This chaos is the very order they are trying to protect

On the hundredth anniversary of the order established in the Middle East after the First World War, nearly all of these countries, their regimes, their borders and all the components that make them up, are in motion again. In fact, all of the upheavals we have been living through in recent years reflect a situation in which virtually all the actors of the First World War have been summoned back to a problem area they all share.

Undoubtedly a century has passed over that problem area, and the world is no longer the world of a century ago. The actors who carried out the partition a century ago and finished the job want to keep in their hands the initiative to have the final word today as well, but the world is no longer the old world, and both the sociology of the matter and the level of international relations have produced entirely new conditions.

First of all, the Middle East picture that was created a century ago by the partition whose draft form was given by Sykes-Picot was based on the division of Ottoman lands following the Ottoman defeat in the war. Today's Middle East is, in the end, the Ottoman Empire of a century ago. Over the defeated Ottoman state, whose pieces were shared out among themselves, perhaps the only thing on which the great powers of the day agreed was that it had been killed so that it would never return to the stage of history.

One reason for the unrest of some time now is probably that they feel the spirit of the Ottoman Empire, which they slaughtered together at that scene of murder. This spirit they feel unsettles them, because they have founded their present existence on the fortunes they gained from that murder. It unsettles them because these lands never calm down; the distorted orders they tried to create upon them confront them every day, claiming a share in the wealth they enjoy, descending like a ghost upon the comfort they live in, throwing in their faces the falseness and hypocrisy of their democracies, which they boast of as running like clockwork, and of their discourse based on human rights and freedoms. It disturbs them, because it instills in them the worry that all the comforts they have so painstakingly and elaborately built are not eternal either.

These days there is not a shred of consistency in Europe's policies, either toward Turkey or toward the Middle East in general. The European countries that display an epic stance against human rights and crimes against humanity through Hitler and the Nazis content themselves with exercising their right to remain silent in the face of crimes against humanity committed in Syria, Iraq, Egypt and Palestine, provided of course that they are not directly and actively involved in these crimes. While humanity is dying in Myanmar, Syria and Egypt through their own contributions and interventions, they hypocritically voice their concerns that Turkey is drifting away from democracy.

In a way everything resembles a scene in which the actors of a hundred years ago have clung once more to their roles of a hundred years ago. The pressure for democracy on Turkey works merely as an instrument of colonization. They are resorting again to the terror, coups and intrigues they resorted to a century ago and before that, in order to break up this geography and to destroy the political will on this geography. The claim and demand of democracy is nothing but make-up, peeling off in sheets, no longer able to sufficiently hide all these archaic hostile policies.

Perhaps the most important difference between the picture a century ago and today's picture is this: a century ago they played their games to break up these lands and to bring down the Ottoman Empire, whereas today they are trying to adopt a status quo position against the dynamism of this geography, which is about to revive and come together again. Yesterday, when they were trying to destroy what existed, their advantages were greater; today an order they established is on the verge of collapsing and they are trying to protect it. In trying to protect the decrepit orders they established on these lands they are merciless, savage, without the slightest share of humanity, and they are putting all their skills to use. But they act out of fear, and this causes them to be unable to hide their contradictions sufficiently despite all their skills. They are afraid, because sooner or later they will, one by one, face the crimes they have committed. To postpone this they commit still more crimes today.

While they themselves seek strength in unification, they do everything in their power to see these lands fragmented even further. And they try to present this to us as a good solution. Yet had they stepped aside and not interfered, the peoples of these lands never had, and would not have, a problem they could not resolve among themselves. Against the seeds of discord they have set ablaze in Syria and Iraq in a way that makes it impossible for people to live together, this geography will sooner or later find and put forward its own solution.

It is not as if they are trying to complete today a job left unfinished a century ago. These are the birth pangs of the bankruptcy today of the order established a century ago. They are trying to protect their decrepit orders, their status quo; they want to continue suppressing the noble people of this geography. To this end they are taking their most savage measures with new intrigues and new collaborators. Facing them is a deeply rooted history and a dynamic sociology that has been set in motion and will not easily settle. It is impossible for them to defeat this to the end.

The process will evidently be even more painful, but history will not have said its last word without this process being lived.