The global geopolitical accounting of 2025

2025 has been a year in which not only the last few decades but perhaps centuries of geopolitical tectonic shifts have occurred. The multipolar world has now formed. The era of Pax Americana has officially ended. The question that must be asked now is how the world will be shaped. Will there be a managed transition, or an uncontrolled hardening? 2025 has shown that multipolarity was not born with a "soft landing," but in a conflictual, disorderly, and dangerous manner. The US is trying to prevent this transition rather than manage it, which in turn generates more crises. The Ukraine war, the Taiwan tension, and the vulnerabilities in maritime trade routes are reflections of this process. The new order has not yet been institutionalized, but it is clear that the old order has completely lost its legitimacy. 2025 has been the harshest year of this interim period. 2025 has gone down in history as the year when Western dominance and its latest representative, Pax Americana, retreated not just rhetorically but in practice, and collapsed in many areas. Pax Americana can no longer offer a promise for the future. The name of a power that has lost its capacity to establish order, has become unable to manage crises, and has lost its legitimacy cannot historically be mentioned alongside "peace." From this date on, the world is no longer talking about an American-centered peace order, but an era of power struggle that is multi-centered, harsh, uncertain, and in transition. In this era, seas, trade routes, energy lines, and law are being redefined; new balances are taking shape on the wreckage of the old order. For this reason, 2025 is not only the end of Pax Americana but the year in which the naked truth of the global order was revealed.

THE HARSH BIRTH OF THE MULTIPOLAR ORDER

Power transitions have never been calm and stable processes in history. The current hegemon has exerted effort to delay and prevent the transition. Today, too, the US, instead of accepting its declining position and seeking a ground for sharing with new power centers, has become stuck in the reflex of protecting the status quo through force. This choice has not slowed down multipolarity; on the contrary, it has made it harsher, more fragile, and more uncontrolled. In this context, the Ukraine war is not just a regional conflict, but a laboratory for the old order's way of defending itself. NATO's expansion strategy, the policy of containing Russia, and the proxy war model reflect the essence of the US response to multipolarity. However, contrary to expectations, this war has revealed not the absolute superiority of the West, but the limitations of sanctions, the differences in military-industrial capacities, and the fragmentation of global support. The Ukrainian front has exposed the limits of hegemonic deterrence. With the National Security Strategy Document (NSS 25) published at the beginning of December 2025, the US clearly declared its withdrawal from European security, leaving Europe alone with the Ukraine crisis. As a result of this maneuver, which caused a revolutionary change in Europe, Europe, remaining loyal to the paradigm of endless wars of global finance capital, has turned to the option of increasing its defense spending to astronomical levels and intensifying the process of hostility with Russia that will last for many years. The common feature of this group, led by France, the UK, and Germany, is that their leaders are practically encouraging a war with Russia despite their own people. Similarly, the Taiwan tension shows how fragile the power transition in the Asia-Pacific is. What is happening here is not a classic sovereignty debate over the status of an island. Taiwan has been turned into an outpost of the US strategy to contain China and has been removed from being a regional balancing element. This situation, while making military tension permanent, turns the Western Pacific, the heart of maritime trade, into a constant risk area for the global economy. The vulnerabilities in maritime trade routes are one of the most concrete and dangerous reflections of the multipolar order. Strategic passages such as the Red Sea, the Eastern Mediterranean, the Black Sea, and the Strait of Malacca have ceased to be the secure backbone of the global system and have turned into areas of geopolitical pressure and military challenge. In this context, the opening of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) under Russian control in the Arctic Ocean to year-round navigation has revealed, for the first time in 500 years, the unstoppable presence of a maritime transport route outside the control of the collective Western world. During this period, the seas have begun to play a divisive rather than a unifying role. This means that global trade, energy supply, and food security are under threat at the same time. The new order has not yet been institutionalized. Multipolarity still exhibits a fluid, uncertain, and often contradictory structure. Permanent norms, binding rules, and crisis management mechanisms have not yet formed among the new power centers. Conversely, it is now an undeniable fact that the old order has completely lost its legitimacy. The "rules-based order" rhetoric has lost its meaning due to the gap between it and the practices on the ground; rules have turned into tools that are remembered only to the extent that they serve the interests of the powerful. For this reason, it is possible to define 2025 as an "interim period." However, this is not an ordinary transition year. 2025 has been the harshest, riskiest, and most instructive year of this interim period. While the old order is effectively collapsing, the new order is still in the throes of birth. This void is filled with conflicts, crises, and unexpected ruptures. Historically, such periods are times when the most mistakes are made, but at the same time, the most lasting results are produced.

