It will be too late!

"We are going through very critical days, both for Turkey's history and for the region's history." This sentence in fact expresses a situation that has been repeated in the same way on several important occasions over the last ten years, making itself felt.

Similar sentences were uttered especially in the process following the self-immolation of a street vendor in Tunisia and the toppling of the Ben Ali government, and then Hosni Mubarak's loss of power in Egypt. The political conjuncture that emerged after the mass movement in the Arab world and the demand for democracy and good governance had brought critical but hopeful days to a Middle Eastern geography living in the shadow of dictatorial regimes.

However, before a very long time had passed, the old regimes or their extensions, one by one, strangled the democratic revolutions in the countries where this mass movement had occurred and displayed a will to return to the status quo, which carried the process to another critical point. For the peoples living in Arab countries, in the process embodied in the examples of Ben Ali and Hosni Mubarak losing their power, the wall of fear had been overcome. Consequently, political choices promising a return to the status quo had to apply much more intense violence in order to deter the masses.

In addition, the building of the old regimes upon the reshaped political and social structure, and the requesting of support from outside the region, like a "bearer of good news to the cobbler," for the return to the status quo, brought us from hope-filled critical days to days when hope was found too optimistic.

In particular, these waves of mass mobilization around Turkey affected in one way or another Turkey's border security, its economic policies, and its political engagements. Let us briefly recall. In Iran, with which we share a long border line, large anti-regime mass demonstrations have taken place almost every 2 years since 2009.

In Iraq, after the vacuum created by the US withdrawal, ISIS expanded its sphere of influence, and a process followed in which allied forces led by the US intervened to limit this influence. Meanwhile the Regional Government in northern Iraq held a referendum that had no legitimacy whatsoever and declared its independence. This also caused the hand of the central government, which was already struggling to control its country, to weaken even further.

In Syria, where the process called the Arab Spring turned into a civil war, the areas slipping out of the regime's control, especially those on the Syria-Turkey border, passed into the control of terrorist organizations. While these developments were taking place in Turkey's south and southeast, let us also keep in the back of our minds that the Georgia-Russia war and Russia's intervention in Crimea occurred; that the collapsing Greek economy created an area of collapse in Turkey's northwest as well; and that, in parallel with the growing political influence of the rising far-right parties, debates intensified about the EU moving from a supranational organization toward a loose international one.

When we add to all these developments the Obama tragedy, who came to power with great hopes and was expected to consolidate the US's regional and global leadership position with pleasant-sounding strategies but ended in great disappointment and fiasco, and the bad governance of his successor Trump, we can easily claim that a rather hopeless picture emerges.

In such a pessimistic international environment, we can say that the steps Turkey has taken especially in Syria and Iraq have at least made hopes for our country's future flourish and grow.

Moreover, this determined and strong stance of Turkey has created hope not only for the Turkish people but also for the peoples of the countries of the region. Today, when you mingle with people in the countries of the region from Kuwait to Morocco, you can see the expectation and hope regarding our President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's leadership and Turkey's role.

We can read the excitement that Operation Olive Branch has created in the countries of the region within this framework as well. It can easily be seen that the propaganda terrorist organizations carry out in the Western world, based on false news, has no echo among the people in the countries of the region. This stems both from the people of the region knowing the true face of the PKK terrorist organization and its extensions, the most ruthless criminal mechanism in history, and from the undisputed goodwill and acceptance that Erdoğan's leadership enjoys giving him the power to have the final say.

Therefore, the job of those who come from outside, or who rely on those who come from outside, is much harder than is supposed.

The day the outside support ends they will look for a hole to flee into, but on that day it will be too late.