Gefira #19 The big reconfiguration

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After the decline of the Soviet Union, the United States became the sole world power. This American hegemony has translated into the global dominance of Western values such as free markets and the rule of law and democracy, which create prosperity and wealth. Now that the United States is in decline, many Western analysts believe that there will be real power sharing between the powers that be – Russia, China and Europe – based on the same universal values. Without Washington’s interference, it is time for genuine democracy within the framework of which countries will implement the universal human rights as defined by the Helsinki Committee. Alas, they have all overlooked the fact that these values are Western values and are claimed to be universal by… Westerners. The fact is that Western populations are in decline, and so their global influence is waning. The rest of the world will not adapt to utopian ideas, but it will return to a situation before the Europeans began to dominate the globe. To understand the future, one has to know history. China, Africa, Central Asia and the Middle East will resemble more and more what they were in 1900.

Turkey, the new Ottomans

Turkey sees itself as an independent nation that does not need to bow to the East or the West. The modern Turks are the spiritual descendants of the Ottoman dynasty, and not of Kemal Atatürk. Unlike Western leaders, Erdoğan is less obsessed with economic growth and more concerned with the re-establishment of Turks as the leaders of the Islamic World. Turkey recently registered a double-digit economic growth of 11%. However, we do not believe something so incredible may have happened.

For decades the Europeans have been trying to enforce their “universal” values on the Turks, telling them how to behave civilly, establish democracy, open up their markets, accept Israel in its present borders, recognise Armenian Genocide and withdraw from Cyprus. A strategy Brussels is now repeating in its dealings with the Eastern European countries, Poland and Hungary. It is not because it is the political wish of Angela Merkel that these countries have to accept mass-migration, but it is because these are “universal” principles.