The voice that rose from the Western world with the collapse of the Soviet Union was not only a declaration of victory; it was also an arrogant sentence of judgment imposed on the entire world. The final triumph of the liberal order was presented to all humanity with the tale of the “end of history”. The ideological struggles were over, and humanity had embarked on a single, definitive and indisputable correct path. According to this arrogant narrative, the world would turn into a paradise on earth where borders would lose their meaning, the free market would regulate everything perfectly, and the individual would be unchained and liberated. This era, called the “New World Order”, was marketed as the golden age of globalization. But this so-called perfect order had a bloody condition, hidden from the beginning: Those who remained outside this new world, those who did not surrender their underground riches to Western capital and did not submit to the system, would not be excluded from this utopia; they would be directly and ruthlessly eliminated.
That is why what has happened in the last thirty years has never been accidental. From the very beginning, it proceeded as a gigantic liquidation process planned step by step.
The First Crack of Utopia: The Gulf and European Hypocrisy
The first signs appeared with the First Gulf War in 1991. The bombs dropped on Baghdad by the international coalition were not just part of a military operation; they were the first official announcement of how the new order would deal with those who did not obey it. But the real break for humanity at that time and the fall of the great mask did not take place in the Middle East, but in the heart of civilized Europe.
Beginning in 1992, a systematic massacre was carried out in Bosnia, and then in Kosovo, in front of the eyes of the world, in the geography claimed to be the ’heart of civilization“. Sarajevo was kept under a siege reminiscent of medieval darkness for years in the middle of the modern age. In Srebrenica, tens of thousands of innocent people were handed over to Serbian militias and massacred with the connivance of Dutch soldiers in a territory declared a ”safe zone“ by the United Nations and claimed to be under its protection. This was not only a crime against humanity, but also the first open collapse of the grand narrative of peace and human rights. Because the clear truth that emerged that day was this: This new order was not protecting the lives it promised to protect if they were Muslims. The ancient Islamic lands, the oppressed peoples of Islam were abandoned in those very days.
The Beginning of an Unlimited Occupation: September 11 and the Fall of Kabul
September 11, 2001 was the sharpest turning point in this century-old process of liquidation. The attacks on the Twin Towers handed the global system the unlimited and unquestionable authority to intervene that it had been seeking for years. With the new era launched under the name of the “war on terror”, international law was suspended on a global scale, the concept of state sovereignty was turned into rags, and war was transformed from a limited action against a specific enemy into an open-ended slaughter machine.
With the first bombs dropped on Afghanistan in October 2001, this new and dark era effectively began. Kabul, an ancient Islamic city, was targeted, the country was shattered and occupied, and a process of destruction that would last for generations was initiated. Although the rationale for this intervention seemed clear on paper as ’ending al-Qaeda“, the result on the ground was much more strategic and destructive: A geography where brother breaks brother, a collapse of law and order, social traumas and a permanent chaos.
The Collapse of a Civilization: Iraq and the Execution of Saddam
Immediately after Afghanistan, Iraq was targeted. In 2003, the Second Gulf War, which was launched on the basis of false evidence and the claim of “weapons of mass destruction” waved from the rostrums of the United Nations, turned into one of the biggest lies and legitimacy crises in modern political history. Because after the invasion, none of those weapons were found, and the invaders themselves admitted that they did not exist. But this confession did not stop or reverse the process in the slightest.
Baghdad, the birthplace of civilization, was recklessly bombed, libraries and museums were looted, an entire state structure was deliberately destroyed. Society was divided into a thousand pieces and human dignity was trampled on in Abu Ghraib prison. Sectarian and ethnic divisions, imperialism's favorite weapon, have been deployed to trigger fault lines and the country has been transformed into a protracted and bloody civil conflict. This was not just a regime change; it was the systematic dismantling of a resisting country down to its genetic code.
In 2006, the execution of Saddam Hussein on the morning of Eid al-Adha was one of the most violent and provocative symbols of this process. Far from being the result of a fair legal process, this execution was a brutal message sent by the masters of the new order to all Middle Eastern leaders who did not submit.
“Black Winter Called ”Spring": Gaddafi, Mubarak and Morsi
From that point on, the process of liquidation became much more open, much more aggressive, and proceeded with tactics of subversion from within. In 2011, the so-called “Arab Spring” was launched. Initially presented by the Western media as a dawn of freedom, human rights and democracy, these developments soon turned into a large-scale process of destruction that left the Middle East and North Africa in ruins.
Under the mask of bringing democracy, regimes were thrown into the fire one by one. The spark that started in Tunisia crossed borders; in Libya, Muammar Gaddafi, who had ruled the country for years, was lynched to death by crowds in the street under the bombardment of NATO planes. That day, Libya lost not only its leader but also its statehood forever.
But the biggest contradiction of this process and the clearest picture of Western hypocrisy has been in Egypt. When the 30-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak was toppled by the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, the Egyptian people thought they had taken their destiny into their own hands. But Mohamed Morsi, the first civilian president elected by popular vote, was overthrown in 2013 in a bloody military coup cheered on by global powers. After years of severe isolation and imprisonment, he died in a courtroom in front of the cameras in 2019. This process revealed in the most naked way that the global system's approach to democracy and the will of the people is not principled, and that democracy is only instrumental when it serves the interests of the West.