THE US UNABLE TO CHART A COURSE

The collapse of Pax Americana in 2025 is not the result of a sudden, singular, and dramatic military defeat. On the contrary, it is the product of a multi-layered and irreversible disintegration that emerged as structural weaknesses accumulated over a long time simultaneously became visible. The loss of moral legitimacy, the loss of the deterrent quality of naval power, the unsustainability of the economic order built on debt and financial manipulation, and the deep erosion of trust among allies constitute the main pillars of this disintegration. Undoubtedly, Israeli Geopolitics and Anglo-Zionism played a significant role among the factors that played the biggest role in this collapse. The US is no longer a hegemon that establishes order, produces norms, and provides stability. The only tools left in Washington's hands today are threats, sanctions, secondary sanctions, and coercive pressure. These tools, however, do not produce order; they only produce crises, deepen conflict, and accelerate counter-bloc formations. In other words, "leadership through consent," which forms the essence of Pax Americana, has been replaced by open coercion and the production of fear. This is not a form of hegemony, but an uncontrolled drift after hegemony. What happened in Iran, Venezuela, Gaza, and Lebanon has been a historical breaking point where the US has invalidated its own "rules-based international order" rhetoric, which it has been voicing for decades, with its own hands. While talks between the US and Iran were ongoing in Oman, Israel's attack on Iran, or its attack on the Hamas delegation in Doha—which was under American and British air defense protection—just as talks between the US and Hamas were about to begin in Qatar/Doha, destroyed the reputation of the US. The American Navy, which indiscriminately sank boats belonging to Venezuela and Colombia in the Caribbean Sea outside the rules of international maritime law and the law of armed conflict, or applied a blockade—a wartime practice—against Venezuelan tankers under the guise of counter-terrorism, has seriously damaged its legitimacy. The clear disregard for international law, the protection of civilians, and the principle of proportionality throughout 2025 has revealed to the global majority that Washington does not see law as a universal norm, but as an instrumental and selective instrument that only legitimizes its own interests. From this point on, even the concept of "double standards" is insufficient; the emerging picture is one of direct norm destruction. As of 2025, the US has also effectively lost its capacity to be a mediator. It has become one of the parties, and in many cases, has fallen into the position of being the architect and sustainer of the conflict itself. The claim of moral superiority has collapsed; the rhetoric of "democracy," "human rights," and "freedom" has lost its credibility due to the gap between it and the practices on the ground. This is not just a loss of image; it is the complete breakdown of the consent-producing mechanism of the hegemonic order.

