Taha Özhan
The American elections ended with Trump’s victory. Elections are not always focused on thechange of power. The need for change may arise in many elections. However, this need willnot be enough for the change to come to life. Change comes to life in elections only if there is an actor who will carry it or claim it. When such a carrier actor or ground appears; if there is also a discussion or prediction pain to be taken seriously regarding the outcome of theelection, that choice is a “change” choice. With the Constitutional amendment of America in 1951 limiting the president’s term to two terms, the “change of power” has also turned into a pattern that is expected to occur every 8 years without being announced. Most of the time, this cycle also worked as a political and social rule. After eight years, the only election wonby a different name from the same party, that is, my change did not take place, was George H. In 1988.W. It happened with Bush. Bush almost paid the penalty for breaking the practice bynot being elected in his second term. Change has won again. It was obvious that the 2024 elections would be a “change election” from the very beginning and on August 11, 2020.Because on this date, Biden, who was nominated not because he was preferred, but becausehe had to, chose Harris, an apolitical liberal prospectus product, instead of choosing a name that could be his political heir, genuine and leadership characteristics, helping as if he werenot a candidate problematic enough for Democrats with his political colorlessness and lack of vision. With this decision, it has been announced that Biden, who is in the middle of declaringthat he cannot even take off 2024 due to health problems before he is even elected, will throwin the towel and change will take place in the 2024 elections, not only himself but also theDemocrats. Trump, who transferred the feeling of a dethroned leader to his base by not accepting the results of the 2020 election, also launched the 2024 campaign in November2020. While Trump is spending the period 2020-24 with an active campaign, Biden and theDemocrats are Decently immersed in paifism on the political stage. Biden’s cognitiveweakness due to health problems has turned into a dementia that has metastasized almost tothe entire Democratic party. After all, the result that emerged on November 5th was not surprising, but the expected result. The two most important reasons why this result could not be clearly explained were that Trump’s “imbalances” were uncontrolled enough to cover theDemocrats’ political desperation, and the economic indicators necessary to win elections werequite good.
It is obvious that the election was shaped by dozens of different dynamics, historical politicaland social vulnerabilities, economic background and individual problems and demandsproduced by strong decentralization in the case of America. But although a large part of allthese elements transformed from time to time, they have always existed. What is important is that these elements create the feeling of change by moving in an indescribable directionduring an election. There is not even a need for such a big wave before the 2024 elections.Because the presence of Biden, who is physically too weak to perform any task, politicallyhas no vision to be taken seriously in any title (regardless of right and wrong), has turnedchange into the only option. Once the feeling of change began to form, it was seen once againthat it was unlikely to be stopped, despite the anti-democratic electoral system that preventedthe reflection of voter will to power, like America. Trump has signed the most stunningcomeback in American political history. Just five months ago, he was crowned the firstpresident to be convicted of dozens of crimes in a courtroom, the first name in Americanhistory to lose the presidency for the first time in 130 years and re-enter the White House aftera Dec. Again, as in 2016 and 2020, he used rhetoric that reached nonsense to the end. But thistime, two important dynamics shaped his campaign differently. First of all, despite all his radical and absurd rhetoric, he saw the benefit of the basic economic propositions and theconsistent position he took against wars. He took bold steps that Biden and Harris hesitated topursue. Notably, for the first time in US electoral history, a presidential candidate directlyaddressed Muslim voters and offered specific promises. On the economy and some socialissues, ironically, the “sane” Trump represented. Moreover, he also made this the slogan of his campaign: “We don’t ask for much. At the very least, I am sane” Indeed, he has captured a political language that will appeal to social sensitivities and reason: “A man is a man, a woman is a woman. Illegal immigration must stop. The cost of living is too much. We don’twant war…” Trump’s second and most powerful leverage has been the Democrats. TheDemocrats managed to do everything that needed to be done to lose an election. Thecandidate crisis, a paralyzed Democratic party that made the wrong choices in all the main topics, such as the anti-war, anti-Israel and Muslim vote in two critical states, which eventhose who watched the American elections for the first time in their lives and understood