Imperial Vision, or Reviving the Spirit of an Extinguished Fire

First Publication: www.haber10.com, 2010

 

‘How far we were from the Tigris

Though we were born so near it

The Tigris, from foams of its lower course

Gave birth to a city; that is Baghdad, your country

Baghdad; this, my brother, is your country

The moon falling on the Tigris and rising again to the earth

Tearing off the mirror, constantly, tearing off the mirror from the sun

Your city, my city and the city of us all

A river’s city that has washed us, soul and body

It has flowed within us night and day without heed

Its body bears traces and spots from the Black Amid fortress

Wounds adorn a tiger’s skin, bright as glass

Wounds of the heart are metaphysical

And a city that gives news

From the heaven that was before heaven was created

Becoming of chrysolite voices into the house’s cage

The garden railings, tooth upon tooth, fashioned of silver

The dates, the flowers of the Tigris, a gift of the Prophet

A gift of the saints, coming toward Baghdad

Advancing without cease for a thousand years

And passing onward for a thousand thousand years more

I have not seen Baghdad though I so wished to see it

They have deprived us of each other

We have deprived ourselves

Ourselves from ourselves

Baghdad’s mortar is the martyrs of Karbala’s blood

The Capital of Islamic Civilization

The peace of Harun al-Rashid

The justice of the Imam A’zam

The eyes of Junayd

The heart of Geylani

And Khalid’s dhikr

The land of One Thousand and One Nights

The truth of a thousand and one days

Fuzûlî’s day

The breath of Layla and Majnun

And nourished by the blood of Hallaj al-Mansur

Angel of the night

Were I to light every lamp

To summon the moths of the flame

Were I to lower the wick and dim the springtime of light

So that the lovers’ hearts might not burn

With a deception, with a burning

With a great conviction, with a burning

…………………………………….

And the messenger says: what became of Baghdad?

Where is the wall and veil that protected it?

The human being live in their opus

Every fallen stone is my stone

Every ruined house is mine

In stone, in water, in the date palm

In a bird’s throat

In a car tire, in a speck of oil

 

In every particle the one who dies is me

The dying Baghdad is me

And the messenger says:

I am the burning moon, I am the extinguished day

I am the night that comes when the evening falls

Why did you not understand all of this

O you who turned Baghdad’s golden key to the ash?’

Sezai Karakoç, Alınyazısı Saati

 

Globalism as an ideology advances by concealing what is truly global, that is, genuine universality and a genuinely global perspective. This process of globalization, driven by the U.S.–U.K.-Israel alliance and controlled by multinational finance-capital interests, is destroying not only all grand narratives but also the accumulated heritage of humanity itself. Their version of globalism is, in reality, nothing more than the one-way imposition of a particular way of thinking and living. The fascistic character of this ideology, founded upon the creation of a uniform human type, hides its deeper totalitarian nature behind the curtain of an enchanting rhetoric. It conceals its monopolistic character behind the language of the market economy, its fascism behind the language of democracy, and its theology that grounded in the supposed superiority of one race, the Western white race, behind the discourse of modern civilization. This form of globalism, predicated on controlling a process that stokes passions, is taking hold across the globe by garnering support from segments of society whose passions have eclipsed their reason and spirit. In contrast to the wars of expansion and partition waged by classical colonialism through state apparatuses, globalist colonialism today establishes dominance via decentralized, amorphous, and refined instruments, such as the media, the entertainment industry, corporate relations, social engineering, stock market manipulations, and NGOs. Globalism, which wages war against all conventional powers, particularly states, and thus against the religions and great philosophies that embody the dynamics of mass resistance, is restaging an age-old drama of human subjugation using new rhetoric.

Classical colonialism played out through nation-states, and wars unfolded as struggles for the division of territory. Today, by contrast, globalist colonialism wages war with the objective of bringing the entire world under its domination. Consequently, it targets every force that possesses the potential to resist that domination. At present, however, the principal practical adversary of globalist colonialism lies within its own internal contradictions. The contradictions, specifically those between the war industry/Pentagon bloc that known as the Military-Industrial Complex and finance-capital forces; those rooted in the conflicting political objectives of the US and UK states and the Jewish party; and those pitting the Catholic/Continental European elites against the Protestant-Jewish alliance, indicate that a civil war within globalism is not far off.

