Turkey and the West’s Covert War Against Asian Development
Western imperialism once had a “civilizing mission.” The enlightenment and modernity were its buzzwords. The Europeans and Americans were in the game of railroads and reason. Or so the world was led to believe. Africans and Asians aimed West.
But not today. They aim East now. The railroads today are Chinese. And reason is multipolar.
In response, the unipolar West is not interested in civilization. Chaos and barbarism now sum up its politics. New York, London and Paris ain’t the solution anymore but the problem.
Syria illustrates this.
The takeover of Damascus by Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), an intolerant medieval-like sect, is being celebrated in the West.
The rule of religion rather than secularism is its preference. It is as if Attila the Hun is on the march again but this time the West is rejoicing instead of revolting.
Gaza illustrates this. There, Israel’s far-right government is committing a genocide against a dispossessed, trapped and defenseless Palestinian population. And New York, London and Paris openly justify it and actively facilitate it.
In his book The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Peter Frankopan’s few words on the 5th century Huns and their assault on the West captures the 21st century Western assault on the East:
“The Huns caused pure terror. They are ‘the seedbed of evil’ wrote one Roman writer and ‘exceedingly savage.’…They had no interest in [civilization], noted another and only wanted to steal from their neighbors, enslaving them in the process: they were like wolves.”[1]
Some 1,600 years later, the West is the barbaric Hun invading the East—charging mindlessly into the heartland of geopolitics—as if the Renaissance, the Enlightenment and Modernity never happened.
The West Begins and Ends in Istanbul
The current state of Western imperialism and the downward trajectory of Western civilization are best exemplified by Istanbul, Turkey. A century ago this pivotal city secularized itself—because it wanted to be Western. Today mosques are everywhere in Istanbul—because it is Western. This is not a contradiction but Western policy.
After World War One, the Ottoman Empire, based in Istanbul, collapsed and European imperialism walked into geopolitical nirvana: the Arab oil fields. In response to the humiliating Ottoman collapse, Kemal Atatürk, the father of modern Turkey, abandoned religion.
The current father of Turkey, Recep Erdogan, is doing the opposite: abandoning the modern in favor of the medieval. And the West is his key partner in this reversal of history. As the most strategic part of NATO, the Western alliance, Turkey has been reinvented in preparation for the West’s wars against Eurasia. Gone are the ideas of global development based on universal reason. And in their place are ideas of religious sectarianism and racial supremacy.
Turkey is the West’s geopolitical battering ram. Perfectly positioned, it can swing east and hit Iran. Or south and hit the Arabs. Or north and hit Russia. Indeed, Istanbul is built on the Bosphorus—the choke point as regards the shipping lane that serves the ultimate clash of civilizations: the Black Sea.
The West’s use of Turkey, however, extends further than its near neighbors. It penetrates deep into Central Asia and into China, into the whole Turkic speaking region. And seeps into every mind affected by Islam.
Turkey isn’t just the home of an ethnic group originating in Central Asia; it is a stronghold of the Muslim Brotherhood. And the latter, reactionary/right-wing Islam, has always been a tool of Western imperialism.
Britain’s Barbaric Brothers
The imperialist/Muslim conspiracy to overthrow the modern/secular government of Syria in 2024 was born a century before in the Arabian Peninsula and on the banks of the Suez Canal. The British controlled both areas and controlled the destiny of Islam as well. After the collapse of the Ottoman Caliphate, the Ottoman leadership of the Islamic World, Islam should have withdrawn into the background of modernity, like Christianity. But the British decided otherwise.
