"What do we want from the US, what does the US want from us?"

"When we, in our critical analyses addressed to our American friends, the defenders of democracy and human rights, about what is going on in the Middle East, in our countries, especially in Egypt, please let it not be misunderstood: what we want is not for the ABD to make a new intervention, or to invite it to find other partners against the dictators it has supported until now and to support them.

It is no secret that until now the ABD has supported in our countries only the dictators and the most merciless, most despotic enemies of democracy, and that this has thus constituted one of the greatest obstacles to the development of democracy in our countries. That is why it is customary for all the putschists and would-be dictators who want to come to power in the Middle East to seek the ABD's approval and support while awaiting approval.

But what we are doing here is never to propose that the ABD change its partners and begin to support the peoples instead of the dictators. What we demand is that the ABD give up supporting only the enemies of democracy in our countries and refrain from interventions that would obstruct the democracy that is developing, for better or worse, in our country. Otherwise, if left to themselves, our peoples too have set out to realize their demands for democracy, human rights, dignity and freedom.

But the greatest obstacle before these demands, which have recently accelerated and intensified, is unfortunately the unthinkable investments that the ABD and other Western countries have made in anti-democratic forces."

These words are a summary of the statements made last Saturday in Istanbul at the forum titled "ABD Policy in the Middle East: Visions and Transformations," especially by the famous Egyptian political scientist Prof. Seyfeddin Abdülfettah and the liberal Tomorrow of the Revolution Party leader Eymen Nur, which I also repeated in the same session. The forum was organized jointly by the ABD-based National Interest Foundation, in whose activities Cemal Kaşıkçı also took part and gave talks, and the Union of Strategic Thought Organizations, and it was an event that brought together very important participants from the ABD and the Middle East and made the ABD speak, an example of which we had not seen for quite some time.

For instance, there were names such as Karen Attiah, one of the Washington Post's powerful journalists, the editor of Cemal Kaşıkçı's articles, who also played a very active role in making his newspaper and the ABD agenda take up the Kaşıkçı case; Michael Steele, former chairman of the Republican Party; former congressmen James Moran and Nick Rahall; Doug Bandow of the Huffington Post and Khaled El Gindy of the Brooking Institute; as well as Muhammed el-Raşid, Editor-in-Chief of the al-Mujtema magazine published in Kuveyt, and Abdullah el-Sahgy of Kuwait University. From Turkey, Dr. Talha Köse, Dr. Bilgehan Ayık, Dr. Hakkı Uygur and Prof. Muhiddin Ataman delivered their talks among the panelists of the forum, and a large number of listeners put the ABD's Middle East policies on the table across 6 sessions.

The main subjects that steered the agenda of the meeting were the Cemal Kaşıkçı case, Trump's declarations that the occupation of the Golan Heights by Israel, which has continued since 1967, would now be officially recognized as Israeli land, and the ABD's attitudes toward what has recently happened especially in Egypt and in the Middle East in general.

Frankly, with the agenda being this, it was very meaningful that, against the expectation that, as usual, a message in the direction of the ABD supporting democratic forces in the Middle East might be emphasized, almost all the Middle Eastern participants stressed that they did not want ABD support.

The sociological dynamics of the Middle Eastern peoples are in any case already pushing toward democratization and toward a development toward freedoms. If only the ABD would not cast a shadow.

Unfortunately, the ABD and AB countries, which care very much about democracy in their own countries, have a habit of hurrying to strangle at once any development in this direction for Muslim societies, because they see democracy as contrary to their interests. Moreover, afterwards they turn around and keep repeating the question that conditions the social science centers and public opinion about why democracy somehow cannot develop in the Islamic world.

We have no expectations of the ABD, but the ABD must also know that its present Middle East policy is not in its own interest. Because the Middle East is bigger than Israel, as the ABD supposes and places at the center of all its policies. The Middle East does not consist of Israel alone. When Israel draws the lightning of all the peoples of the Middle East upon itself, with its inevitable collapse it drags the ABD along with it into the swamp.

Yet the question that the younger Bush voiced right after the September 11 attacks still stands there for the ABD to guide it in correcting its own vision. "Why do they hate us so much?" Bush had asked. The reason was not at all far away. The ABD's reducing the whole of its Middle East policy to Israel's security and interests completely exhausts the ABD's future in the region as of today.

For Israel's sake, the ABD completely spends and exhausts all its consistency, credibility and neutral superpower position on democracy, human rights and freedoms, and leaves itself no friend on whom it can rely.

Yes, the dictators it supports in appearance seem like close friends because they owe their existence to it. But the ABD must know clearly that neither do those dictators have a future in the region any longer, nor is there any benefit it will gain from being seen with them.

Moreover, by supporting them it also takes on partnership in all the crimes against humanity they have undertaken, and thus draws even more hatred. Precisely because of this, the ABD, as a superpower, is on the verge of completely losing its moral and prestigious position. That it is no longer a center of expectation concerning democracy or contemporary values shows this very clearly.

In short, Israel costs the ABD very dearly. But unfortunately it is not even yet aware of this.