“Yesterday the lie of democracy, today the reality of monarchy”

 Politics Collective

US Ambassador to Ankara and Special Representative for Syria T. Barrack is back in the spotlight, stating that ‘we have been hindered by nation states since 1919’ and that the convergence between East and West via the Silk and Spice Road has been interrupted due to nation states. Barrack subsequently argued that the best model for the Middle East is ‘benevolent monarchies.’

The US National Security Strategy also emphasises the unnecessary pressure on monarchies via Gulf countries, stating that the key to successful relations is ‘accepting the region, its leaders, and its nations as they are.’

NEW OPENING REGIONAL PLAN

These statements reveal important clues about the new Middle East order centred on the US and Israel. What really needs to be underlined is that Turkey is being forced towards a reactionary regime within this new Middle East construct.

In the first phase of the Greater Middle East Project, positioning Turkey as a moderate Islamist centre was one of the most important elements of US strategy. S. Huntington had expressed the goal of transforming Turkey into a political Islamist regime at that time. The prevailing view was that Turkey could not inherit the legacy of the Ottoman Empire due to the secular foundations of the Republic, and that it needed to break free from this. G. Fuller, head of the CIA's Turkey office, who also played an important role in the establishment of the AKP, expressed this as defining Turkey as a centre of the caliphate.

Turkey has long been facing a counter-revolutionary process in line with this American plan. Significant progress has been made in the process of transformation into political Islamist fascism, with the relative democratic and progressive achievements stemming from the founding of the Republic being eliminated.

At this stage, Turkey is being repositioned within the search for a new order pursued by the US and Israel. This once again brings to the fore a regime that will rise on the basis of ethnic and sectarian foundations centred on the ummah. The new opening, expressed as a Turkish-Kurdish-Arab alliance, also leads to this.

THE CALL TO ABANDON THE NATION STATE

Similar views were previously brought to the agenda during the 2013 initiative period through neo-Ottomanism. This is expressed as a policy of expansion and growth within a kind of ‘flexible unitarianism’ where ‘borders disappear,’ in line with the US's efforts to eliminate old nation states.

It is possible to speak of a similar situation today. T. Barrack, while stating that ‘the Ottoman Nations system is the most suitable system for Turkey,’ also brought to the agenda a definition of a new regime that would be formed through different identities.

The remarks about monarchies can be considered as complementary to such a system. It is thought that such administrations would be easier to manage in every area, from Syria to Turkey and the Gulf monarchies. Therefore, the transformation of Turkey's structure in this direction is being imposed as the new policy of the United States.

ESCAPING SOCIALISM AGAIN

One of the most important points to note is that this is also presented as a liberation of identities. The creation of decentralised or federal structures can be put forward as a democratisation initiative that transcends the old nation-state structures in this sense.

It is possible to speak of such a situation in terms of the Kurdish movement. Recalling the views previously expressed in the theses of Democratic Confederalism, a proposal for a kind of autonomous areas and a confederal union formed through them was put forward as new openings that transcended Marxism in the new era. A similar situation is now being brought back to the agenda with a proposal for communes based on flexibility through identities.

This approach means nothing more than the quest to create a limited autonomous sphere of power within the new monarchical orders based on ethnicity and sectarianism established on the Greater Middle East stage. The new pro-American reactionary order imposed on the region cannot be considered independently of the systematic liquidation of all progressive and democratic accumulations and movements.

It must be said that today, such approaches are merely the repetition of outdated and exhausted post-modern liberal theses, presented as socialism. The fact that the criticisms and objections within this framework are presented by the leaders of the Kurdish movement as a ‘Kurdish-Turkish contradiction’ should suffice to show that we are faced with an obvious contradiction—an oxymoron—in the name of socialism. If our friends wish to discuss socialism, let us discuss it again, of course, but for now, let us simply remind them that in a class-based society and a society ruled by existing powers, powerlessness and statelessness bring subordination to the existing power and state rather than democracy.

