Srebrenica and Aleppo: The political economy of a humanitarian tragedy
It has been exactly 21 years since the Srebrenica massacre, which is the first legally documented genocide in Europe. It took place in the heart of the EU, which was established to prevent total war and accompanying genocides and massacres. Now, after 21 years, incidents similar to what happened in Eastern Europe in 1995 are taking place just beyond Turkey's eastern and southern borders, which accompanies one of the greatest refugee tragedies that humanity has experienced.
Turkey has been discussing the Syrian refugee question under these circumstances. The question of Syrian refugees cannot be discussed independently from this current situation, which has historical roots. As such, we are facing not only a demographic problem, but also multi-faceted economic, social, political and humanitarian problems.
Today, it is not possible to find the causes of Europe's current crisis and estimate its consequences unless understanding and finding the causes of the Srebrenica massacre. The political chaos that emerged in Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s was indeed associated with a profound debt crisis that was yet to be felt in Western Europe in those days.
When we look at the Syrian civil war today, we see that this process actually started in the early 1990s and its political dynamics go back to the profit squeeze crisis in the early 1970s. Profit squeeze is one of the basic causes of crisis in capitalism. The system overcame this fall through various methods until 2008. However, as German economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck from the Cologne-based Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies says, the sum of these methods was a just time that was purchased with debt. Now, this time is over and we are facing civil wars, great political and economic crises and multidimensional humanitarian questions like the refugee crisis.
Racism, xenophobia and the danger of genocide that we thought had vanished in Europe after World War II, emerged in Srebrenica. Likewise, racial hatred against blacks, which is thought to have become a thing of the past, is reappearing in the Anglo-Saxon world. Let us leave aside the fact that the most successful athletes in the U.K. and the U.S. are black and U.S. President Barack Obama is a black man whose father is of African origin. The street executions aimed at blacks in the U.S. and concomitant terror, racist political movements in the U.K., their influence on the Brexit process and the Brexit's success are not developments that are independent from the refugee crisis in the Middle East. This is a time when the crisis that emerged in the West, including both Continental Europe and Britain, in the early 1970s is no longer deferrable. All Western states' phases of deferring the crisis in this whole process can be formulated as follows: From the early 1970s to the early 1980s, civil wars and pro-coup tutelary processes were created in developing countries, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, and the current chaos was prepared through partial positional wars.
An ultra-neoliberal process started firstly in the U.K. with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and then in the U.S. with President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. This process laid the foundations of the current crisis, which turned European states into debt states. It has come out in the open that the political-social balance that was established in Europe after World War II was actualized at the expense of an economic imbalance.
The political balance that European states ensured first through high inflation and then high public borrowing gave rise to the current economic imbalance when Britain put an end to the narrative of the Keynesian debt-state in the 1980s. When it came to the 1990s, the public sector went completely out of control. Germany was the first country to notice this. First, it united with East Germany and then attempted to disintegrate Yugoslavia. In this regard, the years of 1935 and 1995 have many similar aspects.
Although the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, true Nazi rule started when German President Paul von Hindenburg died in 1934 and was succeeded by Adolf Hitler as a führer and imperial chancellor. When it came to 1935, Nazi aggression and invasion started. Nazis ignored the Treaty of Versailles and set to work by annexing Saarland, which was a strategic state in terms of coal mines. In other words, the Nazi invasion and expansion did not literally start with the annexation of Austria in 1938, but with the Nazis' invasion of the Saarland state in 1935 - the Third Reich. And World War II started with Germany's attack on Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. The fours years from 1935 to 1939 are quite important. Here, the Nazi danger was not taken seriously and Stalin's covert alliance with the Nazis was not dwelled upon.
What has happened since the 1995 Srebrenica massacre is quite similar. The process starting with the unification of East and West Germany in 1990 - just like the unification of Austria with Nazi Germany with its so-called will in 1938 - continued with the Balkanization process that focused on Yugoslavia and which resulted in a massacre in 1995.
Although it has been 21 years since the Srebrenica massacre, they cannot see the reality today. Those who committed this massacre in the heart of Europe could not achieve their objectives, but further intensified their own crisis. Those who support terrorist organizations like DAESH in the Middle East today are trying to imitate this desperation. Therefore, there is no difference between the DAESH terror and Srebrenica genocide.
Today, the question of Syrian refugees has such a profound historical economic policy narrative. As a country which regards the Syrian refugee crisis as a humanitarian problem, Turkey has brought up the issue of granting citizenship to Syrian refugees. It is a humanitarian mission to make an effort to avoid the reoccurrence of what happened in Srebrenica and Aleppo in any other parts of the world.
