They want to change Turkey's address, but...

Where can we start? Perhaps with this question: Could Washington be the first and most important external center for Turkey in the outside world? If so, why? If not, why not?

If we look at it as a center for military, and consequently political and financial, authorization, then yes, the US is still Ankara's big boss. It could be.

But are relations between the two capitals established directly?

In other words, is Ankara obliged to fulfill whatever the US wants immediately? Does it fulfill it? Or is there an “intermediary authority”?

There is a stopover here. We could also call it an “intermediate stop.”

A HALF-CENTURY-OLD REALITY: THE TRUE “RABITA”

The “established order” in Turkey has followed a different line since the 1970s. Bülent Ecevit, for instance, gave a signal when he first came to power by “breaking” the opium ban. While in opposition, for example in 1975, he had visits to Helmut Schmidt’s Germany. But he gave the real signals when he came to power in 1978 and made his first official visit to the West as prime minister to Bonn: The Bonn Republic was now Turkey’s first and most important connection center in the outside world.

Connection?

This “connection” was much more important than the one Uğur Mumcu described: The effectiveness of Mumcu’s findings was fueled not by the petrodollars accumulated by Arab sheikhs and their master, Washington, but by the influence of Bonn, which was growing deeply in Turkey as a geoeconomic power. The real vitamin, let’s say: This real and significant connection was finalized in the 70s. Then it was deepened through two coups in 1980 and 2002. Germany, which grew first economically and then in terms of population and geography, was the confirmation center for every development and every reactionary coup in Turkey (the first being the generals of September 12, 1980, and as a natural consequence, the subsequent AKP of 2002). These coups were approved in one way or another.

Why, you ask?

Since the early 1990s, the author of these lines has written, perhaps in a very limited circle but especially in the left-wing media, that Turkey’s real—direct—boss, even if it doesn’t appear so, is Great Germany, or to use a more fitting expression, European Germany. (You can find the summary in my book “12 Eylül – Bir Alman Pastası” [September 12 – A German Cake], published by Yazılama Publishing in 2018.) However, this boss was a vassal of a world-leading great boss and was happy with this label: The US covered its military expenditures, and it bought cheap energy from Russia.

With Donald Trump, we are witnessing that some things are changing.

IF EVERYTHING CHANGES, DOES NOTHING CHANGE?

With Trump, we see that those who “try to change everything so that nothing changes” are trying to dominate the world. It must be said that a picture of “great powers” has emerged that contradicts each other and is ready to tear each other apart.

To be clearer: The first clear indicators/signs of the line we mentioned above existed half a century ago, and our teacher Yalçın Küçük, whose books are being published again with the care they deserve these days, had realized something even then as a political analyst. We are in the 1970s, and the economy is pushing Turkey under Germany’s mandate. This also meant a political shadow. A growing shadow... Turkey had been left to the mandate of Federal Germany, and I suppose everyone knows this by now. George S. Harris, whom our teacher Yalçın identified very early on, wrote in his book “Troubled Alliance” that this process had been working since the 60s. As is known, Harris was a CIA expert.

We listed all this for this reason: The phone that Turkey calls first to speak with the outside world and to seek permission within the world system is, contrary to what is thought, not in Washington and hasn't been for a long time. Ankara will certainly take cues from there, but the real “decision-making authority” is likely in the middle of Europe.

Let’s write it more clearly. All the movements that came to power in Turkey and destroyed the republican regime, those who (in the words of Orhan Gökdemir) “killed the republic but could never bury it,” were raised in the nurseries of this “geoeconomic power” in the middle of Europe.

THERE IS REACTIONISM, BUT THERE IS ALSO PROGRESSIVISM

Let’s start from here. But by reminding ourselves of something else, an “antidote” that we can also call an intellectual. Because if we don’t add that, we will fall to the level of the reactionary and ignorant educated people in the market.

Take the map in front of you. The Eurasia map. On the right side, there is a Russian-speaking population of at least 150 million. Then look to its left, towards Central Europe. There, you will see another language and culture circle of 120 million: Germany and German.

So, between these two poles, which geography, history, and language exist in dimensions that can compete with them? Turkey! Indeed, Republican Turkish can make direct and fast contact with a mass of 120 million.

Good.

Good and this: There is another common side in these three cultural circles, an emancipatory fabric: The intellectual.

Three intellectual profiles that can demolish the borders drawn by the world system and world reactionism. Russia tore up and threw away all the straitjackets tailored for it in 1917. Drawing strength from that, Turkish and Turkey were able to shatter all the calculations made about them in 1923. Germany? There, too, a small country changed the history of Europe with its existence after 1949 and its absence after 1989. No one wanted it, but they did it!

They are three great intellectual circles.

Let’s think about the straitjackets that current developments and the established order are trying to force upon us, taking these three intellectual reservoirs/treasures as the center...

We are now in a world determined to change Turkey’s address. They can try. But we also have the character to tear up and throw away all the straitjackets. We have the experience of rebuilding.

We will talk about these. Here...