If we set Russia's brutalization of Ukraine aside, the grain agreement proves that the world can get involved; when the world is involved, the idea that change is achievable strengthens and revives!

The change is the idea that the United Nations could be made more effective in initiating actions and stopping nations from putting themselves in the U.N.'s place and intervening with their own operations. The reform of the U.N. is a must, but it is literally impossible given that it reflects the international order that the victors of World War II had imposed on the world.

Perhaps, I should have said "the U.N. reform was impossible" until the historical signature ceremony of the Turkish-brokered grain deal to unblock Ukraine's grain exports from the Black Sea. How I make this logical jump from a one-off agreement to a major international affair to redesign the post-World War II international order is not complicated, but it needs explanation.

The United States and the United Kingdom called on all nations to resurrect the League of Nations after World War II. The League of Nations, the predecessor of the U.N., had been based on such lofty ideals as "promoting international cooperation and achieving international peace and security," but it did not have the teeth to do it; the new organization would have the tools and mechanism to achieve these goals. For instance, the new international order would be based on one concrete rule: States could not increase their territory by occupying other countries; the international body would have armies to go and correct the wrong-doings. However, the war's victors – France, Britain, China, the Soviet Union (USSR), and the U.S. – should be spared from the war power of the international organization. By the end of the war, it was apparent that the nations would be divided into two blocs. The USSR and China (the East) were afraid that the other side (the West) would gang up against them. In the meetings to design the U.N., Moscow, Tehran and Dumbarton Oaks conferences and in the final meeting in Yalta, a compromise was reached: These five countries would have veto power over any resolution that could authorize the use of sanctions and military force. For some, with the veto system, the new international body would have been dead in case any of these countries would be involved in a matter that the U.N. would be trying to solve. But for some, this system, at least, enabled the international system to work against others!

Since 1946, USSR-Russia vetoed several resolutions of the Security Council 122 times. The U.S. vetoed 82 resolutions, while the U.K. invoked its veto power 29 times. If we look at the "totals" of the blocs, we see that against the East's 139 vetoes, the West opposed 127 sanctions and the use of military force. Russia's last veto was on the U.S. Security Council resolution to continue cross-border aid for Syria. The U.S.' last veto had come under the Trump administration on the council's resolution on threats to international peace and security caused by terrorists. The resolution sought to address the prosecution, rehabilitation and reintegration of "foreign terrorist fighters and their accompanying family members." Still, the U.S. thought it had failed to include "a crucial first step – repatriation to countries of origin or nationality."

If you read the list of the items vetoed by the five permanent members of the Security Council, you'll see that almost all vetoes boil down to the dichotomy of "our bastards against your bastards." (No, it was not Brad Pitt's Lt. Aldo Raine who coined the term in Quentin Tarantino's movie "Inglourious Basterds" in 2009, but what the former U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, trying to make a distinction between authoritarian regimes, said about Rafael Trujillo, dictator of the Dominican Republic: "He may be a bastard, but he's our bastard.")

But the international community noticed that with 266 issues in total, sanctions and military force could not be used to solve an important international problem because of dictators here or there; we can hardly call it an international order. Moreover, in the new system, countries should not increase their territory at the expense of others, but they did. They should be promoting economic development and cooperation, but they did not. There should be fewer arms on the face of the Earth, but quite contrary, the globe had become an arms depot ready to rip at the seams. In short, the system needed reformation; specifically, we had to change it so that the order of the founding fathers of the U.N. could be possible.

As soon as you pose this question in a graduate studies class, the most common answer you get is the need to revoke the veto power of those five permanent members. You pose a follow-up question: How could it be done? Then you have a cacophony of clashing opinions.

In addition to the Security Council and myriads of resolutions it passed that became sort of international law, we have the International Convention of Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR) and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR). But, we still have photographs of people displaced because a nation is trying to expand its territory, pushing people toward hunger, exposing them to torture and other human-made calamities. In the 21st century, you see images of mass graves in Ukraine, Afghanistan or Yemen.

How can we reform the usage of the veto power in the Security Council? Or can we?

President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has advocated that the world is bigger than the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council. But the question is: How can we make those five nations understand that the world is bigger than them? There are 188 other countries at the U.N. that can vote, but their collective will can be invalidated with one "No!" at the U.N. Security Council.

For the first time in the recorded history of wars, we have been witnessing those 193 nations coming together (so to speak!) and deciding to halt a war and get those millions of tons of grain and fertilizers out of the war area. In the words of the U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, Turkey's "facilitation and persistence" freed up Ukrainian Black Sea ports and cleared the way for exporting Ukrainian and Russian grain and fertilizer.

Ukraine would, of course, like to have such an agreement, but the side that started occupying Ukrainian territory, Russia, would not agree to any resolution the U.N. Security Council would try to pass allowing Ukraine to export its grain. So how was it made possible?

Simple: By talking. Even the warring parties can listen if you speak sense. Guterres heaped praise on Erdoğan and the representatives of Ukraine and Russia at the İstanbul signing ceremony, saying, "You have overcome obstacles and set aside differences to pave the way for an initiative that will serve the common interests of all." He said that accord now stands as a beacon on the Black Sea: "A beacon of hope, a beacon of possibility, a beacon of relief in a world that needs it more than ever."

The possibility of making the U.N. more effective, having more initiation to push nations, big and small, and the ability to work not in the Security Council mechanism but the general assembly of 193 (hopefully, soon with Palestine, 194) countries raises the hope that it is possible to make the world a safer place for all people. That beacon Guterres pointed out will probably shine soon when the people see that the world is bigger than the five countries.