whatthe Electoral Board was for the first time quickly realized, could easily lose the election, andeven the Democrats would have no chance in the election without definitely winning thesesegments to a certain extent, served Trump. In an election that summed up the American net elite fertility decline in one go “for the first time since 1976, Bush, Clinton and Biden’s nameswere not in the race”, the Democratic party may have removed Biden’s name from the race at the last moment, but it had to enter the election with the ghost of Biden. After all, the voterturned to the more realistic-looking Trump option instead of the Biden ghost. The Democraticparty’s coalition, based mainly on ethnic and demographic minorities, has dissolved. The factthat the US elections are a “change election” will have serious consequences for America andthe world. Of course, the landscape that will emerge in the coming years will not only be shaped by the change that appeared on November 5th. However, November 5th may increasethe momentum of the problems and crises that are already happening for both the world andAmerica. The question that should not be taken out of mind for the world is this: what will be the consequences of America, which is seriously separated from the rest of the worldmilitarily and economically, will have the power of global corporate domination at an unprecedented rate even in the last century in new technology areas, regardless of the rankingof global economic power in the coming years, what will be the consequences of continuingto grow its military and economic power and shrink its political mind? It is challenging toprovide a definitive answer to the critical question regarding the implications of the changesinitiated on November 5th. It should not be forgotten that the ambitious and short-termreadings made through the entertainer Trump, which have been seen in recent years in America analyses, provide largely misleading answers to “American problems”. BecauseAmerica coincides with a crucible in which its political, social and economic transformationsin the modern period transfer human history through different channels at the global levelthrough the ingenuity of colonists and refugees and melt it with a difficult-to-solvearrangement. It is not easy to solve the alchemy of the final state that melts and emerges in this crucible, nor to conduct a political and sociological autopsy on it. Therefore, the analysisof the results of the American elections, which are interesting, different and strange in everyaspect, will continue to be a challenging topic. Bearing this difficulty in mind, when we lookat Harris, the loser of the November 5 elections, it is possible to say that besides the fact thatshe was too weak and unsuccessful to make a difference, the possibility of getting rid of theghost of Biden never arose. The Harris story, which began as a liberal project, ended as a crisis of the Democratic party. If Harris’ sad end is going to be a benefit to Democrats andAmerica, it could be that they reconsider themselves. However, when we look at the structuralproblems they have fallen into and the fact that many things that the liberal approachconsiders to be politics are just political criticism, there are no serious reasons to be hopeful.In fact, Republicans are in a similar crisis. Moreover, although the Republicans experiencedalmost the same crisis as the Democrats, the only reason they won the election was that they“overcame” the problem of leadership at a minimum through Trump.
But instead of solving the leadership problem with Trump, the entire traditional structure andaxis of the party has also entered into chaos. The fact that Trump took a character like Vance, who is a complete opportunist and politically bipolar, to this situation showed thatRepublicans cannot face their crisis in the short term either. At this point, the lower bar forwalking towards the leadership stage in the Republican party will be to Trumpize and, ifpossible, to surpass it. Vance appeared to be the first example of this. He took Obama as his role model, risked changing his religion for the sake of skipping classes with an obsessivecareer ambition from a small town, promptly solved the social roots of the problems arisingfrom America’s 2008 economic crisis with amateur literacy, whose fortune was opened whenthe New York Times included him in the bestseller list by treating him like Tocqueville, wrotearticles against Trump for years with an exceptional name; a name that Republicansdiscovered from the citizenry quota to break down the Democrats’ “Blue Wall”. It will alsonot be surprising that we will now see new Vances that will make Trump look reasonable.Because Trump, coded as an “accident” by the world and America in 2016, was not “a temporary, one-time anomaly or an exception produced by the distorted American electoralsystem” over the years, but rather a structural, permanent and genuine result of the Americansocial imagination and political crisis. Trump won 2024 by overcoming America’s two-century-old system that allows the states to elect the president instead of the citizenry, findingthe voter corrupt. In other words, both the national vote totals and the states also showedsuccess. Her opponent Harris