The heavy price of the Damascus sweet

Do not let the nonsensical commentary of television pundits or the premature victory cries of government circles confuse you. It has become clear that they will not let Turkey have even a crumb of the "Damascus sweet" or the "Aleppo halva." As you might understand, the Sykes-Picot agreement of the early last century is being updated. We are talking about the secret agreement signed between the United Kingdom and France on May 16, 1916, which Tsarist Russia later joined, regarding the partitioning of Ottoman territories in the Middle East.

The West had dubbed the declining Ottoman Empire the "Sick Man." The Sick Man and the Eastern Question were twin concepts of imperialist jargon. The Eastern Question was to be solved by the imperial powers partitioning the energy-rich political geography of the Ottomans! One of the reasons for the outbreak of World War I was that the Ottoman estate could not be partitioned peacefully. The plan was to seize the Sick Man by the throat and divide the inheritance among the imperial vultures!

The Eastern Question was the terminology used by the imperial agenda in the last century. The updated imperial agenda uses the name Greater Middle East Project (GMEP) for the same geography today. Are you asking what this GMEP, presented as the democratization and liberation of the region, actually is? Despotic regimes in the Middle East will be toppled, archaic nation-states will be dismantled, and miniature states based on ethnicity and sectarianism will be established! The ethno-feudal Kurdish despotism, to which imperialism has assigned the task of acting as a hitman against nation-states in the region and guarding oil wells, is just the icing on the cake. Here is the GMEP prescription of imperialism that will bring peace and democracy to the region!

With Ukraine to our north and Syria to our south, as the flames of two hot wars lick our faces and their sparks fly over us, what are we doing? Instead of state wisdom and institutionalism—which mean accumulation, experience, foresight, analysis, and future planning based on lessons learned from the past—we are all witnessing where the Syria policy, created in line with individual whims detached from reality and science, has dragged our country. The traditional practice, jointly formed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the General Staff, the National Security Council, and the political government, and ultimately turned into state policy, is a story of the past. Instead of the state's institutional wisdom, post-truth dreams, contradictory statements, and off-the-cuff declarations are the painful reality of today. The situation we are describing is damaging Turkey's seriousness, prestige, and deterrence beyond what is imagined.

We hope that the masterminds behind the scenario and field implementation of Syria's fragmentation have not planned for Turkey something similar to the Kuwait bait they fed Saddam! The fact that the designers and implementers of the GMEP have begun to portray themselves as pure as the driven snow while accusing Turkey of cooperating with jihadist organizations should wake those governing the country from their daydreams as soon as possible. The way imperial news agencies and Western media outlets portray Turkey as an occupying foreign power that commits war crimes and engages in ethnic and sectarian cleansing is reaching alarming dimensions.

What does it mean that some professional organizations and certain "Town Musicians of Bremen"—who did not say a word about the GMEP, did not raise their voices against the fragmentation of Syria and Iraq, and ignored the massacres by ethno-feudal gangs—have begun to make statements that amount to snitching on Turkey to imperial centers? The fact that rhetoric about filing applications against Turkey to humanitarian law and international judicial bodies, such as the International Criminal Court, has begun to be voiced should be read as domestic support for imperial initiatives and sanctions against Turkey.

Have no doubt that those who have abandoned anti-imperialist ideology and a pro-labor, pro-people stance, transferring from the "left-wing stands" to the "orange stands," will continue their duty as local suppliers of imperial requirements with even greater fervor in the coming period.