Will Israel be tried in Istanbul?

The opening panel of the Gaziantep Forum titled "Where Is the Islamic World Heading?" was seeking an answer to the question "Has the Global System Lost Its Legitimacy?" After Gaza, the legitimacy of the global system has become far more open to debate. However, squeezing what we have experienced and the crisis of the global system into the context of legitimacy may not be all that appropriate. Legitimacy has to do not with the use of force by power but with acceptance.

"HAS THE GLOBAL SYSTEM LOST ITS LEGITIMACY?"

Truly, while we debate legitimacy in this way, indeed while we so easily declare that the legitimacy of the global system is over, the realities we are living through say that the powers said to have utterly exhausted their legitimacy still enjoy great prestige. Are we missing something? Are we seeking or claiming legitimacy in the wrong place?

Taking a more practical path, it may be more correct to think about the nature, the foundations and the variability of legitimacy through a few scenes. Our first scene is the vicissitudes in Syria of the Assads, father and son, with their bandit rule that for 60 years made their people spit blood.

All the conditions had in fact been met for a state to lose its legitimacy at home and abroad. At home, the regime had massacred more than 1 million people, displaced 15 million of its people, and turned its prisons into centers of inhuman treatment, and it was at the same time a mafia order exporting to the whole world the narcotic poison produced in its own country. Yet it was still Assad who retained the legitimacy to speak on behalf of Syria at the UN until his last day. Indeed, when the staying power in office of Assad, who over 14 years had become at every stage the accursed of the world, appeared proven, everyone from the Arab League to the Organization of Islamic Cooperation and many European countries entered a race to re-establish relations.

Assad was re-establishing his legitimacy not by changing his immoral, extra-legal stances and practices but, on the contrary, merely by showing that he had not fallen. No one expected his collapse on December 8. When this collapse became inevitable, the most illegitimate face and dimensions that history has recorded were suddenly laid bare. In his place, HTS, which waged the people's struggle against the criminal against humanity Assad, and its leader Ahmed al-Sharaa, were removed from the "terrorist organization" list by the US and the international community and turned into the leader of a country, within a few days. What is it here that provides legitimacy for Assad, or removes it afterwards? What is it that re-establishes the legitimacy that Sharaa did not have?

The second scene is from Afghanistan. While fighting the world's most legitimate power, the power that distributes legitimacy, the US and all its allies, the Taliban was an organization without any legitimacy, a terrorist one. After fighting for 20 years against legitimate forces with methods deemed illegitimate, it drove the US and its allies out of the country and was recognized as a de facto power. Today, even if they are not officially recognized, everyone knows that the only legitimate power of Afghanistan is now them.

The way Turkey ended, by supporting Azerbaijan, the occupation of Karabakh that had been left to drag on for 30 years by the legitimate institutions of the global order, the UN and the Minsk Group. The intervention it undertook to end the continuing chaos in Libya, and so on.

In addition to all this, our last scene is the situation of the European leaders (Britain, France, Germany, Italy, etc.) and Arab leaders circling around Trump in Sharm el-Sheikh. How far can we say, looking at these photographs, that the legitimacy of US hegemony, represented today by Trumpism's sloppiness, has been exhausted? Without doubt this is a subject that requires far more complex debates and analyses.

GAZA TRIBUNAL

That Israel, against which the International Criminal Court has issued rulings over genocide and crimes against humanity, is still today accepted by the US as a legitimate state is a de facto situation. If there were an order consistent with its claims, a state called Israel should not exist today; perhaps the very same Holocaust penalty imposed on Germany, or even more, would have been imposed on Israel.

The global order, which has no rational, legal or conscientious consistency left, nevertheless sustains legitimacy by virtue of its de facto power. But this should not prevent it from being tried before law, conscience and justice. That this trial should be held in Istanbul would be extremely fitting to the nature, the history and the spirit of the matter.

In exactly this spirit, international jurists, human rights organizations and media platforms organized the Gaza Tribunal in Istanbul as a global and independent initiative to investigate the war crimes committed by the murderous Israel in Gaza. The tribunal, which has met in many countries over quite a long time, presented evidence reports on these crimes in its final session held at Istanbul University.

The "Gaza Tribunal" held in Istanbul recorded, with their evidence, at least 250 different crimes of genocide committed by Israel in Gaza over 4 days, the relevant witnesses were heard, experts' opinions were consulted, and in the end all of Israel's crimes against humanity were laid out in all their details.

Representatives of the "Witness Eye" platform, established by journalists to digitally archive the testimonies of those living in the conflict zone, stressed the importance of preserving these records and presented the records they had kept to the tribunal.

The representative of Human Rights and MAZLUMDER, stressing the importance of recording what has happened through testimony, remarked: "We watched everything on television. But you are merely entering it into history. We, on the other hand, are eyewitnesses."

The International Association of Jurists presented to the Gaza Tribunal 13 detailed reports, compiled over more than 700 days, on the crimes said to have been committed in Gaza against civilians, journalists and institutions.

ISRAEL, THE ORGAN MAFIA

Among the most striking subjects within the evidence and statements presented to the tribunal is that the bodies of Palestinians whom Israel had detained alive, and later handed over lifeless, had had all of their internal organs removed. Everyone knows that Israel is not a state, but its organ-mafia character should be exposed on this occasion.

A second matter is that Israel has rendered Gaza's agricultural lands unplantable and, by filling water wells with earth, has deepened the genocide by condemning the people to long-term hunger and thirst. These are only two of the 250 types of crime, evidenced and recorded.

The "Gaza Tribunal," established as an independent initiative, a tribunal of humanity and conscience, held its first international meeting in London, the capital of England, after a long preparatory process.

On the presidential panel of the project, led by Falk, former UN Special Rapporteur on Palestine, there are, alongside names such as Michael Lynk and Hilal Elver, also former UN special rapporteurs, Raji Sourani, Susan Akram, Ahmet Köroğlu, Diana Buttu, Cemil Aydın and Penny Green.

Among the "tribunal members," one of the important components of the tribunal, are many well-known names from different regions of the world.

Among them are Ilan Pappe, Jeff Halper, Ussama Makdisi, Ayhan Çitil, Cornel West, Avi Shlaim, Naomi Klein, Aslı Bali, Mahmood Mamdani, Craig Mokhiber, Hatem Bazian, Mehmet Karlı, Sami Al Arian, Frank Barat, Hassan Jabareen, Willy Mutunga, Victor Kattan and Victoria Brittain.

While the hearings of the Gaza Tribunal continued, events such as very fine talks, conferences, music recitals and art exhibitions also enlivened the occasion. A superb organization, a clever and highly meaningful event; everyone who contributed deserves great congratulations and thanks.