Turkey has been discussing the Syrian refugee question under these circumstances. The question of Syrian refugees cannot be discussed independently from this current situation, which has historical roots. As such, we are facing not only a demographic problem, but also multi-faceted economic, social, political and humanitarian problems.
Today, it is not possible to find the causes of Europe's current crisis and estimate its consequences unless understanding and finding the causes of the Srebrenica massacre. The political chaos that emerged in Europe with the fall of the Berlin Wall in the early 1990s was indeed associated with a profound debt crisis that was yet to be felt in Western Europe in those days.
When we look at the Syrian civil war today, we see that this process actually started in the early 1990s and its political dynamics go back to the profit squeeze crisis in the early 1970s. Profit squeeze is one of the basic causes of crisis in capitalism. The system overcame this fall through various methods until 2008. However, as German economic sociologist Wolfgang Streeck from the Cologne-based Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies says, the sum of these methods was a just time that was purchased with debt. Now, this time is over and we are facing civil wars, great political and economic crises and multidimensional humanitarian questions like the refugee crisis.
Racism, xenophobia and the danger of genocide that we thought had vanished in Europe after World War II, emerged in Srebrenica. Likewise, racial hatred against blacks, which is thought to have become a thing of the past, is reappearing in the Anglo-Saxon world. Let us leave aside the fact that the most successful athletes in the U.K. and the U.S. are black and U.S. President Barack Obama is a black man whose father is of African origin. The street executions aimed at blacks in the U.S. and concomitant terror, racist political movements in the U.K., their influence on the Brexit process and the Brexit's success are not developments that are independent from the refugee crisis in the Middle East. This is a time when the crisis that emerged in the West, including both Continental Europe and Britain, in the early 1970s is no longer deferrable. All Western states' phases of deferring the crisis in this whole process can be formulated as follows: From the early 1970s to the early 1980s, civil wars and pro-coup tutelary processes were created in developing countries, particularly in the Middle East and Africa, and the current chaos was prepared through partial positional wars.
An ultra-neoliberal process started firstly in the U.K. with Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and then in the U.S. with President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s. This process laid the foundations of the current crisis, which turned European states into debt states. It has come out in the open that the political-social balance that was established in Europe after World War II was actualized at the expense of an economic imbalance.
The political balance that European states ensured first through high inflation and then high public borrowing gave rise to the current economic imbalance when Britain put an end to the narrative of the Keynesian debt-state in the 1980s. When it came to the 1990s, the public sector went completely out of control. Germany was the first country to notice this. First, it united with East Germany and then attempted to disintegrate Yugoslavia. In this regard, the years of 1935 and 1995 have many similar aspects.
Although the Nazi Party came to power in 1933, true Nazi rule started when German President Paul von Hindenburg died in 1934 and was succeeded by Adolf Hitler as a führer and imperial chancellor. When it came to 1935, Nazi aggression and invasion started. Nazis ignored the Treaty of Versailles and set to work by annexing Saarland, which was a strategic state in terms of coal mines. In other words, the Nazi invasion and expansion did not literally start with the annexation of Austria in 1938, but with the Nazis' invasion of the Saarland state in 1935 - the Third Reich. And World War II started with Germany's attack on Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. The fours years from 1935 to 1939 are quite important. Here, the Nazi danger was not taken seriously and Stalin's covert alliance with the Nazis was not dwelled upon.
What has happened since the 1995 Srebrenica massacre is quite similar. The process starting with the unification of East and West Germany in 1990 - just like the unification of Austria with Nazi Germany with its so-called will in 1938 - continued with the Balkanization process that focused on Yugoslavia and which resulted in a massacre in 1995.
Although it has been 21 years since the Srebrenica massacre, they cannot see the reality today. Those who committed this massacre in the heart of Europe could not achieve their objectives, but further intensified their own crisis. Those who support terrorist organizations like DAESH in the Middle East today are trying to imitate this desperation. Therefore, there is no difference between the DAESH terror and Srebrenica genocide.
Today, the question of Syrian refugees has such a profound historical economic policy narrative. As a country which regards the Syrian refugee crisis as a humanitarian problem, Turkey has brought up the issue of granting citizenship to Syrian refugees. It is a humanitarian mission to make an effort to avoid the reoccurrence of what happened in Srebrenica and Aleppo in any other parts of the world.