DRIFT FROM HEGEMONY TO EMPIRE AND STRATEGIC BLINDNESS

As we conclude the year 2025, the world is at the intersection of geopolitical change/transformation and the transition moves of the clogged neo-liberal capitalist system to a new order. From a geopolitical perspective, the collapse of the Soviet Union created an illusion of the "end of history" in Washington. This illusion was based on the assumption that hegemonic borders were no longer necessary, that military power could establish order on its own, and that there were no actors left to resist. At this point, the US abandoned the strategic patience and moderation required to be a hegemon and began to act with imperial reflexes. Hegemony works through persuasion, attraction, and indirect influence. Empire, on the other hand, requires direct power, force, and military imposition. The US ignored this difference after the Cold War, and especially in the period after September 11, 2001, it started the era of the empire's endless wars through the neocon-Zionist strategic partnership. The fronts of Afghanistan, Somalia, Sudan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Georgia, and Ukraine have shown that the US has replaced strategic wisdom with military power and color revolutions. These choices generated military-industrial gains in the short term; however, in the long term, they created naval power erosion, budget deficits, and internal political fragmentation. As of 2025, the US presents the image of an unmanageable superpower. The common element on every front is the lack of clear political goals, the absence of an exit strategy, and the perception of military intervention as the only tool for a solution. This approach may have generated serious gains for the defense industry, private security companies, and financial networks in the short term. However, from the perspective of state wisdom, all of these wars are strategic losses. The state of constant war has faced the US budget with chronic deficits; borrowing, monetary expansion, and financial manipulation have become ordinary state policy. It should not be forgotten that hegemony requires fiscal sustainability; empire lives on debt. The US chose this second path and began to pay the price for it with internal political fragmentation, class tension, and institutional decay. Polarization in domestic politics is the natural result of this strategic blindness. A state that constantly produces external threats and is governed by a permanent war psychology cannot produce unity at home. Today, the US presents the image of a superpower that is militarily strong but politically divided, economically fragile, and strategically directionless. The picture that emerged as of 2025 is a classic example of the phenomenon of "unmanageable power." On the other hand, although migrations, pandemics, inflation, energy crises, and wars experienced in the last decade are often presented as random shocks, when these developments are read together, they point to a kind of controlled liquidation of the industrial capitalism based on the productive middle class of the 20th century. The goal is to transition from a production-centered economic order to a new sovereignty model based on platform dominance such as digital property, financial rent, digital infrastructure, algorithms, data pools, licenses, and user agreements. The rescue of the financial system during the pandemic, the deliberate weakening of the Germany-centered European industry, the continuity of the energy crisis in Europe, and the declaration of defense spending as a growth engine are parts of this structural transition. In the new order that has emerged, while constant states of emergency, digital surveillance, and social discipline tools become the norm, human labor, the social state, and life itself are increasingly redefined as cost items. This situation fundamentally shakes social contracts in both the US/EU and many parts of the world, creating conditions that will lead to social explosions.

DEBT, FINANCE, AND IMPERIAL DECAY

In your 2025 analyses, the phenomenon of debt can be defined not as a classic economic problem, but as a systemic cancer that produces direct geopolitical consequences. The US public debt, which exceeds 33 trillion dollars, is no longer an abstract balance sheet item; it has become a concrete burden that erodes military power, diplomatic maneuver space, and strategic flexibility with billions of dollars in interest payments every day. This picture is one of the fundamental dynamics that explain the historical fate of empires and is a direct confirmation of historian Paul Kennedy's thesis of "imperial overstretch." As Kennedy pointed out, when the balance between military and geopolitical obligations and economic production capacity is broken, great powers inevitably enter a process of collapse. The US has crossed exactly this threshold today. Hundreds of bases on a global scale, a state of constant war, massive defense budgets, and simultaneously decreasing production capacity have made the debt unmanageable. Debt is no longer a tool that finances growth; it has turned into a mechanism that consumes power. The fundamental weakness of financial capitalism is revealed here. A financial dominance not supported by production, industry, shipyard capacity, and maritime trade is not sustainable. Throughout history, global powers have been able to gain trust in their currencies to the extent that they dominated the seas. Today, the US has largely lost its industrial infrastructure and shipyard capacity to China. The US share in areas ranging from global container shipping to shipbuilding tonnage, from port management to logistics chains, has declined dramatically. This picture also means that dollar hegemony is structurally weakening. Reserve currency status cannot be protected only by financial moves and interventions; it requires production power, trade volume, and maritime dominance behind it. The US Navy is still strong; however, it no longer has the capacity of a maritime empire as it once did, which could guarantee the global circulation and reliability of the dollar on its own. The historical link between naval power and financial power has reached a breaking point. As a natural result of this rupture, Washington is increasingly resorting to more sanctions, blockade threats, secondary sanctions, and financial coercion. However, these tools are not deterrent as they were in the past; on the contrary, they create a repulsive effect. Instead of bringing target countries into line, sanctions encourage them to create alternative payment systems, trade with local currencies, and establish regional financial networks. The US's financial weapons are fragmenting the global system instead of controlling it. As the debt spiral deepens, the US's strategic options are narrowing. The cost of a new major war has become unaffordable; current conflicts have made the budget even more fragile. This situation marks the classic final stage of empires: the need to use power increases, but the economic foundation to sustain this power gradually weakens. The result is more pressure, less legitimacy, and accelerating disintegration.

