A contribution to the book of diplomacy: the world is bigger than five

In these days of September every year, because of the UN Security Council, New York is like a kind of diplomacy fair or festival, where diplomatic traffic is at its busiest. The speech each country's leader gives at the UN General Assembly sets out that country's message, position and claim about the world. That is why all leaders prepare earnestly to express their country's vision here. Because after a point these messages have become routine, each of the speeches of so many leaders, one after another over a few days, has its own separate clientele or audience. This audience is largely also related to the world's current agenda or balance.

At the same time, since almost every country has a small or large diaspora in New York, it has become one of this festival's routines that each country's diaspora holds demonstrations around the UN's location in support of or in protest against their country. The protests by the diaspora of its own people against Iran have never been absent since the days of the revolution.

Owing to President Erdoğan's participation in this year's General Assembly meeting, Turks in the US did not fail, for four days, to hold demonstrations of support and affection around the hotel where Erdoğan stayed. The diplomatic traffic at the hotel, with his receiving the presidents of many countries and businesspeople, also displayed Turkey's increasingly central importance.

Since it was the first meeting after the July 15 coup attempt, President Erdoğan's first agenda item, both at the General Assembly and in all his contacts, was the coup attempt and the epic struggle for deliverance that the people of Turkey waged against this attempt

. Both in his General Assembly speech and in all subsequent speeches, Erdoğan insistently underlined that he is proud of his people and that this people is one that has earned and deserved democracy

in the world.

He frequently underlined that the leader of the terrorist organization that organized and set in motion this coup attempt is in the US, and thereby drew attention to the contradiction the US is displaying in the fight against terror. As if it were not enough for the Organization's Leader Fetullah Gülen to be staying in the US, the US government also earns an income of nearly 300 million dollars a year through schools contracted out to the organization affiliated with him.

That one meaning of this is "financing of terror" against Turkey emerges clearly from this picture.

President Erdoğan's speech

was a manifesto-like speech that criticized the structure of the UN radically and proposed restructuring it anew in a more just, more democratic and participatory manner.

He displayed an oppositional stance toward the UN system and, by inviting the world to be more just and democratic, repeated at the highest level the thesis that the world is bigger than 5.

The President expressed this thesis in his subsequent speeches and in his private contacts as well.

We can

say with ease that no one ignores, can ignore, the messages the President gives.

It is evident that it disturbs some, but even those who are disturbed cannot refrain from listening to these words. Because he speaks from where the truth lies and says what no one dares to say.

Thus Erdoğan, as the only leader to express the distortion of an order that a great majority of the world is uncomfortable with, regains and deserves every day anew the quality of being a world leader.

At the round-table meeting organized by one of the US's important businesspeople and Bloomberg CEO

Michael Bloomberg,

in his meeting with many senior US businesspeople and politicians, the answers he gave when asked about these statements also revealed meaningfully his insistence on this subject and his self-confidence in his theses. At this meeting, the legendary former Secretary of State

Henry Kissinger,

for example, asked Erdoğan what he thought about his making

his statements about "the world being bigger than 5" a subject of diplomacy,

and Erdoğan reminded him of his famous book Diplomacy and explained his reasons again on this matter by saying, "It was quite a thick book, but at the time you wrote that book there was no one criticizing the UN and its structure in this way. I'm sure that if there had been someone who said such a thing then, you would have had to add another important chapter to that book."

At the same meeting

Blackstone President Hamilton E. Jones,

interestingly pointing also to these statements, said,

"Looking at the fragmentation and the representation problem of the Islamic World, you are at present in effect representing the voice the Islamic world needs."

THE ISSUE OF THE CENTRAL BANK'S INDEPENDENCE

When the large investor

Jean Paul Rammitt

also said that he was aware of Erdoğan's attitudes toward the Central Bank (CB), and that he found it difficult to reconcile Turkey's being such a well-developing economy with Erdoğan's interventions in the CB, which should be independent,

Erdoğan was destined to give him, in the literal sense of the word, a lesson in economics and real life.

Erdoğan asked what the maximum interest rate that could be considered reasonable in a normal economy, for example in the US, and that would not block investment, might be, and insistently asked the participants for the answer. When most settled on 3 percent, he posed the question: "Just imagine that the interest rate with us is 15 percent; can there be investment, stability, development in such a country?"

Truly this answer alone was convincing enough, but he also made a statement, again by way of a lesson, regarding the politician's role in the CB's independence: "Because of the problems caused by monetary policies, the people hold the politician, not the CB governor, responsible and demand an account from him.

Of course we cannot say, in the face of an interest policy that destroys the investment climate and drives the investor to despair, 'what has it to do with us, this is the CB's business'

. The politician's job is to open life up in every field in the direction the people want, to make their work easier and to contribute to development. Besides, I don't think the CB is any more independent with you than with us."