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REMINDERS: LIES ABOUT CHEMICAL WEAPONS IN IRAQ AND THE INVASION

The 2003 invasion of Iraq and the Saddam Hussein regime was justified by the US on the grounds of eliminating a bloody dictator, destroying chemical weapons, and bringing democracy and civilisation. The most frequently used arguments were the threat posed by Iraq's alleged weapons of mass destruction and Saddam Hussein's alleged links to Al Qaeda.

However, it soon became apparent that these were not true. No weapons of mass destruction were found in Iraq after the invasion. Evidence obtained under torture regarding Saddam's links to the 9/11 attackers was also found to be false.

The campaign to convince a sceptical global public reached its peak with the speech delivered by then US Secretary of State Colin Powell at the United Nations in New York on 5 February 2003. Powell presented numerous pieces of so-called ‘evidence’ that the dictator in Baghdad already possessed biological weapons of mass destruction and was working on nuclear bombs. Two years later, Powell admitted that this speech was a ‘black mark’. The former Secretary of State offered a self-critique, stating, ‘I was the one who presented the world with false information on behalf of the United States, and this will remain a part of my life forever.’

Among the falsehoods stated by Powell were the following:

‘We have first-hand depictions of biological weapons factories on wheels and on rails.’

‘We estimate that Iraq currently has a stockpile of between 100 and 500 tonnes of chemical weapons material.’

‘Saddam Hussein is determined to acquire nuclear weapons... So determined that he has made repeated attempts to secretly acquire high-grade aluminium tubes from 11 different countries.’

‘The point I wish to draw your attention to today is the potentially far more serious connection between Iraq and the Al-Qaeda terrorist network... Iraqi officials deny allegations of links to Al-Qaeda. These denials are certainly not credible.’

The Iraqi chemical engineer who informed the American administration that Iraq was producing biological weapons admitted in a statement to The Guardian newspaper in 2011 that he had lied. Rafid Ahmed Alwan al-Janabi, who fled Saddam Hussein's regime in 1995, told American and German intelligence that Iraq possessed biological weapons and that these weapons could be transported by truck, thereby providing the Americans with a pretext for invading Iraq. He said he had no regrets. The United States, with the support of the United Kingdom, cited the information provided by al-Janabi as grounds for military intervention.

In a speech at the United Nations in 2003, US Secretary of State Colin Powell presented al-Janabi's fabricated information as coming from a source who had witnessed the production of biological weapons. Al-Janabi told The Guardian at the time, "I was given the chance to overthrow the Iraqi regime by telling a lie. My sons and I are proud to have contributed to bringing a piece of democracy to Iraq."

So what was the result of these lies? The occupying forces, together with the Kurdish peshmerga in northern Iraq, defeated the Iraqi army within two months. The US seized political power in the country. In the second year of the occupation, it transitioned to an ‘Islamic-Democratic’ federal constitution. The country was redrawn along ethnic and sectarian lines. The US seized northern Iraqi oil, securing the country's resources by placing the Regional Administration, established under Barzani's leadership, under its protection.

However, the US military intervention in Iraq, its bloodiest occupation since Vietnam, with its notorious prisons of torture, the transformation of the country's political structure in a way that intensified sectarian tensions, and the purging of Saddam-supporting Sunnis, plunged the country into an internal war that continues to this day. According to Wikileaks documents, the occupation, which claimed over 100,000 civilian lives in its sixth year alone, went down in world history as one of the greatest crimes of American imperialism. However, one of the greatest harms of the occupation, always remembered for its destruction, torture and massacres, was that it completely eliminated the possibility of Iraq becoming a country united on the basis of sovereignty, democracy and brotherhood, by dividing it along ethnic and sectarian lines. In its crudest form, the divide-and-rule strategy became the new model for the Middle East. In addition, the interventionist model towards sovereign countries, tested in Iraq, which allowed the American military-industrial complex and American companies to plunder, became one of the dominant imperialist strategies of the 21st century.

