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Back in March 2020, Ibrahim Karagul, who was at that time the editor of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s mouthpiece, Yeni Safak, managed to say absolutely nothing in a great many words. I tried to find something that made sense; I failed; perhaps you can do better. Yet one thing was clear when the piece was published that is even clearer now: Karagul was reflecting the self-image and aspirations of the Turkish regime. For that, his piece remains relevant, and is worth examining in depth.

Here is MEMRI‘s summary of his column:

In his March 27, 2020 column, titled “Time Has Stopped, History Is Being Reset… West’s Political System, Financial System, Security Theories Have All Collapsed. New Political Orders Will Be Established. New Superpowers Will Emerge. Nations Controlling The World May Collapse. East May Become West, West May Become East. New Nations May Take To The Stage. We’re Starting Everything From Scratch…” in Turkey’s Yeni Şafak daily, which is a mouthpiece of Turkey’s ruling AKP,[1] the paper’s editor-in-chief İbrahim Karagül described what he saw as the collapse of the West and the rise of countries, including Turkey, after the global spread of the Coronavirus.

On the West, Karagül wrote: “It seems that everything produced and imposed to the world by the West in the form of a global discourse and order is coming to an end. The West has already lost its ‘central’ power… The West’s financial system is collapsing. Its political system and discourse are collapsing. Its security theories are collapsing. Its social theories are collapsing. Humanity no longer has any expectation of them.” Regarding the rise of Turkey, he wrote: “Turkey is one of the world’s new superpowers… If there are going to be any countries to rise post-corona – and there will be – Turkey is going to be one of them.”

Here are MEMRI’s excerpts from his column:

Following are excerpts from Yeni Şafak’s translation of Karagül’s column. To facilitate readability, the excerpts are not in the order in which they originally appeared:

“Time Has Stopped, History Has Been Reset – We Are Going To Start Everything From Scratch”

“We are going to look toward the future. We are going to establish the future. We are going to start over.

Yes, the future lies before us. And the past lies behind us. That we can all agree on. How grateful we are to have this unusual information pointed out. But then things become a bit uncertain. Making the claim that “we are going to start over,” who does Karagul mean by “we”? Turks? Muslims? Everyone in the whole wide world? Why will we have to “start over”? And what does “start over” mean, in any case? Will successful countries, such as those in North America and Western Europe, need to “start over”? Will besieged Israel need to “start over”? What about Turkey itself — given that it’s become such a wonderful place under Erdogan, why should it feel the need to “start over”?

Isn’t it the Muslim countries, except for Erdogan’s perfect Turkey, that will most feel the need to “start over,” as they consider the desolation and waste they have brought upon themselves? Here’s a brief survey of how things stand today in those Muslim lands: Hamas decimated in Gaza; Hizballah decimated in Lebanon; civil wars in Syria, Libya, and Yemen; sectarian rivalries, often murderous, in Iraq and Lebanon; a dictatorial theocracy in Iran, whose Supreme Leader has managed to pocket at least $95 billion of his country’s wealth, while one of his clerics expressing his deep belief that “djinn” are working with the Zionists and helped them kill Hassan Nasrallah; Sharia states in Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Sudan; low-level hostilities between Algeria and Morocco over control of the western Sahara; the blockade of Qatar by Saudi Arabia, the U.A.E., Kuwait, and Bahrain; nearly a million black slaves still being held by Arab masters in Mali, Mauritania, and Niger; every sort of crazed conspiracy theory spreading across the Muslim world.

Then there is Turkey itself, a country that under Erdogan has abandoned its former adherence to true parliamentary democracy and Kemalist secularism, and instead has embraced authoritarian rule. There is no longer a free press. More journalists are jailed in Turkey than in any other country in the world. Though Karagul predicts that Turkey will be one of the world’s “superpowers,” it has been in the throes of an economic collapse, like a patient on life support, breathing through cheap credit and public subsidies to firms, in a state-backed Ponzi scheme. Since the final quarter of 2018, after a currency crash in August of that year wiped 30% off the value of the Turkish lira, the Turkish economy contracted for three quarters. In the fourth quarter of 2019, it seemed to recover slightly, but then the coronavirus struck and the economy renewed its slow motion collapse. Don’t bother Karagul with these displeasing facts. He insists that Turkey will be, in our brave new world, a “superpower.” A perfect example of the True Believer.