Our Geopolitical Fate TURKEY As The Central Country

Bünyamin Bezci*

The modern man is a man who is in control of his nature. On the other hand, the traditional man is one who adjusts to his nature. However, the relationship we have with nature is frequently cultural, neither dominating nor subordinate. As a result, as man molds his nature, nature molds it as well. Man's establishment of order via dominance over nature begins with his settlement in a particular region. As a result, there is a strong link between settlement and order. Without a settlement, the claim of order remains ambiguous. As a result, since Ibn Khaldun, we have understood that nomadic civilizations may only become states through settlement. The organization of production has a bearing on the transformation of settlement into order.

The expression “nomos” in German has three meanings; nehmen (to take), teilen (to share), and weiden (to graze, to spread). In some ways, this means that you control the territories you have conquered to the extent that you can share, organize, spread, and settle. If we flip the statement, a people's nomos begins/opens with the conquest conducted to settle and create order. Indeed, each settlement and order (ortung und ordnung) contribute to the shaping of your landscape. As you sit within the geography, the space re-forms according to your mental state, and as the space takes shape, it transforms you.

When did we begin to call this place home? Manzikert marked the beginning of the Turks' Anatolian settlement. However, when did we institute order in occupied spaces? With the conquest of Istanbul, Anatolia's "settlement" obtained "order." The Ottomans demonstrated that the order they believed the Seljuks of Konya and Karaman created was only a settlement. Because Konya could only serve as the focal point of regional geographic fluxes. However, a global state required a flowing space that connected land and water, and such a place could only be Istanbul. The conquest of Istanbul laid the groundwork for the establishment of the Ottoman state. The fact that the state/order that established itself in Istanbul has ceased to exist indicates that the process of resettlement has been finished. It is not in vain that Ahmet Cevdet Pasha regarded Istanbul as one of the state's four pillars, even during its near-destruction. The Republic's Ankara is the product of the order's introversion and burial over a period of many years of loss and sorrow. Indeed, despite the fact that Ankara is the capital of the Anatolian-centered Republic, migration to Istanbul has not ceased. Istanbul retained its status as the capital of commerce, banking, and economics, more precisely production/weiden.

If we are to speak of a Schmittian "Grossraum," this territory is focused on Istanbul. Schmitt, a twentieth-century political thinker, was correct in asserting that both the international liberal capitalism system and the classical modern state structure are outmoded. The modern global capitalist system promises an adversarial-free, self-sufficient system. The economics was frequently the mentor of this system, and when that was insufficient, the state and even society. With the increasing gaps of the 2008 crisis and its aftermath, globally hostile liberal democracies ceased to be safe havens. However, the restoration has not been to the classical modern state, which possesses undisputed authority over its borders and population. The enchantment of borders has been shattered by technology. Weapon technologies and climatic concerns that disregard borders need the state extending its reach beyond its borders in order to maintain order. Immigration shattered the people's spell of homogeneity. International migration is increasing and clearly increasing, posing a challenge to peoples' cultural and political cohesiveness. In this view, adapting to a new circumstance is neither about sanctifying borders and preserving people's homogeneity, nor is it about creating an enemy-free, limitless, economy-based utopian world federation.

Prior to elucidating the new setting, it is vital to explore how we arrived here. This requires an examination of how global capitalism has changed the modern state form. The history of the modern state and global capitalism are inextricably linked. The bourgeoisie desired expanded markets and favored modern state formations in the sixteenth century. This is a political form that rules over its homogenous social form and borders. The rule is more essential than the monarch. As a result, it was able to go from kingship to parliamentarianism without destroying the modern state form.

By the 19th century, it had become clear that modern states could not simply subjugate the people inside their borders. Simultaneously, it was required to bring the people together in political unity, and if they were unable to do so, to forge this unity. As a result, the instruments necessary to build a nation from the people, most notably education, were employed. National states also instilled in the populace a new political spirit and coordinated their energy/sacrifice. In this setting, the merchants' backing for absolute kingdoms to extend the market increased their power when they became nation states.

It should not be forgotten that the maturity stage of capitalism is based on three basic entities. These entities also became independent by being born from each other in history. Today, capitalism means a tripartite relationship consisting of "state", "society" and "market". For ancient Greece there was only the state. The police were both the state, the society and the market. As a sociality apart from the state could not be thought of, the economy meant only housekeeping. A semantic shift had taken place in Rome resulting from the translation of Polis as Civitas. Because Civitas also meant society. In a sense, while juris sociatas was pointing to the state as a regular sociality, civilis sociatas was pointing to the disorderly, unruly sociability outside the state. The latter is what we now call civil society.

