Joe Biden's real challenge

With US President Joe Biden taking the oath of office last Wednesday, an unusual election process for his country has come to an end. We had said that Biden has inherited from Trump a serious pile of wreckage, including the picture that emerged on 6 January, the day the congressional leg of the election was to be completed, when the Republicans stormed the Capitol.

Yet clearing away this wreckage is still the easiest task for the US. It can even be said that the discomfort Trump's aggressive, extreme politics caused in certain segments of society has made Biden's job of clearing it away easier still. For some of Trump's rhetoric had increasingly become indefensible even for Republicans. And yet a more reasonable and stronger articulation of that rhetoric reflects the demands of a serious discomfort and unrest that exist deep within American society. These demands, all the same, are largely about the US's own internal affairs, its own social dynamics and conflicts.

There is also a wreckage inherited at the international level. There is the kind of wreckage that Biden can clear immediately by reversing some of Trump's policies. But we had said that part of it is not only about Trump's policies. It is America's Middle East policy, to which he himself has contributed for nearly 40 years, and in particular the Middle East and Arab Spring policies of the eight-year Obama administration, in which he served as vice president.

It is certain that all the operations and policies undertaken under the pretext of bringing democracy to the region have strengthened the region's dictatorships even further and aroused an even greater hatred among its peoples. The famous reaction of Bush the son to the 11 September attacks was expressed in the question he asked: "Why do they hate us?" At least Bush had realized that the US was a subject of serious hatred in the region and had the sense to ask this question. This hatred has not diminished since then; it has grown even more. Today the US's policies of unconditional support for Israel have placed it at the top of the list of countries most hated by the peoples of the region.

Although it cannot feel this today because of its armed power and economic superiority, it shows that the US's future in the region will be buried under the wreckage formed by the policies that gave rise to this hatred. As Zionist policies push it toward cooperation with the region's most ruthless, most despotic, most brutal rulers, they distance it from the peoples of the region. The Obama administration never shouldered the strong will that the peoples of the region showed on the road to democratization. On the contrary, it turned a blind eye to those who carried out the bloody coups staged to strangle the will of the people, and in a short time brought its relations with them back to a normal level.

Meanwhile, its policy of supporting the PKK-JPG in Syria, which even by its own documents is classified as a "terrorist organization", against Turkey, the only democratic power in the region and its ally in NATO, has no explanation. Its insistence on this policy places the US in the position of a thoroughly untrustworthy country.

Trump contributed only a little to the formation of all this wreckage, but it is a serious problem that threatens the US. It codes the US as a country that supports terror, finances terrorists, and in the process betrays its allies. This perception further piles up the wreckage that the US, already seriously damaged in the region, will have to deal with.

The warning to Biden in these first days of his term comes from us.

THE JUSTICE AND DEMOCRACY FOUNDATION AND THE THINGS THAT KEEP THE CHP MEMBER'S JAW WAGGING

I did not see it as anything worth explaining. Those who made the news story clearly made something up at the table with utter bad faith and meager wit. The CHP's Ankara deputy Tekin Bingöl pounced on it as if he had found a bargain. I wondered where I should begin to set it right, why I should answer, and I thought I would mind my own business and keep walking with my caravan, and I paid no heed. But because of the story's malicious and sensationalist side, let me say this for friends who may have heard it and become confused:

Some time ago we decided to organize under a foundation the voluntary think-tank activities that we have been carrying out for 6-7 years as a platform, together with a group of intellectuals and activists from many countries of the Islamic world who are in search of democracy, human rights and development. The name of the foundation established for this purpose is not "fighting poverty", as it was distorted in the news story, but the "Justice and Democracy Foundation".

Fighting poverty is only one of the purposes stated in the foundation's charter, and it too has many varieties. For example, money is collected and distributed to the poor; there are those who do this, and may God multiply the reward of whoever makes an effort on this path. Ours is a kind of think-tank activity in which the quest will be carried out for securing justice, democracy, human rights, good governance and development in the Islamic world, and for developing development policies that will eliminate poverty and for being able to implement their programs. Not a single kuruş was taken from anyone. Those who founded the foundation contributed money from their own pockets as the foundation's capital.

Without examining the foundation's charter at all, they tried to cook up a tall tale in the most sensationalist manner possible, with "poverty will be fought in a million-dollar residence". Then they put a price of 198 thousand dollars on the building they called million-dollar. It is not clear whether the building is rented or belongs to the foundation. What can they attribute to a newly established foundation whose activities they do not yet know anything about? Is this what is called "preventive news" against a potential corruption that might occur in the future? Is it a new genre of journalism? Or, even if it were about fighting poverty, why does this bother these CHP members so much?

Truly, the AK Party's struggle against poverty has always bothered the leftists and the CHP members in Turkey, and one way or another they have expressed this discomfort. It is actually possible to understand the reasons. It is entirely psychological. They themselves do nothing, and they try to obstruct those who do and to splash their own mud on them.

They conducted market research on the value of the place the foundation showed as its address. They went to the trouble of big research. But they could only stay within the limits of their own imagination and could not even come close to the truth. The truth of the matter? Why should we say it? Let them research a little more, if they have any concern for knowing the truth, that is. Otherwise, let them eat their hearts out a bit more with their bad faith. That is all they deserve.