1178) Hypocritical West & its pretext of terror

The Western logic that stemmed from imperialism, which puts no value on human life or values, has in some way succeeded in exploiting an inordinate number of communities since the beginning of the 20th century. Although conveniently based on Christianity, it brings up the importance of the respect for human life and human rights at every opportunity and even arrogantly ventures to judge other religions on the basis of its supposed humanitarian stance, it hypocritically continues its systematic exploitative approach. This approach is the ultimate source of its wealth, because these imperialist and exploitative powers of the West constructed their past on Christian-mercantilist thinking and have to construct their futures on this “principle” as well. . . .

Hardly caring for human life, it is clear that the West has begun to cause bloodshed, hatred and war on Earth for the sake of economic benefits, just as Portugal and Spain, the former soldiers of Christianity, once plundered the continent of America and killed hundreds of thousands of Indians for gold. It is clear that the futures of the United States, with a population of 298 million, and the EU with 480 million people, are dependent on this egoistical understanding of abuse, due to the fact that their material resources are on the verge of exhaustion and their populations have been aged and declined. On this account, as their last resort and a respectively rationalistic approach, they are seeking new models of imperialism. Within this context, their new strategies will be grounded in maintaining the exploitative order by creating small states that are easy to be dominated and controlled. The map drawn by the Col. Ralph Peters -- seen as a member of the brain team of the neocons in the United States -- and published in America's Armed Forces Journal, proves that regional powers are no longer favored. According to the West, countries such as Turkey, Pakistan and Iran are too big and too powerful. They may very well stand in the way of its “new imperialist” scheme. Though lacking considerable natural resources, especially in terms of energy, a modern and secular Turkey with an orderly, rationalist and nationalist government is a threat to the West's existence in the Central Asian Turkic Republics and the Caucasus and an obstacle to the Western imperialist strategies.

Again, despite all sorts of hindrances from the United States, Pakistan -- which unexpectedly became a nuclear power and in turn retained its future independence and unitary integrity -- is an eminent country today. Yet the extent of its power is not fit for Western designs concerning South Asia. The West will attempt to ruin the Iranian regime -- which is struggling both to survive and to live up to its imperialist ambitions -- if it cannot control it, particularly its huge oil and natural gas resources.

This expedient, hypocritical and opportunist new imperialistic logic is being applied in the disguise of “globalization,” which is a catchword abundantly used by the West to seek ways to reach its ambitions. While being expressed as underpinning the enhancement of universal transparency, cooperation and accessibility, globalization is in effect a means of pure injustice and insincerity for the Western world -- the United States in particular. The Western world, which passively observed the massacres, grievances and all manner of suffering in Africa, the Middle East and the former Yugoslavia, assumes that to occupy and divide a state arbitrarily, or to diminish a country's sovereignty is its inherited right. New imperialism under the pretense of globalization is a very useful expression and practice for the powerful and commanding one. Developing countries, which obviously suffer from globalization, have to withstand the issue. First of all, as a starting point of such resistance against the pitfalls of globalization, they have to act collectively for the sake of their own sovereignties. Because the new imperialist spirit embedded in globalization can not enjoy influence over big incorporated entities, it rather aims to control smaller states and divide the bigger ones similar to how the giant monopolies in the past treated the banana republics of South America. For the time being, the champion of this new universal imperialism seems to be the United States.

However, the West, which makes good use of the terms “humanity,” “democracy” and “just world order” and of Christian values through nongovernmental organizations in many places at every opportunity, insists on maintaining its brutal and insincere attitude towards world events. If the West gave importance to humanity and democracy for real, it wouldn't have needed to acquire nuclear power that could destroy the entire world. Moreover, it wouldn't have needed to establish a military power with a savagery potential of hundreds of millions of dollars. Today, the annual defense budget of the United States is close to $450 billion, of which it spends $200 billion on its military operations in Iraq alone. Therefore, as members of humanity it is our right to enquire after the reasons why the United States doesn't care for endangered lives around world that could be saved by only a 10th of that money.

Unfortunately, the Western world exerts intensive efforts for domination and expansion of its own capital rather than for the happiness of humanity. The timing of the recent comments by the Papacy that degraded Islam and offended Muslims is not insignificant. It is a by-product of a certain strategy.

According to this strategy, humanitarian concerns that still wear well in some parts of Western society should first be diminished by increasing tension between incompatible cultures and religions. Then they should be brought up to a point where they will no longer be in the position to oppose the “new imperialistic approach of Western society -- in other words the so-called globalization.

Nowadays, the main target in this “clash of civilizations” is the Islamic countries. The causes of the gradually intensifying and terrifying fact of Islamophobia should be explicated and tackled together for the sake of these states. The fact that most of the world's oil and natural resources belong to them requires an urgent solution for all the problematic implications of Islamophobia. Thanks to the global access to worldwide sources of communication, the peoples of the Islamic countries have started to name their exploiters and better perceive the politics of oligarchic order, which itself is an instrument of the exploiters. The uprisings in some of these countries are led by fundamental Islamist groups, which are in fact the strongest institutions there. The exploitative, insincere and Machiavellian approach of the West, through which the religious institutions were prompted and essentially used against communism by U.S. intelligence itself, has been unveiled by those Islamist groups. As a boomerang, it is now being used against the Western world, predominantly against the United States.