NAVAL POWER DECLINE

One of the most striking indicators of the year 2025 was the simultaneous decline of the Anglo-Saxon naval powers (the US and the UK) that rule the seas. The drop in the US Navy from 600 ships in the 1990s to around 290 in 2025; the weakening of the Royal Navy to the point where it cannot protect its aircraft carriers; and the crises in shipyards and human resources are irreversible signs of the loss of hegemony at sea. Viewed from this perspective, the simultaneous and structural decline of the US and British navies is not an accidental weakening; it is also a clear indication that the historical cycle of Anglo-Saxon maritime hegemony has entered its final stage. In contrast, China has established a sea-industry-logistics integrity by growing its navy and merchant fleet together. On the other hand, American maritime dominance, established with the claim of ensuring the security of global maritime trade routes, is no longer absolute or undisputed. Along the line extending from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, from the Black Sea to the Indo-Pacific, the presence of the US Navy has become a source of risk rather than a producer of security. Seas are turning into fault lines where fragmented spheres of influence clash, rather than being unifying as they were during the Pax Americana period. In 2025, no power can establish simultaneous and undisputed maritime superiority across all oceans. The disruption of trade routes in the Red Sea, the US being forced into constant crisis management in the Western Pacific, and the increasing competition over new sea routes in the Arctic are concrete manifestations of this fact. Seas have ceased to be "open and secure" areas as they were during the Pax Americana period; they have turned into multi-actor, high-risk, and fragmented spheres of influence. This development produces not only military but also geopolitical consequences. When maritime superiority is lost, trade security weakens, energy flows become fragile, and the capacity to produce global norms collapses. The problem the US is experiencing today is not that its navy has completely weakened; it is that naval power can no longer play a global order-building role. This difference defines the line between hegemony and being a great power. On the other hand, maritime dominance is not a power measured only by the number of ships. It gains meaning with shipyard capacity, human resources, logistics continuity, merchant fleet, port networks, and ally access. Today, this integrity is dissolving in the Anglo-Saxon world and is being rebuilt in a new Asia-centered maritime ecosystem. In the US and the UK, warship construction times are lengthening, costs are multiplying, and qualified labor is gradually decreasing. Naval power is unsustainable when not fed by industry. Today, Anglo-Saxon navies are surviving by consuming their own past heritage. Their capacity to produce a new maritime dominance is gradually narrowing. In contrast, China is building its naval power not as an isolated military tool, but as a system integrated with industry, logistics, and trade. The growth of China's navy and the expansion of its merchant fleet are progressing simultaneously; shipyards, ports, and global logistics networks are being combined under a single strategic architecture. This is the fundamental condition for the historical success of classic maritime empires. China is producing not only warships but also spheres of influence at sea. As a result, what is happening in the field of naval power clearly reveals why 2025 is a threshold year. Anglo-Saxon maritime hegemony is approaching its end not with a dramatic collapse, but with a silent, gradual, and irreversible erosion. Seas are no longer the competition field of a single center, but of multiple powers. Those who read this transformation correctly will build the future.