has been more successful in almost no constituency than Trump in 2020. This clearly shows that Americans are now rejecting only the Democratic Party, which has become the main representative of the world created by corporations, liberal elites, the Israel lobby, the Netflix identity world. This state, into which the Democratic Party andliberal fanaticism have fallen, and which he has worked his heart out to fall, seems to havemade even a figure like Trump an acceptable man. Representing a hedonistic Northerndeviant for south and central America, Trump was able to rally the support of differentsegments of society, from Muslims in Michigan to devout Christians in rural America, fromLatin Americans to the black population. In America, where the non-white population is expected to become the majority within a decade, it has come quite quickly from the 2008s, when the Republican party was talking about whether it could win elections again, to the daysof how the Democratic Party could recover again. The fact that the Republican Party is morevisionary, authentic, or relatively distant from identity discussions than the Democrats whocarried it to power will also not be enough to solve its own problems. Because just as theDemocratic party has become hollow and its main axis has fallen into the hands of marginalinterest groups, the Republican Party is no longer the old conservative “Big Ancient Party”.The Trump world will lead to a serious management crisis within America, politicalstalemates and perhaps fractures in social fault lines. But more importantly, it is the bill thatthey can issue to the world. The neo-American nationalism embodied by Trump divergessignificantly from traditional American conservatism. This is the value function in the main issue that constitutes a fairly long distance. While American conservatism is a political veinthat has come into being both from its missionary nature and as a result of philosophicaldiscussions, the political representation that has emerged in Trump has also resigned fromvalues and universal approaches. The traditional Republican Party was sitting on a seriouspolitical, social and global vision that had been formed over the years. First of all, the“exceptional state” that geographical, historical and economic reasons have brought to life in America, which makes fun of the “struggle between Biblical morality and new morality”, is negated by the “America First” approach in the Trump world. He even updated this slogan in his campaign and turned it into “Only for America”. Secondly, it does not sit anywhere in thenew American nationalist world of quite serious political theology, built centered on God andshaped by Puritan morality. On the contrary, the world of the “holy conspiracy”, in whichevangelicalism, which has turned into a salad of beliefs and mythology, is one of the main actors, has flourished. Another remarkable dynamic is Atlantic Republicanism, which is an original product of the American political and social imagination, a different political veinfrom the European adventure. American Liberalism, which springs from this political veinand is again different from Europe, is another important dynamic. Today’s nationalism, as theantithesis of American conservatism, which has embodied both of them for many years, is in complete isolationism.
All this corresponds to the American diseases, which the son Bush explained quite clearly.Bush said in a speech: “There are some Decadent ‘isms’ in American history. One of them is ’isolationism’. Its evil twin is ‘protectionism’. The more evil of the two is “indigenism”. Forexample, if you look at the 1920s, there was an ‘America First’ policy that said, “Who caresabout Europe”. Of course, what happened in Europe was important. II. World War II brokeout. As part of the economic program, the Smoot-Hawley tariff law was enacted. It simplymeant that we don’t want international trade. They raised the customs walls. Then, there wasthe immigration policy. They started saying that there are too many Jews, there are too manyItalians. They said there should be no immigrants at all. I’m trying to tell you that we havealso seen periods such as isolationism, protectionism, indigenism experienced today in thepast. My fear is that we will experience the same periods again.” The elements of Bush’sspeech, which he made many years ago as an example of foresight, constitute the three main policies that the candidate who wins the election today says he will implement. This alsoincreases the risk that the global order, which is barely standing and has enough problems andcrises, will become much more fragile during its weakest period in the last 30-40 years. Toembody this risk, as Bush recalled, the last time these “isms” rose seriously at the global level, the heaviest wars in human history emerged. The cost of the election to the world Thetransformations experienced both in American political life and in American capitalism willinevitably produce global consequences in the coming years. It is also difficult to say that theworld is ready for this situation. The trade wars, a prominent feature of the past 7-8 years andintensified during the Biden administration, could significantly destabilize the global economic-political