Hypocritical West's pretext of terror

Aiming at expanding in the name of more and more prosperity and meanwhile defying all established ethical rules, this attitude of the West is encountering opponents in the Muslim world every day. The peoples of Muslim countries have started to realize that the monarchies and oligarchies governing them are manipulated by the “Wild West” and thus are reacting against this world order more violently. Such reaction should be read as a response of the exploited and suffering against the hypocritical West. This is what the West will harvest after years of abuse. Hardly surprising, the Western world, the United States in particular, is fully aware of this new situation and about to establish new strategies. The West never ceases to try new strategies on countries rich in natural resources or on countries such as Pakistan and Turkey, which lack this sort of wealth but possess the potential to emerge as regional powers and hinder Western designs. The classic method is to bring indulgent docile governments into power. Such governments can be controlled and, if not, can be dissolved either by invasion or humiliation. This style of U.S. foreign policy has been proven effective in recent years not only in militaristic actions but also in economics, finance, media and press. The latest example of this attitude was the American threat to invade Pakistan. In return, a right and just response was given by the president of Pakistan, Pervez Musharraf, to the United States. If the small states still hope for the help of international institutions, they should bear in mind that the international organizations such as the United Nations and NATO are among the greatest supporters of the new imperialistic schemes of the West.

Struggle for existence against the hypocritical West:

In recent years, while the preferred way of the Western world to reach sources of energy has seemed to antagonize Muslims, it is interesting that domestic upheavals in Muslim countries has tended to increase. Especially the United States, through a hostile discourse against Muslims that it has created itself, aims to convince the public to extend their support to the military operations against Muslim countries. The same mentality is apparent in Europe too, as the EU states use the immigrants mostly coming from Muslim countries as instruments to guarantee an electoral victory.

Unfortunately, the hostile attitude towards Muslims has grown into a conscious state policy in both the United States and the EU. The recent statements by Joseph Ratzinger, now Pope Benedict XVI, imply the existence of such a strategy, through which, we think, the West is being called to revive the spirit of the Crusades. Ratzinger, who certainly advocates the absolute abandonment of any form of religious violence but at the same time who has dared to defame Islam and its great leader, the Prophet Muhammad, has thus generously offered his support to the misconception permeating Western minds suggesting that all Muslims are either active or potential “suicide bombers.” However, contrary to the efforts of Western strategists to implant the term “Islamofacism” in the global political vocabulary, Muslim countries, Turkey, Pakistan and Iran in particular, have the capacity and means to resist against this attempt at defining by clichés. In the past, millions of indigenous natives in South America and Africa weren't Christianized by the power of discourse. In the colonization episode of their history, the Christians of the West pursued the most shameful practices of slavery. The ideological justifications of the Crusades are known to all of us. It wasn't the Muslims who dropped the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Furthermore, it isn't the Muslims who have attacked Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza and Lebanon with missiles. All these incidents are the outcomes of the selfish and brutal policies of the Western world, and humanity will not forgive them. Today, the views of Benedict XVI and some opportunist politicians who exercise influence in the Western world stem from a medieval state of mind.

As an extension of such a mentality, the support of our so-called allies for the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK) has cost Turkey thousands of precious lives. The terrorist organization made no distinction among the infants, women, civilians and public officials who were in southeastern Anatolia simply to offer public service. The Turkish nation is aware of the role played by the West in this tragedy. However, the details should also be known as they will most realistically tell the coldest truth. The West's military, financial and political support for separatist organizations should be known. In our war of independence, we lost 1,588 people at İnönü, 3,280 at Sakarya, and 2,542 at the Great Offensive (Büyük Taarruz). Nevertheless, the toll of PKK terror encouraged by our own neighbors and the Western states is the heaviest in our history. We have lost 3,664 soldiers, 1,177 village guards, 199 policemen, which makes a total of 5,040 people. Also, 96 teachers and 4,466 civilians were killed. Again, at the same time, 11,037 soldiers and 5,474 civilians were seriously wounded; 305 mosques and post-office buildings, and 241 school buildings were destroyed; 1,124 pieces of heavy construction equpiment were burned; 54 antiaircraft guns, 760 Bixi machine guns, 151 howitzers, 1,559 rocket launchers, 46 grenade launchers, 11,000 mines and thousands of Kalashnikovs were captured. ( See: Erdal Sarızeybek, Terör, Kaçakçılık, Hudut ve Biz- Hesaplaşma, Ümit Pub., Ankara, September 2006.) Who might have given all of this equipment to the terrorists in the mountains, if it hadn't been the civilized and rich West? Who supports the associations, broadcast agencies and TV stations affiliated with the PKK; and who in Europe protects the Kurdish organizations extorting money by intimidation? From the book by Sarızeybek, it is possible to learn about the PKK's activities in Germany, France, England and the Netherlands, in the very words of the chief terrorist who is serving time at Imrali. I wonder whether the Western states and Pope Benedict XVI know any of this. Western civilization and values are only valid when there is profit to reap. Unfortunately, they seem to work only to protect the baby killers.

