A careful eye would glimpse a striking detail while President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan received congratulations from top state officials and chiefs of foreign missions at the Presidential Complex on the occasion of the Aug. 30 Victory Day: The “Refugee Kid”-themed painting.
Crafted by artists from various countries specially for the World Humanitarian Summit held in Istanbul on May 23-24, 2016, the painting aimed to draw attention to the issues of migration and the refugee crisis. The artwork portrays a refugee child symbolizing three different races, including Africans, with the child's eyes reflecting the hardships they have left behind, depicted through a silhouette and tears.
The painting carries profound symbolic meaning. Its placement within the presidential complex is equally noteworthy, as anyone who meets and gets in a picture with President Erdoğan, including state officials and award winners, posed in front of this artwork as a background theme. This sends a bold message: Türkiye stands with people facing adversity and those subjected to oppression.
Türkiye's unique approach, which diverges from the West's colonial legacy, has long held a special place, particularly for Africa. In recent weeks, as a renewed resistance against Western colonial culture has emerged, African countries have experienced a series of coups. Looking back, it is evident that these uprisings have been brewing for some time.
After World War II, African states found themselves in a novel situation. As we all know, when World War I ended, almost everywhere globally, including the American continent, the Far East, the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, had become colonies of a few European states.
In World War II, the conflict between Germany and other Western states weakened England and France and triggered independence movements. Dozens of countries, large and small, declared their independence between 1940 and 1960. When we glance at it from afar, the independence struggles of states such as India, Saudi Arabia, and Iran, which seem to be states of thousand years old, have taken place in years close to each other, all amid the 20th century. There are Middle Eastern countries that gained independence even in the 1970s.
The gendarmerie role of the United States in the global equation is weakening today. The West's reseeding to its internal affairs seems to conceive new fractures in Africa. African countries began declaring independence, one by one, through a military coup against France.
I want to bring a topic into the agenda here: Democracy and the coup. When viewed from the outside, Western colonists formed a Jacobin administration of the colonial elite and intellectual class enslaved by the French, the British, or the other Western nations. By employing this administration, Western states continued to suck the blood of African people.
Africa is a self-sufficient continent with fertile soils, rainy climate, rich vegetation, mines, oil, and human resources. However, it is almost at a level that can be bought and sold totally as commodities and 80% of Africa is at risk of starvation today.
In this context, when military groups fighting for independence against France and other Western countries stage a coup, they are acutely criticized. In fact, from time to time, patriotic military groups, in favor of their country and their own people, staged a coup against France in African countries. I cannot call these military coups bad, ugly, or terrible. Shall we interpret these as wars of independence? Later on, we will see what and where these initiatives will evolve.
In the end, the African people are exhausted. They cannot rebel and stand against their slave-spirited rulers and the West behind them. Therefore, the revolt in these countries is limited to military units rebelling against colonialism and coups.
I think African countries are going through a breaking phase similar to the breakup period after World War II, and here again, the United States, Russia, China, Iran, or other states should not enter Africa with the former colonial logic. Moreover, Africans should not jump out of the frying pan into the fire.
As I have previously mentioned, Türkiye has developed a model related to the countries that have not completed their development. Türkiye desires the countries with which it works to be stabilized and exist as independent states, therefore cooperating with them with a win-win approach.
Even the fact that the French or the British, who exploited African lands for 200 years, did not open water wells at 30 to 40 meters to access drinking water shows how cruel these people are. While African societies are getting rid of bloodsucking vampires, they should not fall into the hands of other predators.
All intellectuals and thinkers globally should stand behind the warriors who pursue their national independence, even if they are putschists. If democracy is to be decreed on one day, the people of that country must decide by their own army.
If an African country is to go to democracy for the continuance of the French colonization or the British occupation, and if it will still be exploited, the blood of Africans is still to be sucked, they should not pass to democracy either. We already know that there are two types of democracy: Western countries operate one for the welfare of their own nation; and the other as an instrument of colonial culture to exploit other countries.
Now it is time for Africans to raise the flag of rebellion and declare, “We do not want colonial democracy; we can form our own administration, our will, ourselves. We do not want the Western states that sucked our blood for 200 years, to suck our blood for another 200 years!”
The interests of Russia, China, Türkiye, and other states in Africa should never resemble colonialist countries. Otherwise, it will turn into a collective revolt by the African people. Because Africans are familiar with British, French, Belgian, and German colonialism. They know very well that they forever lose, their people die, their resources are consumed, and they have not gained any administrative skill.
The independence spirit that started after World War II has flared up again in Africa.