Colonialism is, ultimately, a form of domination. Like every form of domination, it advances through the distinction between master and slave and through the enslavement of the majority of humanity. Claims of superiority and privilege constitute the very essence of colonialism. Equality, justice, and freedom are its Grim Reaper. For this reason, efforts to subject entire populations to mass hypnosis aimed at destroying these values have been given priority over political and economic measures throughout the world. A person’s capacity to believe in something, to commit to it, and to dedicate oneself to a higher cause constitutes the foremost enemy of globalist colonialism. One purpose behind the global media’s constant circulation of images depicting the brutality of the occupation of Iraq has been precisely to weaken these sources of conviction and to persuade humanity to accept the absolute triumph of power as inevitable. Spreading fear is one of the principal methods by which consent is manufactured. Today, all states and many people have used their fears as a pretext for surrendering to globalist colonialism.  “If we object, they will destroy our economy; they will occupy us; they will destabilize our country; we will lose power, and so forth.” This rhetoric of fear is perpetuated by Westernist-submissive intellectuals by appealing to elitist-conformist sentiments, such as “being left outside of the modern civilization, falling behind civilized societies, being excluded from the advanced world, becoming a Third World country, and being held captive by the status quo.”

In the end, the strategy of spreading fear has proved effective. Many states, many intellectuals, and many individuals have now chosen to exist in fear. The governing elites justify this fear in the name of realpolitik. Yet genuine realpolitik consists not in submitting to globalist colonialism, but in refusing to bow before it and in breaking the spell of its apparent invincibility. In the words of the Romanian philosopher Cioran, colonialist powers are merely “fake wrestler”; they can be pushed back not by fearing them, but by creating authentic alternatives.

IMPERIAL ALTERNATIVES AGAINST COLONIALISM

The most realistic alternative to globalist colonialism is not merely anti-colonialism, but the development of imperial alternatives. Here, the term imperial refers to large, integrated political entities composed of multiple nations and religions. Across every continent, the movement of all those fraternal societies that have been divided and fragmented by colonialism toward continental or regional integration will give rise to imperial alternatives. Latin America, Central America, the Mesopotamian-Mediterranean Basin, the Indian subcontinent, Central Asia, Africa, and East Asia are continental regions in which such imperial alternatives can emerge. The nation-states within these regions can unite within a higher model of regional statehood. The only way to prevent the world from becoming the territory of a single global state, or a farm shared by a few major united Western states, is for the non-Western world to forge closer ties, integration, and unions among its own members. A system of continental imperial states would constitute the foundation of a multipolar world and would also serve as the guarantee of world peace.

Türkiye can assume a leading role in the integration of the Mesopotamian-Mediterranean Basin. This imperial policy can be made the foundation and ultimate objective of all other policies, so that every domestic and foreign policy decision becomes an extension or implementation of this imperial goal. In this context, the process of European Union membership represents a waste of time for Türkiye. Geoculturally, Türkiye is not European. Indeed, in many respects, being called European is an expression of disparagement and humiliation for Türkiye. At the Paris Conference of 1856, convened after the Crimean War, which marked a turning point in both Westernization and dependence upon the West, Britain and France formally recognized the Ottoman Empire as a European state. This record is, in fact, an instance of ironic demotion, signifying the reduction of the Ottoman Empire from a distinct and alternative empire to the level of an ordinary European state. It was at the end of this process that characterized by diplomatic dependence and deepening economic dependency, that the Ottoman Empire became known as the “Sick Man of Europe.” For this reason, discourses concerning a European identity for Türkiye and its accession to the European Union still carry an undertone of humiliation from Türkiye’s perspective.

In reality, ever since the Ottoman period, the interest directed toward the West stemmed from the desire not to miss the opportunities offered by technological and social modernization. However, the Tanzimat era treated modernization as Westernization and imposed a superficial transformation based upon an inferiority complex toward the West. A genuinely original policy of modernization, by contrast, would have enabled the production of what were assumed to be the benefits of Western civilization. Today, two hundred years later, Türkiye, along with many other non-Western societies, is able, with some effort, to reap the fruits of distinctive modernization policies and generate models that surpass even those of the West in areas such as an educated population, technology development, and urbanization. The dizzying pace of change during the nineteenth century may have prevented much of the non-Western world from taking these steps. But today there is no rational justification for continuing to defend the Westernization model and objectives of a century ago.

