Erdogan Mouthpiece in Turkey: ‘The West May Become the East and the East May Become the West’

Ibrahim Karagul, the editor of Yeni Safak, the Turkish newspaper that is the mouthpiece of the AKP, President Erdogan’s party, in March 2020 wrote a column about all the fantastic changes that he thought our giddy globe would soon undergo. East would become West, and West become East, and the powerful become powerless, and the powerless become powerful, and so on and so idiotically forth. He never tells us what exactly he has in mind, so we can only offer wild surmises. My surmise is that he is an idiot, signifying nothing. But it also seems clear that he reflected the current thinking of the Turkish regime. See if you agree with me.

It seems that everything produced and imposed to the world by the West in the form of a global discourse and order is coming to an end. The West has already lost its ‘central’ power. The standards of value may change radically. Crazy ideologies may emerge. The notion of power could be redefined. West’s financial system, political system, security theories collapsed. New political orders will be established. New superpowers will emerge. The West’s financial system is collapsing. Its political system and discourse are collapsing. Its security theories are collapsing. Its social theories are collapsing. Humanity no longer has any expectation of them.

Centuries-old history has ended. History has turned over a new leaf. A new world is being established. As a matter of fact, this is nothing like the post-world war periods. It looks like a much more solid, much more radical change.

How has the West “already lost its ‘central’ power”? Again, what in god’s name does this mean?

“Crazy ideologies may emerge” – yes, there is one that comes swimmingly to mind, one that appeared 1,400 years ago, and is still going strong. But I don’t think Karagul had that one in mind. What “standards of value may change radically? If only he would give us a solitary example of those “standards of value.” It’s impossible to make out what he means – if, indeed, he means anything.

He claims that the “West’s financial system, political system, security theories [have] collapsed.” He wrote this column just after there had been, in early March, a dramatic fall in stock markets around the world, attributable to panic over the effects of the coronavirus. And there were predictions of economic disaster. But then, over the course of two weeks, the stock market recovered much of the ground it had lost. Would Karagul still claim that “the West’s financial system [had] collapsed”?

New political orders will be established. New economic models will be developed. New lines of businesses, new consumption habits will begin. New political movements, new live models will develop. New superpowers will emerge. New discourses and models will develop with respect to the management of resources, markets and masses…”

Word-besotted Mr. Karagul continues with his hollow vaporings.There is nothing to accept or reject because no one can possibly extract a meaning from these remarks. If there is going to be something “new,” it will come from such places where the technological advances are being made. And those are in the United States, in Silicon Valley and Route 128, and in Israel, the Start-up Nation, and in the advanced states of Western Europe. But nothing “new” of value has come from such Muslim nations as Turkey. For Islam discourages the habit of questioning, of skepticism that undergirds the enterprise of science; it instead encourages submission to authority, above all to religious authority. What “new economic models” or “new political orders” will be established in the future? Is present-day Turkey perhaps what this loyal lapdog of Erdogan has in mind? But there’s nothing “new” about Turkey under Erdogan. It’s a standard-issue authoritarian regime, akin to what Mussolini had in Italy, or Admiral Horthy in Hungary.

After geographical discoveries, this is the first time, ever since the start of colonialism that the world is undergoing such a power shift, power void, power consumption. Countries may change places. Nations may change places. Massive population movements are likely. Countries with weak power domains, weak state coordination may collapse.

What “power shift, power void, power consumption” are those? Can he describe any of them? Couldn’t he have given his readers just a tiny hint of what he mean by a “power shift”? A “power void”? “Power consumption”? How is the ludicrous statement “nations may change places” different from the equally ludicrous “countries may change places”? And what does it mean to “change places”? Does it mean the last shall be first? Is Turkey now among the last, since he predicts that it will in the future be among the first (“a superpower”)?

The West may become the East and the East may become the West. The North may transform into the South and the South into the North. The nations controlling the world may collapse while new ones may take to the stage. The perceptions of state and homeland may change. Political language and forms of political organization may change.”

Here is the editor of one of Turkey’s leading newspapers. He must, at some point, have impressed someone. Or more likely, he was chosen for his job because of his blind loyalty to Erdogan. To judge by the evidence of this column, he is quite remarkable in his ability to compose paragraph after paragraph of utter nonsense. As in the paragraph just above: “The West may become the East and the East may become the West.” What is the East? Is it China? India? The Muslim world? Africa? All or some or none of the above? Is the West America and Europe? How is it, exactly, once we’ve been set straight – and we’re all ears, Ibrahim Karagul – as to which is East and which is West, that they will change places? What would “changing places” mean? Would the rich and powerful countries become poor and weak? How will this happen? There is no way to make sense of the senseless.

When I began to read Karagul’s column, I assumed that there would at some point be a morsel of meaning in it that would eventually become apparent. But there never was. There is no there there. Nothing will come of this nothing. No deposit, no return. The words, phrases, paragraphs full of nonsense flow into each other, each paragraph emptier than the one before, but Ibrahim Karagul is convinced he has said something of great moment. No sane person could possibly agree, with the exception of — if they are to be counted sane — the supporters of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

It’s a piece of perfect idiocy.