Greetings from Iraq to the President of the New Turkey

While Turkey was busy with the presidential election, the turbulence around us continued at full speed. On the night when the election result made it certain that Recep Tayyip Erdoğan was the 12th President of the Republic of Turkey, a coup attempt undertaken by Nouri al-Maliki in Iraq, which had been struggling in the vise of complete instability since the occupation, ended in failure, and, in a development that in a sense meant the closing of the Maliki era in Iraq, President Fuad Masum tasked Haider al-Abadi, the candidate of the Shiite Alliance, with forming the government.

This development is undoubtedly of great importance for Iraq. In fact it was a necessary first step toward overcoming the crises in a country that had been dragged into complete chaos for years under Maliki's rule. Because nearly all of the crises we are experiencing in Iraq today stem from Maliki's entirely sectarian policy, from his attempt to suppress both the Sunnis and the Kurds in emulation of Saddam Hussein-era tactics of power, and from his attempt to put in place a kind of Shiite-axis Baathism.

It was also not hidden that he received great support from Iran for this policy, in the direction of the Shiite crescent Iran was trying to create in the region. Indeed, it was incomprehensible that Iran, with its great state tradition and its skill in rational politics the stuff of legend, staked all its prestige and policy on Maliki's narrow sectarian policies in a way that was bound to cost it in every respect. Yet this policy also caused the formation, advance and wide room for maneuver of ISIS, the most merciless and most savage terrorist organization in the history of Islam that we face today.

At the end of the day, when one looks at what Iran might have gained from this policy, nothing remains but a great big "nothing." Moreover, what is left of this policy is an Iraq shattered into pieces that will be very difficult to put together again. It was so obvious that this Iraq could be a friend neither to Iran nor to Maliki.

Turkey had warned from the outset that Maliki's policy would ultimately lead to the fragmentation of Iraq, and everyone has clearly seen how right Turkey was in this approach. When US President Obama called Erdoğan to congratulate him on the presidency, he said he saw how right Turkey had been from the start in its Iraq policy, and congratulated him for that as well.

Both Erdoğan and Ahmet Davutoğlu were subjected to various criticisms precisely because of their Iraq policy. It was said that with this policy Turkey was needlessly creating problems with Iraq. The "zero problems policy," which comes to everyone's lips at every problem or crisis, was targeted in the Iraq case in particular as an example of failure.

Yet in order not to have a problem with an Iraq that was bound sooner or later to normalize, having a problem with Maliki was also bound to happen. Just as we had to have a problem with Assad in order not to have a problem with his people, who will win in the end. Because Maliki, who pushed both the Kurds and the Sunnis out of the system with his incredibly exclusionary policies, was in Iraq the very source of the problem, and not having a problem with him would have meant writing off the Iraqi people with all their components.

Moreover, despite these repressive policies, Maliki could not preserve the sovereignty he claimed against ISIS, which turned on neither the Kurdish regions nor the Sunni regions. His soldiers could show no presence at all in front of ISIS, which at the outset had no military force whatsoever, and they had to flee, abandoning all the regions.

The Iraqi people, who had lived together for centuries to the point that even mentioning it was considered superfluous, were divided within a short time under Maliki's rule and came to the point of fighting one another. This caused Iraq to slip out of the hands of everyone who was trying to establish control over it, Iran and the US first of all.

Without doubt, the fact that such a development occurred on the day Erdoğan was elected President also has a symbolic meaning: for Erdoğan, who has set out toward the New Turkey, which means above all "democratization, human rights, strong citizenship and national dignity," this development was recorded as the first greeting of a new Middle East that will work in harmony with Turkey.

That a kind of coup-making that Turkey has left behind was attempted in Iraq, and came to nothing, on the very night Erdoğan, who ended the coup-making traditions of the old Turkey, became President, surely must not be passed over so simply.

We can take this as Iraq's greeting to the new Turkey and the new Middle East in its own particular way.

Let no one doubt that the continuation of these greetings will keep coming in the same fashion from Syria, from Egypt, from Libya and from other countries that are searching for their honor and dignity.