Instead of waving goodbye to Islam, as Kemal Atatürk did in the new state of Turkey, the British held onto it for the benefit of its Empire. While Istanbul, in the 1920s, was rejecting medieval notions like the caliphate, the British were empowering Ibn Saud, the father of Saudi Arabia—and resuscitating the idea of the pan-Muslim caliphate. In his book, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, Mark Curtis writes:
“Britain had already provided arms and money to Ibn Saud during the First World War, signing a treaty with him in 1915 and recognizing him as the ruler of the Nejd province under British protection. By the end of the war, he was receiving a British subsidy of £5,000 a month….some British officials were pinning their strategic hopes on Ibn Saud…a Captain Bray [wrote]….’We should therefore create a state more convenient for ourselves, to whom the attention of Islam should be turned. We have an opportunity in Arabia.”….Ibn Saud established ‘Saudi’ Arabia in an orgy of murder….The British recognized Ibn Saud’s control of Arabia, and by 1922 his subsidy was raised to £100,000 a year by Colonial Secretary Winston Churchill….Churchill later wrote that “my admiration for him [Ibn Saud] was deep because of his unfailing loyalty to us’…..”[2]
This British policy served as a template for Western actions in the Middle East. And Britain wasn’t finished. In 1928, in the city of Ismailia along the Suez Canal, the British funded the beginning of a secretive group that wanted to return to the medieval roots of Islam: the Muslim Brotherhood.
Christopher Davidson writes in Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East: “The relationship between Britain and the Brotherhood was of course nothing new, as ever since its formal founding in 1928 it had been identified as primarily an anti-nationalist and anti-liberal vehicle….”[3]
And F. William Engdahl writes in The Lost Hegemon: Whom the Gods Would Destroy: “The rising anti [imperialist] tide [in Egypt] …created the backdrop in which an obscure Sunni Muslim school teacher named Hassan al-Banna created the Society of the Muslim Brothers, or, as it became known in the West, the Muslim Brotherhood.”[4]
Lastly, Robert Dreyfuss explains in his book Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam: “[In Egypt, at the time,] British diplomats, the intelligence service MI6, and Cairo’s [conservative establishment] would use the Muslim Brotherhood as a cudgel against Egypt’s [anti imperialists]…”[5]
Acting on behalf of the British, the Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia misshaped the Sunni branch of Islam in the 20th century. London wanted an obedient and backward population around the oil fields it coveted in the Middle East. It did not need secular Arabs arguing for nationalism or communism. So the fundamentalist, anti-modern brand of Islam espoused by the Muslim Brotherhood and Saudi Arabia (Wahhabism) fit the British perfectly.
America Doubles Down on Medievalism
After World War Two the Americans continued Britain’s retrograde mission in the Middle East. Dumbing down and repressing the Arabs was the goal. Following the British, the Americans began in Saudi Arabia because of oil. Indeed, before the war ended—in 1943—U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt declared that “I hereby find that the defense of Saudi Arabia is vital to the defense of the United States.”[6]
Why? Because America’s biggest energy companies (Standard Oil of California, Texaco, Exxon and Mobil—later known collectively as Aramco) were ready to exploit the most strategic oil fields in the world. The British had been eclipsed by the Americans but, in compensation, the U.S. gave London (British Petroleum) the oil fields in Iran.
By this time, around 1950, Saudi Arabia was bankrolling the Muslim Brotherhood. And America agreed. Medieval/Reactionary Islam was its insurance policy in the Middle East.
The Brotherhood’s covert network crisscrossed the Arab World. It was in Egypt—resisting Nasser’s nationalism. And was in Syria and Iraq—resisting the pan-Arabic socialists: the Ba’athists. The Brotherhood insisted that the Koran was its constitution. And Sharia law was its only law. Imams and America’s energy companies sabotaged the historical development of the Arab people.
The apotheosis of this nefarious relationship between America and Saudi Arabia was the 1973 deal to make the U.S. dollar the indispensable currency in the world. This American/Saudi conspiracy—the petrodollar—placed Islamic medievalism at the center of the global capitalist system. “Islamic banks” mushroomed. And “Islamic soldiers” were everywhere.
In 1979 U.S. President Jimmy Carter began Operation Cyclone, the CIA mission to fight the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. This covert crusade meant unleashing the crudest elements of Islam. America’s partners were Britain, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan—the latter had just had its Islamic counter-revolution. In 1977 General Zia overthrew Pakistan’s democracy and Islamized the country—turning it into a pro-American dystopia.