At the same time, dependence upon the West is now frequently confused with maintaining relations and alliances with Western countries. The effort to free oneself from dependence upon the West does not mean withdrawing from the world; on the contrary, it would make possible genuine engagement with and integration into the wider world. Because of its policy of Westernization, Türkiye has become almost incapable of recognizing any world beyond the West. Indeed, we scarcely know even our neighboring countries, with which we shared provincial status only eighty years ago, except through the lens of Western media. They, likewise, largely follow developments in Türkiye through Western media. The European Union accession process offers nothing fundamentally new beyond institutionalizing and legalizing this dependency. Suspending the accession process or redirecting it toward a special-status relationship would better serve Türkiye’s genuine interests.

The Mesopotamian-Mediterranean Basin encompasses the widest territorial extent of both the Eastern Roman Empire and the Ottoman Empire. These historical boundaries may be reinterpreted and expanded in pursuit of integration across an even broader geographical area. Energy resources, human resources, accumulated knowledge, the human capital capable of producing technology, the foundations of civilization, and the values of humanity, everything necessary already exists within this region. Globalist colonialism is already active here precisely because it seeks to seize these existing resources. It presents its own world to the peoples of this region through attractive images, while for centuries it has in reality been striving to appropriate this region’s wealth. The fundamental problem is that the peoples of this region have lost confidence in themselves. Their inferiority complex toward the West has produced a condition of paralysis that prevents them from solving their own problems. This paralysis and crisis of self-confidence can only be overcome through the organization of a common state expressing the voluntary unity of all the peoples of the region, and through the asabiyyah (collective solidarity) embodied by that common state. An integration process to be established in the region will mobilize the wealth, potentials, and latent dynamics, which colonialism has recognized and set its sights on, and which we have lost.

The Greater Middle East Project, for example, was presented in a manner that conspicuously relied upon exploiting these very potentials. What is at play here is the exploitation of issues and solutions that every sensible person living in these lands has voiced for decades, such as Neo-Ottomanism, Türkiye serving as a model, the need for regional change, the power of Islam, the role of acting as a synthesis between East and West, and the dismantling of dictatorships alongside the establishment of democratic governments. All of these are, of course, valid observations, and they are voiced precisely because they correspond to realities within our region. What is wrong is that colonialism attempts to establish itself and its proxy elites in the region by pretending to desire these things, while in reality seeking to rule through division along ethnic and sectarian lines rather than through integration.

In this sense, it should not be forgotten that the objectives advanced under the name of the Greater Middle East Project (BOP) have long been the aspirations of the wise thinkers of this entire region, and genuine ways of realizing these objectives should be sought. No one should doubt that a truly large and united Middle East would bring about the expulsion of the colonialisms of the United States, Europe, Russia, Iran, and Israel from the region. For this geography has been shaped by the spiritual foundation of Islam and the monotheistic traditions of Eastern Christianity. That foundation does not serve colonialism. Today, there may be certain Muslim and Christian elements cooperating with globalist colonialism. Yet even these, in time, will become components of this region’s own internal awakening. As noted earlier, the dynamic of fear currently produces paralysis and intellectual confusion in the face of projects such as the Greater Middle East Project. Yet self-confidence and faith are the beginning of everything. The creation of an imperial regional power and Türkiye’s leading role in it constitute not only an inevitable process but, in the final analysis, an eminently national project.

Türkiye has no obligation to choose between competing colonialist states. It should, however, remain open to every form of cooperation that serves the project of creating an imperial regional power. In this sense, instead of the EU membership process, which stalls Türkiye and wastes time, only special and limited relations should be developed with the EU.

At the same time, it is possible to reshape relations with the United States from a relationship of dependency into one of equality. This could include efforts to encourage the withdrawal of the United States from the region, seeking for Türkiye either a decision-making role within NATO or the transformation of NATO into a world police force operating under the supervision and limitations of the United Nations. Likewise, demanding veto rights at the United Nations on behalf of the Islamic world and making use of Türkiye’s leadership within the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation/the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) to mobilize the Islamic world for this purpose would strengthen Türkiye’s position vis-à-vis both the United States and the European Union. Relations with Russia can likewise be evaluated within the same framework. The essential requirement is that Türkiye possess a project and a policy of its own.