Capitalism's primary distinction has been the articulation of the market as a third entity alongside the state and society in the modern state. Capitalism's triple paradigm has defended itself against history's difficulties by acquiring new forms. The state, which has acquired social strength as a result of the nation-state concept, has gained manageability for the bourgeoisie as a result of representative democracy. Politics has turned away from battlefields and toward parliaments. Parliamentary democracy makes two fundamental commitments to the populace. This entails making judgments through negotiation and common sense, and doing it in public, not behind closed doors. That is the art of negotiating and public relations. If parliamentary democracy had not been crowned with the notion of the rule of law, we would have lacked a mechanism for limiting the state's political power. Ultimately, the rule of law entailed the separation of the Crown and the state. Even the Tanzimat men used the same rationale to divide the throne and the state, elevating themselves to the status of men of the state by detaching them from their status as sultan's servants. The separation of the throne and the state is at the heart of the constitutional monarchy's power restriction and constitutionalism movements.

Following World War I, the state acquired the characteristics of a nation-state, a parliamentary system, and a state of law. The market is what sustains all three. The market is uninhibited by government intervention since it is self-regulating through an invisible hand. Additionally, the state of law precludes the state from intervening in society. Furthermore, under the parliamentary system, the state's political will was subordinated to the nation's/political bourgeoisie's will. The 1848 workers' uprisings were the first to demolish the bourgeoisie's vision of the dream state. However, democracy possessed the capacity to organize and govern the populace. Wars were chosen to mobilize the nation. As a result, until capitalism rebalanced itself, nationalism possessed a vitality that surpassed even socialism. It should not be forgotten that market actors benefit from this movement and add to their wealth via it.

It should be underlined that the "Reich" claim does not imply a return to the empire's loose sovereignty; on the other hand, it does not see nation-state borders as adequate. Schmitt's new political form, dubbed "Grossraum," resembles a regional empire with a tight sovereignty relationship. As a result, it has a strong resemblance to the EU's capacity to form a political union. However, economic and financial integration, as well as market integration, are insufficient for political unification. Additionally, it is required to develop a political union capable of making and implementing joint decisions, as well as a safety net/army subject to a common chain of command. The EU, on the other hand, is a long way from such a political union and is continuing to drift farther and further away.

The post-World War II world order reaffirmed capitalism's political primacy. Capitalist countries, seeking to mend the scars of war and defend their border lines against socialism, have also boosted welfare spending to make the comfort of their people. Rather than regional powers, it attempted to forge a shared vision of the world and mankind under the auspices of the United Nations. The market entered a financial crisis in the early 1970s, fueled by postwar government expenditure.

The states were able to overcome the financial crisis precipitated by the Arab-Israeli war's oil embargo, but only by casting off the weights they had accumulated.

Capitalism's logic dictates that the state will dump the burdens it cannot carry on two entities. One is referred to as "market," while the other is referred to as "society." The new equilibrium, which we might refer to as the neoliberal economic and political system, is the transformation of politics from a state-centric to a market and society-centered orientation. Thus, states took on a new form. In the literature, we referred to privatization as the transfer of some of the burdens that the welfare state could not carry to the market. The state, which accounted for about 60% of the economy in the 1970s, was incapable of bearing this burden in Turkish politics. The state, which produces a diverse range of products ranging from banking to cigarette manufacturing, hazelnut to cotton, iron and steel to cement, has demonstrated a willingness to exit the market as a producer after 1980 and remain a regulator. State economic enterprises (SOEs), which served as the patrimonial state's rent distribution mechanism for a lengthy market of time, were privatized and the state's burden was attempted to be lightened.

The second critical tenet of the neoliberal thinking is society's prominence. The society is now referred to as a civil society and is viewed as the state's administrative partner. In terms of the state, it entails the creation of an entity to which it will delegate some of the burdens it cannot carry. The state was waiting for civil initiatives to close their establishments and assume their responsibilities in areas where it could not. As a reason, during the 1980s, associations and foundations were promoted.