ISRAELI GEOPOLITICS AND THE ANGLO-ZIONIST IMPASSE

In 2025, the greatest weakness of US foreign policy is its being held hostage to Israeli security geopolitics. Israel's raid-style attack on Israel on June 13, 2025, was a fait accompli for the US, and in the last 4 days of the 12-day war, which was initially aimed at ending in victory, Israel suffered serious damage and was forced to request a ceasefire under US leadership. What happened in Gaza after October 7, 2023, when the period of limitless aggression and genocide of Israeli geopolitics began in West Asia, is not just a regional tragedy; it is the moral suicide of US hegemony. This is not a tactical alliance choice; it is a state of structural dependency where strategic wisdom is disabled. Washington is no longer a center that defines its own interests in the Middle East; it has turned into an approval authority that acts in line with Israel's threat perceptions, priorities, and security reflexes. What is happening in Gaza is the historical threshold where this surrender is most clearly visible. What is at stake here is not just a severe humanitarian tragedy or a regional war. Gaza is also the stage for the moral suicide of US hegemony. Washington, which has produced global legitimacy for decades through rhetoric about "human rights," "international law," "protection of civilians," and "proportional use of force," has denied all of this rhetoric accompanied by live broadcasts. From this point on, the US's claim to produce norms has collapsed, and only brute force remains. Israel's unlimited military violence and the unconditional American support given to this violence have irreversibly damaged the US's global image. This damage is not limited to the "Global South." A deep crisis of legitimacy towards Washington has formed even at the level of European publics, universities, civil society, and even state elites. For the first time, the US has lost its moral defensibility in the eyes of its allies' publics at this scale and speed. This is the most dangerous rupture for hegemonic orders. This process also reveals the structural impasse of the Anglo-Zionist strategic framework. The approach that absolutizes Israel's security and positions it above regional balances produces a clear contradiction with the US's global interests. Every military and diplomatic move made on behalf of Israel narrows the US's maneuver space in the Asia-Pacific, Africa, and Latin America. Washington is exhausting its claim to leadership in the global system in order to protect Tel Aviv. For this reason, the post-Gaza period is not just a moral rupture; it is also a break that produces geoeconomic and geopolitical consequences. The expansion of BRICS, the acceleration of the de-dollarization trend, and the search for a multipolar order are directly linked to this loss of legitimacy. The US's financial and political pressure tools are now perceived as "order-destroying" rather than "order-protecting." This change in perception feeds alternative blocs and new cooperation architectures. Especially from the perspective of the Global South, Gaza has turned into a symbol. This symbol represents the bankruptcy of the West's claim to universality, the selective use of law, and the naked nature of power relations. By placing itself at the center of this symbol, the US has fixed itself in a historically wrong position. This is not a temporary diplomatic mistake; it is a long-term strategic cost.