Again, if it isn't the United States, then who is allowing the PKK to exist in the north of Iraq? To whom does the terrorist organization owe its military assets consisting of more than 3,000 Kalashnikovs, 10,000 hand grenades, 242 rocket launchers and 13 antiaircrafts guns kept at the so-called Mahsun Korkmaz Military Academy and the so-called Haki Karer Ideological Education Center in the Kandil Mountains? Who trained all these terrorists? Isn't it them, the Western countries, who claim that the roots of their civilization lie in so-called Christian human values? If so, then, why do we still have to defend ourselves about the fight against some baby-killers? Who stood up for Abdullah Öcalan, who was found guilty on 6,036 charges of assault, 3,071 charges of bombing, 388 money/property usurpation charges, 1,046 charges of kidnapping and the murder of 4,412 citizens, 3,874 soldiers, 241 policemen and 1,255 village guards? At which country's embassy was this baby-killer captured? Aren't all these only a small part of a bigger plan put into force by the West, which seeks to divide countries for the sake of its economic interests and promote hostility among the peoples of the earth?

Exploiting West ferments inter-religious conflict:

Because of the fact that the clash of civilizations is nowadays being reconstructed to underpin a new ideology of Crusades, it is considered almost a crime to be a Muslim in Western countries. Antagonism and enmity towards Islam is now taught at schools. Intensifying such hostility can only serve the short-term interests of the West, which is too blind to see that full cooperation with the Muslim world would be in their advantage in the long run. Did not this antagonizing attitude, which seems fit only for short-term policies, lead to catastrophic outcomes over the long term in U.S. policy towards Afghanistan during the Soviet era? If this attitude continues, then from where will Western politicians, who are today carefully and deliberately indoctrinating their people with enmity toward Muslims, obtain the oil that is already hard to get?

At this point, it appears important to find an answer to the question, What should we, the developing Muslim countries -- especially the ones aiming at a regional power status like Turkey -- do? Especially and before anything else, the Turks should search for an answer to this question What should our republic, which has been facing multidimensional threats since its foundation, do?

If our country, which had been the sole power to pose a substantial threat to the West and, which, due to its potential to expand its area of influence is capable of emerging as a regional power, is left to its own devices by the West and gifted with the right sort of politicians, it could acquire the power to hinder the Western design of “new imperialism.” At this point, it is imperative to decide how to proceed within our dealings with the EU, which has left us waiting at the door for 43 years and captured the souls of some of our statesmen. We remember how some EU member states allowed terrorist organizations (the PKK in particular) to bloom in the Middle East and helped them generate financial gain. Today, one could come across a greater variety of terrorist organizations in those states than in the Middle East. And this EU harbors all sorts of fundamental Islamist and separatist terrorist organizations, especially those that aim at destroying Turkey.

Turkey, after having taken a counter stance to the EU, which increasingly targets Islam more and more, ought to plead its own case and show the EU's hypocrisy to the world on every possible occasion. It must show how the EU has supported terrorist organizations where its own interests are at stake and pursued policies based on religious enmity and harmed the humanitarian cause. Again, it must tell the entire world that setting the acknowledgement of the alleged Armenian massacre as a prerequisite to participate in the Nov. 22 elections in the Netherlands, which is also one of the Western countries constantly stressing the words “democracy,” “freedom of thought” and “human rights,” is an inconceivable anti-democratic application and incompatible with every value today known as Western. Following an incident in which a parliamentary candidate of Turkish origin was banned from the Democratic Labor Party's list on the grounds that he didn't recognize the massacre, the Christian Democrat Party also banned two candidates of Turkish origin from the election list. The Netherlands has thus exercised the most extreme application of the hypocritical double standard policy of the West.

Within this context, in the name of resisting double standards and injustice, Turkey, being one of the most developed Muslim countries, should remain in cooperation with other Muslim countries with secular tendencies and rational stances. Such cooperation could also be extended to non-Muslim countries, which are targeted by the new imperialism of the West. Thus, we can fulfill our duty towards humanity. We, the Turks, became the first to win a war of independence against imperialism and wrote a success story to be emulated by the oppressed countries of the world, as we managed to draw our borders with our own blood and rejected the future imposed on us by the imperialists. Today we see that it is possible to benefit from the inherent contradictions of Western ideology and the internal competition among the West itself. Surrounding us are countries such as Pakistan, Iran and even Russia that have more or less undergone a similar experience with the West. A need for cooperation among us and these other regional powers is obvious. Excluding the anti-secular countries, we believe that there is an urgent necessity for all countries of regional importance, especially the Central Asian republics, which will soon be the main target of the new imperialist order using the disguise of globalization.

Sunday, October 22, 2006
www.tdn.com.tr

A Külebi
*Acting president, National Security Strategies Research Center (TUSAM). akulebi@tusam.net