landscape. The crisis that such a chaotic situation will cause at a time when almost everyone has become accustomed to the blessings of global capitalism to a certain extent and has become addicted to a large extent, 20. It will not create an economic-political cost like in the years before the free trade or reasonable customs walls of the centurybegan to form. On the contrary, interruptions or blockages that will occur in the network of millions of goods and services where production, supply and demand processes areintertwined may create inequalities, security and geopolitical risks, the consequences of whichwe will have difficulty predicting today. The processes of inclusion in a network will not be the same as the blockage of that network or the negative energy of exit from the network.Trump appears resolute in his intent to impose higher tariff barriers. If this situation creates a new wave of inflation, we have no idea what will happen in the whole world. But what weknow is that many breaks in the world’s political history are, on the one hand, the history of “price revolutions”, that is, inflation. But it seems that America, as part of its “strategy torepel China” in global competition, will impose a rough and impossible option on the rest of the world, either with me or with the enemy, for now. He expects many countries to end theirdifferent-level relations with China with a quick divorce. In America’s trade war strategy, it is seen that it wants to turn the global economic order into a G-2 world with differentdimensions. Of course, almost the only position of the remaining countries in the G-2 world is that they are doomed to an economic-political Decoy order in which they will move as muchas they can, sandwiched between the United States and China. Although this situation has difficulties for Turkey, it is also possible that it offers serious opportunities. Because now, when Europe looks at the United States, it sees another China. The economic meaning of bothgiant economic powers for Europe, just like for the world, is not any different. Moreover, while the first scenario is the further Chinization of America, Europe will also have to makesome existential decisions. At this economic-political and geopolitical crossroads, it will be inevitable that opportunities will arise for Turkey. Because China sees Turkey as anotherChina with a manufacturing power and a large population at the bottom of Europe, eveninside, while Europe, on the one hand, is dealing with the side effects of Sino-US competition, on the other hand, the United States will be able to see it in its interest to moveits relations with Ankara to a new level in the process of setting itself a direct target.Washington, which has turned the NATO umbrella into an element of pressure, has alreadytaken steps to seriously increase the subscription cost of the security service it offers, whilealready confronting the European region in trade wars. It will be in Europe’s interest to easethis pressure by building a positive agenda for a new security perspective with Ankara. Theuncertainty about how Trump and his administration -this is a difficult issue because Trump terminated or resigned almost all of the names he took to his cabinet and senior managementduring the 2016-20 period at some point-will continue to increase as to how he willimplement the above policies. Moreover, in trade wars, Trump has also taken over fromBiden, an issue in which the American bureaucracy is relatively experienced. The mainuncertainties are in Trump’s geopolitical and security issues, which consist of rhetoric. Whathe will do with Israel, whether he will take advanced Iranophobic names with him as in 2017, what he will do in Syria, whether he will continue tensions with China on the security front, what he will do with Ukraine, which does not seem likely to win and is trying to resistMoscow, how he will use NATO in European relations, how he will take a step in Syria, whathe will do in problematic but not difficult-to-solve files in relations with Turkey, whether he will withdraw the US military presence from Iraq, all these topics remain unclear. There is nopoint in speculating about how he will take steps in all these titles at this stage. Similarly, it is difficult to say that the turbulent presidential period of Trump’s first term also says much totoday. Because Trump, as a kind of personal exclusive character, it is necessary to assumethat his own truths and fanaticism will always be the main driving force. It appears unlikelythat Trump will reconcile with the American establishment, which has increasingly aligneditself with the Democratic-led bureaucracy over the years. There is a lot of speculativeinformation circulating about how to create a team, and this will continue to increase. Thissituation, which makes it very difficult to make predictions about specific headlines, does not apply to a single headline: the fact that the American political crisis continues to deepen.
It is likely that America will oscillate for some time between the possibility of an unstableAmerica having an uncontrolled president and the possibility of having a president who has learned the lessons of the last eight years. We’ll all see which way it goes together.