The inhumane torture and treatment that emerged in prisons controlled by American soldiers, and later in leaks such as Wikileaks, opened up a new arena for jihadist organisations such as Al-Qaeda, which had been strengthened by the Afghanistan invasion. In particular, commanders from the Saddam government era, who were purged after the invasion, organised Al-Qaeda structures in Iraq. Subsequently, the Iraqi Al-Qaeda, the precursor to Al-Nusra and ISIS, which would become actors in the Syrian war, was a direct result of the American occupation. Unsurprisingly, the targets of these organisations' terrorist attacks were largely not American occupation forces, but Shia civilians in the country.

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BECAME THE PIONEER OF REGIONAL FRAGMENTATION

The impact of the American occupation on Iraqi and Middle Eastern politics was not limited to creating space for jihadist organisations. Following the invasion of Iraq, the US's drive for “liberation” and “democracy” created a model in which the entire political structure of the country could only be represented on an ethnic and sectarian basis. This structure, in which all legislative and executive bodies are divided along Sunni, Shia and Kurdish lines, crystallised the hierarchy between these identities and created a situation of constant political crisis. The weakness of Sunni Arabs in terms of political representation in the country strengthened sectarian organisations, while the complete reshaping of the map of Iraq based on Shia-Sunni-Kurdish identities and sects completely destroyed the country's unity.

The problems of the system, which was directly engineered by the US as a colonial power at the negotiating table and which politically destabilised the country, continuing to produce new potential for civil war and political crises, continued to show themselves in recent years. Attacks by organisations such as Al-Qaeda continued uninterrupted for decades in Iraq. Following the outbreak of the Syrian war, ISIS rapidly expanded its territory in Iraq, taking advantage of the country's fragmentation and weakness. Iraq, whose political sovereignty was seized by American imperialism, became a proxy power for various geopolitical forces, primarily the US and Iran. The result of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, launched to ‘bring democracy,’ was a constitutionally fragmented country, entrenched identity tensions, endless jihadist terror, and the continuous plundering of the country's resources. The US would seek to realise the ‘opportunities’ it saw in Iraq in Libya and Syria in the coming years.

According to research conducted in 2007, an estimated 1,000,000 Iraqi civilians died, and according to UNHCR data from April 2008, 4.7 million Iraqis were displaced (16% of Iraq's population), with two million seeking refuge in neighbouring countries.

In 2009, the Iraqi Parliament and the United States signed a Strategic Framework Agreement. This agreement covered the guarantee of the rights of ethnic groups and political formations within the country, student exchanges, education, the development of energy fields, environmental clean-up, healthcare, information technology, communications and criminal law. The US announced that it would provide $1.2 billion in economic aid to Iraq under the new strategy. Bush also announced that the Iraqi government had agreed to allocate a total of $10 billion to development projects. The US, which turned Iraq into a source of profit, also led the country to an ethnic and sectarian-based division.

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THE TALIBAN CAME TO BRING CIVILISATION TO AFGHANISTAN

The formation and growth of jihadist organisations in the Middle East began with the ‘mujahideen’ organised by the US against the USSR in Afghanistan. In Afghanistan, following the rise to power of pro-Soviet and pro-socialist soldiers in 1978, Islamist groups, receiving financial and arms support from the US and Pakistan, launched an armed uprising. The process that led to the Taliban's sharia darkness in Afghanistan today began just 45 years ago, directly encouraged by the US. The Soviet Union's direct intervention in Afghanistan in 1979 to end the civil war further increased the value of the opposing Islamist groups in the eyes of the US. Groups trained in Pakistan and provided with financial and military support crossed into Afghanistan and organised the civil war against the Soviet Union. As part of the US strategy to push back the USSR regionally, a total of $250 million in aid was provided to the ‘mujahideen,’ whom the US regarded as friends and brothers, between 1979 and 1985. In 1985, then-US President Ronald Reagan approved the provision of anti-aircraft missiles to the mujahideen for use against the USSR. Weapons delivered directly to Islamabad airport by the US were distributed to radical Islamist groups there.

