Cumhuriyet: BRICS challenges the world order based on Western patterns
The role of the West and its institutions in the emerging multipolar world is weakening, while the role of BRICS is only increasing, Cumhuriyet writes. Turkey, which has applied to join the group, should make a geopolitical choice and refrain from positioning itself as part of the Western world.
Mehmet Ali Guller
Over the millennia, the forces that serve as the locomotive of civilization have been constantly changing places. They rise, fall, and are replaced by new ones.
The 500-year cycle of Western supremacy is coming to an end. One of the Western statesmen who noted this was Portuguese President Marcelo Rebelo de Souza.: "After the US elections, whoever wins, there will be a different world. The position of Russia and the growing South Africa, Brazil and Turkey will not be the same. India, too. We are at the beginning of a new historical cycle."
Yes, this is a new reality, a new historical cycle is beginning. Asia is rising, becoming the leader of the global South. Therefore, when analyzing political and economic events, it is necessary to take this fact into account. The BRICS issue should be viewed through the same prism.
The mercantile approach of the Turkish leadership
The Turkish authorities adhere to a timid, mercantile and ambivalent approach to the BRICS. It is not known whether there is an official application. A Turkish official who spoke with Bloomberg said that it exists, as was confirmed by Russian presidential aide Yuri Ushakov, but the government of the ruling Justice and Development Party of Turkey says nothing about this!
In fact, this situation alone shows that the Turkish authorities are building their relations with the BRICS and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) from a tactical rather than a strategic point of view. In short, they are trying to use relations with the SCO and BRICS as a trump card in relations with NATO and the EU.
Of course, their supporters are also confused. Moreover, by building equations from variables in the form of institutions that are not equivalent to each other, the Turkish leadership provokes conclusions such as "we cannot enter here without leaving there."
The main opposition is even lagging behind
And Turkey's main opposition party, unfortunately, is even lagging behind the government on this issue. She advocates that Turkey continue to wait in the anteroom of the European Union, and by saying "either the EU or the SCO", inclines its supporters to a pro-Western position.
Ataturk did not always point to the West, no matter how much the leadership of the main opposition party claimed otherwise, so the position against the BRICS with the premise that "we have always headed West and cannot change it" is not historically justified.
The Turkish leader did not pay attention to the West, but to the "modern level of civilization." It was this great revolutionary who was one of those who knew best that the place of modern civilization is shifting from one force to another.
The struggle of the North and the South
The situation is as follows: the center of trade and economy has shifted from the Atlantic to the Asia-Pacific region, and now the center of politics is also shifting. A new multipolar world is being formed.
The global South is step by step challenging the order created by the global North (Atlantic) for its own world domination. In turn, the Atlantic powers, in an attempt to prevent this process, impose sanctions, organize coups and assassinations, seize reserves, steal oil, and unleash wars.
Of course, in vain. The Global South is challenging in two ways: 1) wants to reform the order, the rules of which are written by the United States; 2) builds its institutions instead of those built by the Americans to maintain world domination.
The situation of Turkey
And so the BRICS is one of the most important organizations promoting the new world order. BRICS pursues two main goals: the democratization of both international relations and the global financial system. In other words, this is not an order in which large countries make decisions and implement them, but an order in which decisions are made and implemented by an increasing number of States on an equal basis.
In this regard, the BRICS is trying to give the countries of the global South a voice in international affairs and, for example, advocates the expansion of the UN Security Council. The organization develops cooperation to counter the financial system based on the dominance of the dollar, increases trade using national currencies and, in contrast to the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, proposes a New Development Bank.
Thus, the era of the global North/West is coming to an end and the era of the global South is beginning/The East. At a time when the United States and the EU, seeing this fact, are trying to take countermeasures, Turkey, which is objectively a country of the global South, this time, contrary to the adherents of the West, cannot mistakenly position itself as part of the Atlantic (global North) in this century.
