itself isolated and threatened. The embargo placed by Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates serves to force Qatar into making new "profitable" contracts with the United States and the United Kingdom.

In current Western monopoly over financial capital and information technologies replaced its former monopoly over industrial capital. While China and India have emerged as new powers of the post-Cold War era, the colonial empire does not want Russia, China, Iran or Turkey to come to the fore in the new world order.

Turkey holds a sui generis status in international power politics. Siding with the Western bloc during the Cold War, Turkey has been one of the strongest members of NATO and a consistent candidate for European Union membership. Over the course of the Syrian civil war, Turkey has, however, realized that its allies also want to weaken it in the Middle East politically, economically and culturally. Allied with the People's Protection Units (YPG), which is a derivative of the PKK and was founded by Bashar Assad and Iran to fight Turkey, the present political agenda of the U.S. in Syria clearly endangers Turkey's national interests.

Although it has always been an ally of the West, Turkey has to improve its relations with all the countries in the region due to its historical legacy and geopolitical position. Although its traditional philosophy was destroyed by the end of World War I, it is imperative for Turkey to develop a comprehensive political vision that treats the West and East in conjunction, simply because both the East and West belong to God.