The emergence of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda as important political actors in Afghanistan was a direct result of the US strategy of provoking civil war in the country through sectarian, anti-communist organisations. In addition to financial and military investments to fight against the USSR, the mujahideen, portrayed as US allies during this period, were also portrayed in the mainstream media as freedom fighters, with advertisements calling for participation in jihad being placed in newspapers worldwide with CIA funding. American channels produced documentaries celebrating the Taliban's successes and distributed them to countries with large Muslim populations. Motivational campaigns were conducted in Afghanistan to encourage children to join jihadist organisations. In primary school mathematics lessons at education centres established by the Taliban with US funding, children were taught speed problems using Kalashnikov bullets fired by mujahideen who had killed Russian soldiers.

All these investments also created a darker economic-political reality. Heroin production in Afghanistan was initiated by the CIA in the 1970s to finance mujahideen organisations in the country. The CIA transported heroin produced in Afghanistan to the world market and used the proceeds to provide weapons and financial support to the Taliban and Al-Qaeda members. In response to this strategy, which gave rise to jihadist organisations, poisoned the world with heroin, and filled the country with sectarian massacres and slave markets for women, the US established its own right-wing, sectarian guerrilla organisations in response to anti-imperialist national liberation movements that had made significant gains against Western hegemony over the past decade.

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AMERICAN JIHAD

Before the US organised jihadist Islamism in Afghanistan, the USSR had close relations with most of the Arab countries in the region. Developmentalist-independence-oriented Arab nationalism and the secular regimes established after the colonial era provided significant international support against US imperialism during the Cold War. The political Islamism engineered by the US in Afghanistan, with Pakistan as its proxy, did not merely break the USSR's geopolitical influence; it reversed the political and social trajectory of the entire Middle East with the poison of jihadist sectarianism.

After the USSR's unconditional withdrawal from Afghanistan in 1988, the country was handed over to the Taliban. Although the West thought it was done with the jihadist mujahideen, history took a different turn. The Taliban's destruction of all secular institutions established in Afghanistan in the 20th century, the massacres of Shias, the exclusion of women from education, the establishment of slave markets, the political alliance with Al-Qaeda... Throughout all these developments, the organisation's biggest supporter remained the United States. The Soviet occupation was over, and democracy had come to Afghanistan!

By the 1990s, Islamist structures based in Afghanistan, such as Al-Qaeda, which had been financed, trained and armed for years by the US-Pakistan-Saudi Arabia triangle, were ‘determined to continue and spread jihad.’ Al-Qaeda had become an international organisation carrying out bloody terrorist acts in different parts of the world. Following 9/11, jihadist Islamism shifted from being a remotely supported ally in the US's Middle East strategy to serving as a kind of anti-democratic scarecrow, legitimising the presence of American forces in the region.

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ONCE IN THE REGION, THERE WAS NO RETURN

The American military occupation of Afghanistan in 2001, after the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden, strengthened jihadist organisations rather than eliminating them and expanded their sphere of influence. Likewise, the US, which had brought its military presence to the Middle East for the first time, never left the region again. After the USSR, Salafi jihadist organisations such as Al-Qaeda, which created a new enemy for themselves, carried the war experience they gained here to Iraq and Syria.

At the end of the occupation, which began in 2001 and intensified periodically over 20 years, the US failed to find the ‘moderate Islamist’ actor it was looking for against the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. The same minds that organised the Taliban against the USSR failed to create a new political actor using similar methods, namely by nurturing mafias and gangs within the country. As the US fled Afghanistan in the 20th year of the occupation, the tragedy of people clinging to the wings of aeroplanes in a desperate attempt to escape the darkness of Sharia law remained in people's minds.

Over the past 56 years, Afghanistan has once again fallen completely under Taliban rule. In a country where strict Sharia law is enforced, even the slightest political uprising is crushed with bloodshed. Women are completely banned from participating in education. Their visits to parks, gyms and similar public spaces are punished. Public flogging, stoning, and amputation are among the punishments based on Sharia law. Women are required to wear veils and have been removed from their jobs.