Globalization is the driving force behind new politics. Globalization has weakened the state's sovereignty. On the one hand, postmodern globalization destroyed the nation-state concept's nation-leg; on the other hand, it degraded the state's sovereignty within the framework of dependent relations. The easing of the state's relationship with sovereignty has also made the participation of foreign corporations in politics. Thus, economic logic supplanted political will during the 1990s. Together with zal, those with political will crafted policies that prioritized economic reason. Prioritizing the economic mentality, which resulted in the strengthening and deepening of the market, was thought to improve democracy as well. In the 1980s, it was assumed that economic liberalization, which would benefit the country economically, would also make democracy. This partially right way of thinking crumbled when China's political authoritarianism was perceived to continue alongside economic openness. In the 90s, it was deemed critical for Turkish politics to establish supra-political economic decision-making institutions. Because of the established idea that politics cannot behave sensibly in the allocation of economic rent. As a reason, supreme boards made judgments based on economic reason in opposition to the market, which was unable to see its way through unpredictable political decisions. However, the IMF discussions following the 2001 crisis proved that the "global economic mentality" did not correspond with "national interests."

The twenty-first century began politically in 2008, not 2000. Because the 2008 financial crisis altered the neoliberal form of the modern state. In the 1970s, the neoliberal state that succeeded the welfare state was mired in a financial crisis. However, it was society, not the state, that was at the center of the 2008 financial crisis. The states' debts rose in a predictable manner. The scarcity of people unable to repay their mortgages disturbed the market's equilibrium. All the balances were flipped when the market-created financial instruments derived from mortgaged house financing, which were the most trustworthy and most paid debts, failed to return. In some ways, the 1929 economic downturn was being relived in a different environment. In 1929, the issue was that market output exceeded consumption. The states have resurrected the market through their consumption expenditures. Between 1930 to 1970, there was both war and prosperity as a result of state-subsidized consumption. Between 1970 and 2008, consumption funding was transferred to society via the market. In other words, the market and society have averted a bottleneck for the state. The recent financial crisis reintroduced the state in order to preserve the market and society.

States have also acquired new shapes as a result of the new political balances that emerged in Turkish politics economically after 2010 and politically after 2013. The pandemic of 2020 has proven the state's long-standing process. Once again, the state is capitalism's equilibrium point, and the market and society are submissive to it. This mentality, which is also consistent with the Turkish state concept of politics, has been absorbed more easily than first thought, in part because of its historical coherence. Its performance throughout the pandemic also served as a litmus test for the adopted mentality.

According to Sombart, capitalism is born of the waste associated with love and luxury. In the twenty-first century, the peak of individual existence, luxury remained to be supported by debt, notwithstanding the absence of love. As a reason, the society that was left to its own devices following the collapse of the welfare state grew increasingly indebted. Capitalism has standardized and quantified everything that was before unquantifiable and sellable. Individuals who could only support their life through debt were no longer able to borrow from neighbors or relatives. Those with the ability to borrow opted to remain in debt to abstract financial institutions rather than succumb to human ties. Debts have escalated even more as technology advances and mobility increases. Capitalism's issue was caused by a society that borrows money for a house, a vehicle, a vacation, a holiday, a wedding, or electrical goods. On the one hand, the wheels stop turning when no expenditure occurs, while on the other hand, the society is crushed by debt. In the 1980s, the society, which was thought to be more free if left alone, steadily reinforced its debt constraints. It was thought that through strengthening the market and civil society, democracy would be strengthened as well. While the 2008 financial crisis threw the market into disarray, it also made widespread panic in society.

To begin, following the financial crisis, the pandemic prompted the market and society to turn to the state for assistance; there is nothing more natural than the state's prominence during a time of world reconstruction. Because the state, as the embodiment of the people's political unity, has a disproportionate amount of power in the market. In times of crisis, the supremacy and precedence of economic judgments that dominated politics in the 90s no longer make sense. Furthermore, the state's structural prominence is not a short-term cyclical sense. In a world where states of emergency have become increasingly common and, according to Agamben, even the norm, there is no alternative to the state.

In Turkish politics, the people founded a new state with a presidential government system following the revolution. Prior to the pandemic, the people's best hope was that decision-making systems would improve and that they would have a state with a strong will to cope with problems. We may compare the relationship between Turkish politics and the state to China's or Russia's state-oriented growth strategy. However, we might compare the form of governance to the United States' "Great America" strategy, rather than authoritarian administrations that silence their opponents. Not only does the state take on risk in terms of financial and monetary policy, but also in terms of guiding and funding projects. Not market dynamics, but the state is the primary motivator of those seeking to develop a huge facility such as a car plant. Western liberal democracies are likewise openly relying on the state in the aftermath of the pandemic, but they were a little more reserved in 2008 when it came to reactivating market processes. In this sense, Turkish politics cannot be divorced from world politics. Today, those seeking to introduce marketist and socialist dynamics into Turkish politics are basically multinational corporations seeking to keep the economy open to all kind of manipulation.

*Professor, Sakarya University