Toward a new Middle East order...

Although Trump and the White House staff try to conceal it, the US has suffered a heavy defeat against Iran. This has produced such a heavy picture that the order the US established in the Middle East and kept standing for years has become unsustainable. We are at the dawn of a new Middle East order. This simultaneously contains enormous opportunities and risks for Türkiye. I am thinking of two articles that complement each other. First of all, it is very important to understand where we have come from. I want to devote this article to a concise historical reminder.

After World War II ended, the US took the place of old colonialists like the United Kingdom and France in the Middle East, especially from the mid-1950s onward. To put it more clearly, the US "settled" in a geography leagues away from its mainland, to whose historical depths it was extremely foreign. When we compare, a difference is immediately apparent. The relationship of the United Kingdom and France with the Middle East is quite old and deep. Over a long period, they had come to know the Middle East and possessed an accumulated knowledge that penetrated its historical and cultural structures. (It should be enough here to remember only Lawrence.) Of course, neither the United Kingdom nor France abandoned the Middle East in an absolute sense. They continued their economic and cultural contacts to a greater or lesser extent. But the new boss was now the US. The US also took over the intelligence accumulated from the colonial era. But there would be a difference between producing this itself and merely taking it over. While the former ensured a deepening, the latter was doomed to remain superficial. In short, as I have always claimed, the US presence in the Middle East was doomed to remain provisional.

The US filled this gap with two things. The first of the instruments it used was military, the other was financial. These were bound to each other at the core. The knot was tied tightly in the 1970s. In global trade, oil and, in the following periods, natural gas trade were fixed on the US dollar. The numerous US bases spread across the Middle East would guard this. It does not end there; the lion's share of oil revenues, of course, went to Western companies. The portion left to local puppet structures was squeezed once more through obligatory arms trade. To keep this trade standing, puppet administrators and compradors needed to find "enemies." Externally, this was communist Russia; internally, it was movements like certain "deviant," anti-system Baath regimes with anti-imperialist sentiments, or the Muslim Brotherhood. A fine engineering was developed. An irreconcilable enmity and bloody conflicts were constructed between the Baath regimes and the Muslim Brotherhood. As long as the despotic Baath regimes conformed to the system, there was no problem. For example, after Nasser, the Baath in Egypt had come around. Neither Anwar Sadat nor Hosni Mubarak caused any problems. But there were also "deviants" like Hafez al-Assad, Muammar Gaddafi, and, at the end of the 1980s, Saddam Hussein, and they would be severely punished when their time came.

In the Gulf, which constitutes the sweetest part of the energy resources, US control proceeded absolutely in every respect. The Emirates, Sheikhdoms, and Sultanates did not step outside the US's command. Out of fear of the Baath and the Muslim Brotherhood, they had lined up around US boots.

In the 1990s, the Cold War ended, and Soviet support withdrew from the Middle East. Voices had emerged speaking of nationalizing oil and, more importantly, of selling it outside the dollar. Gaddafi and Saddam were voicing this. In places like Egypt, Algeria, and Tunisia, the Baath administration had rotted to the utmost, and the people's hatred had reached its peak. The shelf life of these party-tocracies with semi-secular, semi-religious; populist, socializing, hybrid ideologies was running out. It was necessary to get rid of them. The invasion of Iraq and the overthrow of Saddam through a two-phase operation is an event that must be understood in this vein. The scenario was simple. The tender was given predominantly to Islamist movements, which were the mortal enemies of the Baath regimes, especially the Muslim Brotherhood. The first trial took place in Algeria and resulted in a bloody civil war. But this scenario was reshaped in the 2010s and put back into play more carefully. We know this as the Arab Spring. The epicenter of the earthquake was Tunisia. It spread in waves to Libya, Egypt, and others.

The "Spring" did not produce the same result everywhere. Tunisia experienced a relatively soft transition. In Egypt, it was relatively painful. In the end, the Muslim Brotherhood came to power. In Libya, Gaddafi was overthrown, but the country was effectively fragmented. Finally, in Syria, a deadlock lasting more than ten years was experienced. (The Gulf also took its share of this turbulence, though these were suppressed in a short time.)

In the second leg of the scenario, there was the liquidation of the Islamist movements that had been set in motion and in some places had seized power. They handled this too in Egypt, as in the Sisi and Kais Saied coups, and finally in Tunisia.

These operations, carried out to maintain US hegemony and flatten the field, strangely increased the dominance and power of the new enemy, Iran, in the Middle East. I think the US allowed this to some extent. We can state that, simultaneously, after the liquidation of the Baath and the Muslim Brotherhood, they filled the enemy vacuum that emerged with Iran. The Shia Crescent was a common danger for both Israel and the Arabs. In the environment arising from this danger, Israel's path was being opened, and the Arabs were being subdued. (Proxy organizations like ISIS and Al-Qaeda were unleashed on the Middle East at this stage. They work like Swiss Army knives; simultaneously striking both the remnants of the Baath and the Muslim Brotherhood and the elements affiliated with Iran.) After the Muslim Brotherhood movement was crushed, Hamas in Palestine was left orphaned and had established strong ties with Iran. October 7 has not yet been fully understood. But the claim that it arose from an Iran-Hamas cooperation with Israel's knowledge is gaining a weight worth investigating.

Yes, October 7 became a complete milestone. In my next article, God willing, I intend to evaluate the chain of events starting from October 7, extending to the Iran war, and presented as the US's "withdrawal," but in essence pointing to the establishment of a new Middle East order.