As a result, the US operation in Afghanistan, which began in the 1970s with the establishment and support of jihadist organisations against the USSR, ended after 50 years with nearly 3 million deaths, a devastated country, and an inhumane Sharia regime. The jihadist propaganda that the US instilled even in primary schools, the massacres it armed, and the sectarian fighters it financed have plunged Afghanistan into a darkness with no light in sight under the Taliban's Sharia law.

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THE MIDDLE EAST DESIGN UNDER THE GUISE OF OVERTHROWING DICTATORS

The people's reactions against the increasingly corrupt regimes in the Middle East, mired in bribery, corruption and poverty, became a stage for the US to use as a pretext for ‘bringing democracy’. In the process known as the Arab Spring, the US, which stole the people's revolution and empowered Islamist groups under its control, notably the Muslim Brotherhood, spearheaded transformations such as the killing of Gaddafi, the overthrow of Mubarak, and most recently, the regime change in Syria. Syria and Libya were selected as new targets for occupation on the map, following eight bloody years in Iraq. Libya, which holds the region's largest oil reserves, was the least affected by the Arab Spring, with Gaddafi playing a leading role in the process of achieving independence, making healthcare and education free, quadrupling literacy rates, and developing the country on a secular basis. Despite the mass uprisings in neighbouring Egypt and Tunisia, no serious spontaneous action took place in Libya. As in Afghanistan in the past, the imperialist bloc, led by the US, attempted to organise an artificial social uprising in Libya through organisations it secretly supported with money and weapons. The Gaddafi government's attempt to suppress these uprisings was sufficient justification for NATO intervention. Leaked emails from the 2016 American elections also revealed that the basis for the intervention in Libya was Gaddafi's ‘crime’ of investing in the gold dinar as Africa's common currency instead of the dollar. On 19 March 2011, air strikes on Libya commenced with the support of all NATO members, primarily the American, British, French and Italian armies. The operation, which aimed to destroy the Libyan army and overthrow Gaddafi, resulted in the killing of more than 400 civilians. After the forces of the National Transitional Government, supported by NATO air strikes, seized Tripoli, Gaddafi, who had been ousted from power, was captured by the opposition, tortured and killed. The so-called ‘liberal’ Transitional Government, supported by NATO, displayed Gaddafi's body in a cold storage facility for days to show it to the public.

In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood-linked and US-backed Morsi, who came to power after the Arab Spring, faced public backlash for his attempts to rapidly Islamise the country and impose an anti-democratic regime. There were intense protests against Morsi, who attempted to implement in a single moment the policies Turkey had implemented over 20 years. On 28 April 2013, the Temerrud grassroots movement was launched with the aim of collecting 15 million signatures to force Morsi to resign on 30 June. The movement's leadership called for peaceful demonstrations across Egypt, particularly in front of the El-Ittihadiya Palace in Cairo, but it was the coup forces that hijacked the people's progressive protests. While the US's response was awaited, the positive shift in the coup leaders' relations with the US marked the beginning of a new friendship between the coup leader Sisi and the US. The AKP government in Turkey initially reacted strongly to this coup against its sister party in Egypt, but later toned down its response and ultimately agreed to meet with Sisi. After warm handshakes in 2022, Sisi's visit took place in 2024.

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NEW EXCUSE: BRINGING A BENEVOLENT MONARCHY

Tom Barrack, the US Ambassador to Ankara and Special Representative for Syria, expressed his desire for a “benevolent monarchy” in his assessment of the Middle East. ‘This is the working model,’ he said. Speaking in Doha, the capital of Qatar, Barrack said: "The first thing that needs to happen is this: we must allow them (Syria) to define their own system. We should not go in with the West's expectations of “we want democracy within 12 months”. We have never had a real democracy anyway. I don't see a democracy. Israel may claim to be a democracy, but the thing that has actually worked best in this region, whether you like it or not, is a “benevolent monarchy”. That is the model that works."

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled “Dün demokrasi yalanı bugün monarşi gerçeği”, published in BirGün newspaper on December 14, 2025.