Hearing the slogan "Oppression began in 1453" from Cairo…

With Turkey putting its weight in Libya at the request of, and in favor of, the legitimate government, the balances have changed completely. But this change of balance is also producing an unprecedented intensity of diplomatic traffic, as everyone reviews their calculations.

Interest has risen sharply in UMH Prime Minister Serraj, who, although he was the representative of the legitimate administration, had been subjected to growing isolation because he was losing until now. He has become the most important actor in Libya, whom everyone, Russia first of all, wants to contact again.

Meanwhile, as the coup-making parties of Libya, who in Cairo lost the bulgur at home while chasing rice, posed for pictures with Sisi, the BAE, Russia, Saudi Arabia and France, though not at first, later positioned themselves within that frame as well. However, France's position is viewed with disapproval both within Europe and within NATO, because in both, France's position is starting to be regarded as a unilateralism that conforms to no ethic of alliance.

The biggest members of NATO, the USA, Turkey, Britain, Germany and Italy, take the opposite stance on this, and the support that Turkey has led in giving to the legitimate government is progressively moving toward becoming the official position of both NATO and the EU. This in fact is also the official record of the successful transfer to the international political arena of the military successes the UMH has achieved on the ground with Turkey's support.

Yesterday a conversation took place between President Erdoğan and US President Trump, whose main subject was Libya, and in it the agreement of views was confirmed. Yet let me recall that only six months ago, depending on how the race for balance on the ground was going, Trump had also made a telephone call with the coup-making General Haftar. After that point, Haftar's closeness to Russia probably gave a stronger idea of his unreliability, but in any case the vision Turkey has shown and has proven with its support and successes on the ground is now a vision more widely accepted by the USA too.

Let us accept that international relations develop partly depending on your strength on the ground.

There are many examples in history of those who win on the ground losing at the table. That is why a strong political will to carry successes on the ground to the table is very important. It is also a familiar situation for those who lose on the ground to open illusory spaces in the field of rhetoric and propaganda and try to gain something there by showing the opposite of the situation. Thus, even if no gain is obtained, at worst they seek some consolation, or try to take revenge by cursing and tormenting the side that defeated them.

In proportion to the rout they have suffered in Libya, the attacks on Turkey, especially on Erdoğan, on social media by the alliance in the Middle East whose methods and means are coups are growing exponentially. The insults they direct at Erdoğan with caricatures and photoshops are truly in inverse proportion to their own situation. It is not at all hard to understand what kind of psychology this is, and of course there is nothing in it to be taken seriously. In fact, the more such publications increase, the better an idea one can form of the scale of the rout of this axis of evil.

What, for example, was the Egyptian Fatwa Institution's statement characterizing the conquest of Istanbul as an "Ottoman occupation" an expression of, out of the blue? By linking the Hagia Sophia agenda, which has recently opened in Turkey, to Erdoğan, and positioning itself, out of rancor toward him, against the Conquest, an indisputable acceptance of the entire Islamic world, it ultimately does no harm at all to Turkey, but renders the Egyptian Fatwa Institution entirely discredited in the eyes of the Islamic world.

As it happens, I think that apart from a very small segment in Turkey nobody heard of it and reacted, but harsh reactions came from every segment of the Islamic world. For example,

the Secretary General of the World Union of Muslim Scholars, Ali Muhyiddin al-Qaradaghi, stated that the declaration was a "stain of shame" for the institution.

But meanwhile this interesting parallel did not escape our attention either. In 2013, when Sisi carried out his bloody coup, at the same time as the Tamarod movement, a Gezi coup attempt was also being experienced in Turkey. It was soon understood, of course, that the two were attempts cooked in the same kitchen. A parallel, of course, that those still with Gezi winds blowing in their heads cannot understand. But one of Gezi's most provocative slogans, written on walls, was "Oppression began in 1453."

It is not very surprising that even the religious cadres of the coup carried out in Egypt at the same time are today objecting, on whatever occasion, to the conversion of the Hagia Sophia into a mosque. In fact, it is no secret that for quite some time the division in the Middle East has been precisely between the coup-makers and those who represent the values of the people, but it seems this secret, which everyone knows, needed to be revealed in this way.

NOTE: After the Egyptian Fatwa Institution's statement drew great reaction on social media, the institution backed down and made a statement to the effect that "the great conquest was carried out by the Sufi Ottoman Sultan Mehmed the Conqueror, and that President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has no connection whatsoever with Sultan Mehmed."