The future of the Middle East cannot be read from the US perspective

The US rout in Afghanistan, which took place over 20 years but for which the most suitable time to announce it to the world was awaited, is not merely the failure of the operation in Afghanistan.

We have said it before. This is the general failure of a well-known style of US politics. Just as the ultimate result of building houses on riverbeds is to be condemned to nature's punishment, the ultimate result of petty states built against the will of peoples and countries is also ruin. The occupation operation the US launched in Afghanistan, rising in anger, could have had no result other than harm.

The same policy suffered a similar rout in Iraq too, though perhaps not with the same starkness. After a de facto occupation of 10 years, Iraq was abandoned with no goal having been reached. Some may say that perhaps this was the goal all along, but to convince us of that they would have to go a very long way.

We said that a similar rout awaited the US in Syria, but also that it still had a chance to avoid living through this rout. That chance was for the US to give up the lowliness of cooperating with other terrorist organizations against one terrorist organization.

From these words it has been concluded that we expect some good or some help from the US. It is not worth dwelling on, but it shows once again that Türkiye has a serious problem of not understanding what is read. Of course, on top of this problem, the stubborn effort to deliberately not understand what is read is a far more serious problem.

Yet the only thing we can ask of the US in Iraq and in Syria is that it "not cast a shadow," we want no other favor. Because the US has never had any positive role in the Middle East so far, nor any presence supportive of peace, human rights, human dignity or tranquility. Its only priority has been Israel's security or material interests, and in this pursuit its choice has always been authoritarian, despotic regimes against the peoples.

For that reason, the only move of the US in the Middle East that we could support and applaud would be steps of withdrawal from this policy.

Truly, the US must take these steps even if only for its own interest. Because by supporting authoritarian regimes, in all the operations or policies it has undertaken in these countries it earns the resentment and hatred of the peoples and loses its own presence in the future of all these countries. The peoples of these countries will sooner or later have a say, and in the meantime, as long as these US policies continue, it will have no real ally left.

Indeed, the routs the US has suffered as a result of both its Iraq and Afghanistan adventures show that things in the foreign policy kitchen are not going well at all.

In Syria, as for turning against Assad, whom it regards as responsible for flagrant human rights violations and crimes against humanity, and then getting busy with an upstart enemy called DAEŞ here, stooping to seek help from the PYD, which it regards as a terrorist organization, in the name of fighting it, and coming face to face on this road with its NATO ally Türkiye, from whichever angle you look at it these are signs of a complete eclipse of political reason on its part. And indeed the end of this road does not look at all good for it.

The US will have neither the chance nor the strength to reshape the Middle East with this eclipsed mind.

That being the case, there are those who speak with great joy of there being no place for Türkiye in the new US policy quests that have emerged because of Biden. By saying Türkiye, they are in fact buying as great good news the promise that there will be no place for Erdoğan.

Of course, it is not possible that they do not know what Erdoğan means for the US or for Türkiye in general. Despite all its mistaken policies, absurd even from its own standpoint, the US is expecting Erdoğan to put Türkiye aboard this mistaken ship. Since they see that Erdoğan will not put Türkiye aboard this ship that is bound to sink in the Middle East of their dreams, it is quite natural for them to dream of a Türkiye without Erdoğan. It is also not as though one cannot see that their dream has opened a tender for putting Türkiye aboard that ship that will sink. So we will watch, with admonition and astonishment, the hungry and lustful race of those who aspire to put Türkiye aboard the US's ship that is bound to sink.

Despite all the routs it has suffered, reading the future of the Middle East from the standpoint of the US's intentions and plans is in itself a great abjectness, but at the same time a grave lack of foresight. Of course the US's intentions and plans must have some effect, but to see it as possible that its intentions and plans could neutralize Türkiye and to make all one's investment in that possibility is a gravity beyond abjectness.