MULTIPOLARITY AND TURKEY

Turkey faced three important geopolitical ruptures in 2025. The first was that, as a result of our own mistake in Syria, we entered a period of open geopolitical competition with Israel, moving out of the gray zone. Israel's taking Greece and the Greek Cypriots to its side in this competition played an important role in Turkey's encirclement from the south. However, aside from the fact that Greece and the Greek Cypriots are completely humiliated in the world morally and ethically and are on the same front as war criminal Israel, it is noteworthy that Israel has put both states into the position of voluntary proxies to suppress Turkey. In addition to Israel's open hostility towards Turkey, the US Congress's declaration that it is on the side of the Greece, Israel, and GCA front with the Eastern Mediterranean Maritime Security Initiative; and France's signing of strategic defense cooperation agreements with both Greece and the GCA have been concrete indicators that Turkey is also encircled by NATO partners on the Blue Homeland and TRNC front. The declaration in the Israeli press that the establishment of a Kurdish state with an outlet to the sea from Latakia in the south of Turkey is a goal for Israel also gives an idea about the future of Turkey-Israel relations. It is self-evident that Turkey will find not only Tel Aviv but also the US against it in its competition relations with Israel. On the other hand, the second rupture was the expansion of the Russia-Ukraine war, which is entering its fourth year in our north, into Turkey's maritime and land territory in the Black Sea through UAVs, and through SİHA/UAVs and USVs in maritime jurisdiction areas. NATO's anti-Russian hawkish wing is not pleased with Turkey's full implementation of the Montreux regime; its non-participation in sanctions against Russia, and its active neutrality. The EU wants to see Turkey on the active anti-Russian front at a time when the US has abandoned European security. For this reason, there is a front in Turkey that does not refrain from using pressure, manipulation, and false flag operations to increase anti-Russian sentiment. When this front is evaluated together with the southern front, it is desired that Turkey both protect the interests of the collective West and give up its own geopolitical goals during the transition to the new world order, and furthermore, surrender to Western interests in the Blue Homeland, TRNC, Syria, and Southeastern Anatolia. The third rupture was experienced with the opening process initiated with the slogan of a "Terror-Free Turkey." This process damaged internal unity and solidarity, ignored the sensitivities of martyr and veteran families, and created negative results in a conjuncture where the public needs unity and solidarity the most. Whereas Turkey had made the fact that the state had achieved final victory in the fight against terrorism after 2015 accepted by the public and had created the impression that it would continue to fight against the PKK and its extensions in Syria. Outside of this perspective, the new political atmosphere created within the country could not gain public support. Despite all these negatives, as the world order dissolves as of 2025, Turkey, which has become self-sufficient especially in the defense industry—that is, which has brought blood and iron together—is not a secondary actor that can be blindly tied to the collapsing Western hegemony. The path ahead of Turkey is not a matter of choosing a side; it is a matter of establishing balance, opening space, and re-fortifying state wisdom. Turkey's greatest strength is not a revolutionary weapon system; it is the freedom of movement offered to it by its unique geography. Whether it is bloc formation with the West through NATO and the EU or with Asian powers, it squeezes Turkey into a single line, narrows its maneuverability, and reduces it to a reactive actor in equations set by others. Turkey does not need new blocs; it needs a multi-layered, sensitive, rational, and sea-centered balance policy. Because Turkey's geography offers extraordinary opportunities not for "choosing sides," but for establishing balance. For this reason, reading the relations Turkey has established with China, Iran, and Russia or other actors as a "new bloc" is reading the issue backwards. In this framework, balance politics, geopolitics reading based on naval power, strategic autonomy, and Kemalist state wisdom emerge not as ideological preferences, but as essential parameters imposed by Turkey's geography, history, and geopolitical necessities. It should not be forgotten that Atatürk also created security belts in the east and west under Turkey's leadership with the Balkan Entente and the Saadabad Pact, initiated strategic relations with the Soviet Union without entering a specific pact or bloc with a letter to Lenin dated April 26, 1920, and with the ammunition support of the Soviets, he both broke the Caucasus barrier and drove the Greeks into the sea within 3 years. On the other hand, Turkey has weakened to the extent that it has drifted between great power blocs throughout history; and it has gained power in periods when it could establish balance, put the sea at the center, and keep state institutions out of politics. The Kemalist vision centered on the Blue Homeland, that is, maritime geopolitics, should not be just a military defense doctrine, but on the contrary, a holistic state project that could make Turkey a founding geoeconomic and geopolitical actor in a vast geography extending from the Black Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, from the Aegean to the Red Sea and Libya connections. Naval power is one of the rare strategic tools that simultaneously expands energy security, trade routes, logistics networks, and diplomatic maneuver space. For Turkey, the sea is not a border, but an area of potential opportunities. However, the biggest obstacle in front of this potential is not outside, but inside. The mandate mentality, strategic blindness, and religious-ethnic polarization inside are consuming the greatest geopolitical capital Turkey has. The illusion that one will be "safe" by attaching to global power centers is a thesis that has been refuted many times historically. Likewise, fragmenting state wisdom through identity and religious politics leaves Turkey defenseless in the harsh competition environment of the multipolar world. The state must be the tool of the interests of the nation and geography, not ideological camps. Turkey should not be in a search for direction, but in a process of return. This return is not nostalgic, but historical and geopolitical. Turkey must return to the place where Mustafa Kemal Atatürk stood, that is, to the ground of independence, balance politics, sea-centered strategy, and national, secular state wisdom with historical necessity. This is not a matter of political preference. This is the minimum condition for survival in an era where the world is hardening again, law is suspended, and power balances speak nakedly. To the extent that Turkey follows this line, it can be a game-maker; to the extent that it deviates from this line, it is doomed to be a bit player in others' games. History is extremely ruthless in this regard. The message that Turkey, squeezed from the north and south, must give should be: "Turkey is not alone, it cannot be squeezed into a single line; as the pressure applied to Turkey increases, the balance areas do not narrow, on the contrary, they expand." This is the scenario that the encirclement paradigm avoids. This architecture is based on the assumption that Turkey can be isolated, cannot make decisions, and will eventually back down. The moment Turkey shows that it can develop alternative partnerships and expand the crisis geography with the opportunities and possibilities offered by its geography and history, this assumption collapses. The move here is not a "search for compromise" or a "maneuver to gain time," but on the contrary, a harsh counter-move against encirclement mechanisms aimed at imprisoning Turkey in a specific geography and controlling its behavior. The goal is not to meet the pressure symmetrically, but to increase the cost of the encirclement, spread its scope, and erode the control capacity of the other side. The message "Iran's security is our security" given by Ankara to Iran after the insolent statement made by Netanyahu by taking the Greek and Greek Cypriot leaders with him after December 22, 2025, is not a language of compromise in this respect; it is a declaration of will that breaks the assumptions that make the encirclement possible. This is a rejection of the assumption that Israel can handle the Iranian front in a "controllable" way while squeezing Turkey in the Eastern Mediterranean. Turkey is targeting the logic of the encirclement strategy not with the language of threat, but by showing that it can expand the crisis geography and spread the cost. In this framework, those who criticized my words "If Iran falls, Turkey falls," which I stated after the surprise Israeli attack on Iran on June 13, 2025, have surely now understood the seriousness of the situation and have been able to realize that the state is acting correctly with its reflex to protect itself. In the future, the message to be given to Israel must be extremely clear. The pressure architecture established through Greece, Israel's voluntary vassal, makes not Turkey, but Greece fragile. For Israel, Greece is not a partner in destiny. It is a conjunctural, functional, and expendable tool when necessary. Turkey's task is to cool-headedly neutralize the encirclement from the north and south at the same time. This can only be achieved with military and strategic determination. Instead of being an overly enthusiastic member of NATO in the north, the Hungarian attitude can be taken as an example. In the south and west, the process can be controlled by giving the message "we will not retreat" from our areas of interest, rather than "we will fight." In this context, re-establishing unity, solidarity, and trust in the state at home, in every field from law to economy, from the fight against corruption to the fight against lawlessness; and avoiding Neo-Ottomanism rhetoric in every field should be taken as the basis. The moment Turkey shows this determination with continuity, the encirclement strategy collapses not militarily, but mentally. Because this strategy does not wait to fight, but waits for the other side to get tired. Turkey must show that it is not tired and will not get tired.