An imperial vision flourishes by overcoming fear. Türkiye can take steps to shed the paranoia of defeat and the sense of backwardness rooted in its fears.

Domestically, a process of turning inward, that aligned with this imperial vision, must be initiated.

True democracy versus tutelary or lumpen democracy

The first step in this process will be the appropriation of the state by the nation. By putting an end to the process of developing a lumpen democracy in opposition to tutelary democracy, the potential of true democracy must be unlocked, that is, the nation’s unconditional sovereignty must be established. The criterion for this is simple: the nation will have both the first and the last word on all critical issues, and everyone, absolutely everyone, will bow to the nation’s decision. No institution or center of power may place itself above the will of the nation. Issues such as the headscarf, secularism, the Kurdish question, minority debates, and enduring foreign policy choices should all be resolved by continuously submitting them, in one form or another, to the nation’s approval, decision, inclination, and oversight. This is the fundamental rule upon which the democratic process should be based.

The Western-backed oligarchy produced by the existing system should be dismantled through the confiscation of all its economic and bureaucratic power. The state should be reformulated as the institutional embodiment of imperial integration and fully democratized so as to become the representative power of the nation. The sole owner of the state is the nation as a whole, without distinction.

For the process of imperial integration to succeed, Türkiye must complete its democratic revolution and thereby complete its own internal integration, that is, its transformation into a fully unified nation directed toward this objective. As the first outward step in this imperial reconstruction, formulas resembling a Regional Federation through integration with Syria, Lebanon, Palestine, and Iraq may be placed on the agenda. Likewise, closer and more special forms of union, including federative integration, could be developed with Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Albania, Macedonia, Serbia–Bosnia and Herzegovina, Egypt, Jordan, and Georgia. Different forms of alliance could also be established with Central Asia–Turkestan, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Croatia, Hungary, Romania, Sudan, North Africa, Yemen, Somalia, Tanzania, Mali, Mauritania, and countries in East Asia. Existing alliances can be further strengthened. Cooperation with Spain and Italy along a Mediterranean axis should always be cultivated, while long-term relations with Latin America should be established on the basis of the shared Andalusian heritage. Russia and Iran, meanwhile, should always be kept under close observation and engaged through cooperation while simultaneously being weakened. In the medium and long term, China should be regarded as a potential rival and adversary, and it should never be forgotten that new forms of global colonialist projects may one day seek to dominate the world under a Chinese guise.

These are more realistic and more honorable objectives than the dream of joining the European Union. At the very least, they are goals that have been tried and achieved before; they belong to us, have been tested as means of securing peace, and rest upon unity and brotherhood. The only obstacle to their realization is that the Western-oriented current, which regards these objectives as unrealistic while considering relations of dependency upon the European Union and the United States to be realistic, still occupies positions of authority and decision-making on behalf of the nation. The democratic revolution is, at the same time, a revolution against the state of this Western-oriented oligarchy. The state of the nation, that is, the state representing the brotherhood of the region’s peoples; the true state that serves as the guarantee of this country’s freedom and independence, awaits the day it will manifest as a willpower hidden within the plow of a farmer in an Anatolian village, the shepherd’s pipe atop of a mountain, the traditional shoemaker’s shop of an elderly man in a provincial town bazaar, and the pages of the Qur’an recited by a grandmother living in the outskirts of the city. The Mesopotamian-Mediterranean Basin will, sooner or later, organize itself as a single country and a single state, serving as the exemplary model for the continental integration of all the oppressed peoples of the world. This goal is not the work of racist, narrow-minded, tribalist, sectarian, or Westernist mindsets. They have played out their role and, for two centuries, have offered these lands nothing but blood, tears, civil war, betrayal, collaboration, servitude, dependency, and an inferiority complex. Now it is the turn of the organic willpower that carries the authentic spirit of this geography. As expressed in an ancient text of wisdom, this willpower is “the spirit of a fire extinguished within the water.” From the moment our destiny’s clock was halted, only through that spirit can its hands begin to move forward once again.

 

Source: Teolojinin Jeopolitiği-Allah Vatan Özgürlük, Ahmet Özcan, Yarın Yayınları, 2010