Brotherly Blood and Destroyed Ancient Cities: Syria and Yemen
The civil war that broke out in Syria at the same time was one of the most destructive and long-lasting stages of this great liquidation plan. Damascus, the heart of the Umayyad heritage, Aleppo, the common memory of humanity, and the ancient cities of the country have been reduced to ruins under the imperialists' test of power. Millions of innocent people have been displaced and left homeless. An entire country has been transformed into a gladiatorial arena where different global and regional powers intervene and proxy wars are waged in the most ruthless manner.
Civilians, women and children have paid the heaviest price in this relentless process. For thousands of refugees on a journey of hope, the dark waters of the Mediterranean Sea became the largest and most silent cemetery in the world. The same atrocity was repeated in Yemen; under embargoes and bombardments, the Yemeni people were condemned to starvation, cholera and death.
Where the Masks Fall Completely: The Gaza Genocide
The picture that emerges when all these events are taken together is clear and unambiguous. In the last thirty years, dozens of ancient Islamic lands from Afghanistan to Iraq, from Libya to Syria, from Yemen to Palestine have been bombed and oppressed Islamic peoples have been mercilessly massacred. Not thousands but hundreds of thousands of people have lost their lives. Millions of people have been displaced from their homes and condemned to live in refugee camps. And not only innocent peoples, but also the political leaders of this geography (whether they are dictators or elected) have been systematically targeted, overthrown or eliminated because they were not integrated into the system.
This is not a chain of mistakes, a foreign policy accident or a regional misfortune. This is a centuries-old process of elimination, which is being carried out with a certain ruthless logic and calculation.
And the clearest, most naked and most brutal version of this dark process is taking place in Gaza today. What has been staged in Gaza for months in front of the eyes of the world represents a final stage in which there is no longer any mask such as international law, human rights and universal values, and civilization is completely bankrupt. The authors of “human rights” fairy tales have been watching this genocide, in which hospitals, schools, places of worship, refugee camps are targeted, children and civilians are directly and deliberately destroyed, on television screens. Moreover, the bombs of this destruction are supplied from the capitals of the “civilized” West.
The language used by the occupiers in this process is exactly the same as in the previous three decades: The need for security, self-defense, the fight against terrorism... But the result on the ground is the total, systematic erasure of a race and a city. Gaza is the most painful demonstration in the face of humanity of the enormous gap between the fancy values claimed by this liberal order and the bloody reality on the ground.
The New Link in the Chain: Iran and the Widening Ring of Fire
And today, Iran is being discussed as the new link in this insatiable chain of destruction. The recent escalation of tensions, assassinations and missile-based military crisis around Iran is by no means independent from previous examples. The rhetoric used against Tehran, the rationalizations constructed in the international community, the perception of threat and the political groundwork prepared are largely the same as before Iraq, Afghanistan or Libya. It is therefore not just a question of Iran's nuclear program or regime. This tension is the most dangerous new phase of the process of dehumanization and total subjugation of the region that has been going on for the last three decades.
This unbroken line of destruction, stretching from Kabul to Baghdad, from Sarajevo to Tripoli, from Damascus to Gaza, is now rapidly moving towards the possibility of a much wider, cross-border regional conflict that will set the entire geography on fire through Iran. It is not only buildings, cities and innocent bodies that are destroyed and buried under rubble on this bloody line; it is also the raison d'être of the United Nations, the credibility of international law, the sincerity of human rights rhetoric and the universal values of the liberal order that the West is so proud of.
Time for Responsibility in the Presence of History
At the point reached today, it is now very clear: The rhetoric of “freedom” that the global system speaks of has turned into a cheap legitimization tool for imperialist interventions and occupations. The claim of “democracy” has become a selective practice that only works when the actors serving the interests of the West come to power, otherwise it condones military coups. The great dream that was presented in the 1990s as ’utopia“ and ”the end of history“ has turned into a gigantic war machine that constantly sheds blood on the ground, generates crises and sells weapons in order to survive in reality.
The great peace discourse has completely collapsed and a permanent order of crisis and chaos has been built on its rubble. And this vampire order constantly needs new tensions, new enemies and new wars to survive.
That is why it is very clear what needs to be done: to evaluate the events not as individual events, as Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria or Gaza, but as a whole, as interconnected moves in a centuries-old chess game. Because only in this way can the whole picture and the continuity of the enemy be seen. Otherwise, every new bomb dropped, every new intervention is explained with its own fabricated justification and the bloody connection with the past is severed in people's minds.
In the face of this shocking picture, the responsibility of humanity, especially the children of this geography, is very clear. Either we will continue to ignore the repetitive, insatiably bloody nature of this process and consent to be lulled to sleep with false tales; or we will wake up and develop a strong historical consciousness that refuses to be a part of this imperialist chain, an extra.
Because history does not only write about the catastrophes that happened and the cruelty of the oppressors; it also writes about how societies reacted, resisted or submitted to those catastrophes. And to remain silent during certain historical turning points is not neutrality or pacifism; it is to become directly a part of those atrocities, those massacres and that system.
It is time to tear up this bloody script written by those who led Saddam to the rope, lynched Gaddafi, poisoned Morsi, murdered Sinwar while he was resisting among the ruins of Gaza, targeted an entire geography in the person of Khamenei and tried to wipe Gaza off the map.
Today we are in one of those historic decision periods. Today is the time to break the silence and stand up.
Sermet Erdem