On Tuesday, U.S. President Donald Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan addressed the U.N. General Assembly one after the other. In fact, the two speeches had a meaning beyond a normal narrative as Trump missed his mark. The two world leaders offered two different philosophical approaches and two different realpolitik narratives stemming from these approaches.
During his address, Trump very often emphasized patriotism, even using this concept as the opposite of the concept of globalization, and directly said that he opposed globalization. Imagine the president of a nation, who has long claimed to uphold open and liberal economy for all countries and whose currency is the basic reserve currency around the world, stated that he is against globalization at the U.N. lectern.
This is an irrational speech, a slip. So, what is the reason for this? To find the answer, it is necessary to look at which capital in the U.S. Trump represents.
It has been said that, since former U.S. President Ronald Reagan's era, the battle between new economy - information technologies - and old iron, steel, oil and war industries has determined presidents and U.S. policies. Even though this approach is quite reductionist, it is ultimately based on an acceptable reality. Of course, financial capital should be added to this equation.
In fact, the 2008 crisis, which the U.S. is still struggling to get out of, emerged as the outbreak of rapid profit fall in traditional industries, which Trump desperately embraces now, on the financial side. This is because profit fall in traditional sectors has long been compensated by the bubbles created by financial oligarchy. These profit bubbles, composed of interconnected chains (Ponzi structures) like a bunch of grapes, led to the current crisis with the blowup of the largest bubble (the mortgage system) in 2008.
So, we were introduced to the great systemic crisis of large groups, who have been intertwined with industrial capital in the U.S. since the beginning, and their current followers. The banking, finance, oil and weapon crises of "historical" groups like Rockefeller, Du Pont, Mellon and Morgan and of their current derivatives actually started with the oil crisis in the early 1970s.
Trump's speech should be considered in this context. As such, another highlight of Trump's address was the emphasis on the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). Underlining that the U.S. is the largest energy producer, he vowed that they would not allow OPEC to block the system with unnecessary price hikes.
This was the way the 1973 oil crisis started. Founded in 1960, OPEC was largely formed against the pressures of U.S. oil giants. However, the denomination of oil prices in dollars was one of the main problems facing OPEC. In the early 1970s, the OPEC cartel became increasingly active against American and Dutch oil giants. In 1971, however, then U.S. President Richard Nixon removed the dollar's dependency on gold, leading to rapid depreciation in the U.S. currency. In response, OPEC announced that oil price would depend on gold, instead of on dollars. However, this was not sustainable.
OPEC ultimately lowered production in 1973, giving a political response to the U.S. and Israel and an economic response to American and Dutch oil monopolies. Thus, the crisis broke out.
From then on, the U.S. established a petro-dollar system with political operations both in the Gulf and in the Middle East. High gains from rising oil prices were converted to dollars and financed the U.S. Trump's speech revealed that we have come to the end of this system. There are many "leaks" in the system as OPEC members have come to use their earnings outside U.S. traditional sectors and even outside the dollar cycle. Direct investments and collaborations are developing in Asia Pacific and Eurasia. In addition, with the rapidly developing new currency systems, OPEC countries are developing new alternatives by going beyond traditional financial instruments.
Here, Turkey is in a very advantageous position as it holds northern (Russia) and southern (Eurasia-Mediterranean) energy routes. Also, its economic and political activities are rising in Iraq, Syria and the Gulf under the Erdoğan administration.
Today, the quest for a new currency system outside the dollar infuriates the rotten capital behind Trump. Of course, Trump's suppression of Venezuela is not a coincidence in this regard. Only U.S. imperialist policies are responsible for the contradiction that Venezuela is a poor nation despite being an oil-rich one. Trump had better acknowledge this well.
As a result, Trump is the representative of the old capital that has decayed and gone bankrupt since the early 1970s and that has defined humanity by turning the world, especially our region, into a bloodbath. The "patriotism" he mentioned points to relevant interests. Even the people of the U.S. do not have the slightest interest here.
Following Trump's address that objected to globalism, Erdoğan went up to the rostrum, saying, "The world is bigger than five" as usual. Then, he mentioned all human tragedies from Arakan (Rakhine State) to Syria as well as their causes, and offered solutions for them. He also referred to Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Asia, rejecting the rotten capital and being the voice of the new and coming one and the oppressed.
This is the summary of the latest U.N. General Assembly in New York.
Last but not least, Erdoğan's visit to Berlin is a turning point in Turkey-Germany relations. The positive result of this visit, beyond any doubt, will be reflected in Turkey-EU relations in a positive way.