As a result, the truth that 2025 has taught is this: The world entered multipolarity not with a "soft landing," but by hardening. In this era, Turkey's survival is possible not by leaning on a bloc, but by being able to establish balance, with geopolitical wisdom that puts the sea at the center, and by being able to place state wisdom above ideologies. Turkey's route is, as Mustafa Kemal drew, full independence, balance politics, and sea-centered strategic autonomy. If this is protected, Turkey can make the game; if it is abandoned, Turkey becomes a bit player in others' games.

With these feelings and thoughts, I celebrate the new year of all my readers and followers.

(The great-grandson of the late Hamit Naci, who founded the High Maritime School in 1909; the grandson of the late Major Lütfi Müfit Özdeş, a classmate and comrade-in-arms of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk; the son of the late Admiral Rıfat Özdeş, one of the former submarine fleet commanders and a Senator; a retired Ambassador to Tripoli and Kabul; a 1967 graduate of Mülkiye; one of the former presidents of Mülkiyespor; the primary donor and founder of our Hamit Naci-Blue Homeland Foundation in 2021; the author of the comprehensive book titled "Notebook of a Foreign Diplomat"; my very precious elder, the distinguished personality of our Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Ret. Ambassador Ahmet Müfit Özdeş passed away to the mercy of God in the morning hours of December 23, 2025. We buried our late Ambassador to the Heybeliada cemetery on December 24, 2025, with a ceremony held first at the Heybeliada Mosque and then in front of our Hamit Naci Blue Homeland Foundation Building located at Lozan Zaferi Street No 55. I wish mercy to my dear elder, who has a head-held-high and highly reputable place in our foreign policy history, and I offer my condolences to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Mülkiye community and his loved ones in Heybeliada where he lived. May his route be heaven.)