However, America’s use of medievalism as an imperialist weapon in the Middle East has its anomalies. In 1979, Iran Islamized itself but in the anti-imperialist—Shia Muslim—direction. A savage, 26-year, pro-U.S. dictatorship had taught the Iranians a valuable lesson.
Similarly, the actions of America’s stormtrooper in the Middle East—Israel—created two Islamic organizations that have resisted Western imperialism: Hezbollah (Shia) and Hamas (Sunni).
Meanwhile in Afghanistan the Taliban (Sunni), for so long America’s official enemy, recently retook power. But America itself and its ally, Pakistan, spawned the Taliban during Operation Cyclone in the 1980s. Blowback is part of the twisted American game.
Unfazed, America and the West continued to embrace and promote medieval Islam—convinced that it was the only way to preserve its hegemony in and around the Arab oil fields. The West may have lost Iran and parts of the Levant, and on the surface Kabul, but these forces hostile to the U.S. are still Islamist and, therefore, they are antagonistic to secular socialism—the West’s real enemy.
So all was not lost for NATO. In any case, the West gained Qatar, a key energy producer as well as being a major sponsor and promoter of pro-Western Islamic fundamentalism, as the wars against both Libya (2011) and Syria (2011-24) have demonstrated.
Full Circle—Back in Istanbul
What next? Another Ottoman delusion. A greater Israel. A never-ending reign of terror directed against the Arabs and whoever else threatens the West’s interests.
Today’s neo-Ottoman Turkey is the new Saudi Arabia. What Ibn Saud did in the 20th century, Recep Erdogan is doing in the 21st century—serving the West by spreading medievalism. New York and London, however, expect more from Erdogan. Central Asia and China are now the targets. From the Caspian Sea to Xinjiang there is a multitude of Muslims to confuse and terrorize. And Turkey has the gig.
The Americans have said as much. A former vice chair of America’s National Intelligence Council and former CIA station chief in Ankara, Graham Fuller, was arguing in the 1990s, and after, that Turkey is a “pivotal Muslim state.” According to Nafeez Ahmed, Fuller outlined the big picture as follows:
“The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against the Red Army. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”[7]
This is déjà vu. It is a repetition of covert British policy in the Middle East a century ago. The focus this time though is Eurasia and the agent is Turkey rather than Saudi Arabia. Istanbul is America’s geopolitical link to Central Asia. And the Organization of Turkic States—which includes Turkey, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan—is the ready-made stage for Turkish/U.S. (NATO) covert action.
Repeating the British tactic in Egypt in 1928, the Americans covertly supported an obscure Islamic teacher in Turkey—Fethullah Gülen—in order to penetrate and manipulate the regional population. Just as British intelligence used Hassan al-Banna (the founder of the Muslim Brotherhood), U.S. intelligence used Gülen.
The Gülen Movement—Islamic schools and a secretive network of Islamic elites—complemented the Muslim Brotherhood in Turkey in the 1980s and 1990s and enabled the rise of Recep Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party. This upswell of Turkish Islamism around 2000 hollowed out the modern legacy of Kemal Atatürk. And after playing his part in this Islamic victory, Fethullah Gülen, significantly, moved to the United States, from where he managed his Islamic “empire.”
After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Gülen’s Islamic schools spread out across Central Asia. And according to a Turkish intelligence officer, Osman Nuri Gündes, these schools were cover for CIA activity.[8]
Education, though, is not the CIA’s business. On the contrary, its purpose is to miseducate people and defeat the modern ideas of international equality and global justice.
Secret warfare is the CIA’s business, and as Graham Fuller intimated, medieval Islam is its key partner. Imams and jihadis are America’s agents. And they are currently operating in Central Asia. Turkey is the strategic key and the CIA is turning it.
Syria indicates this. In Idlib province, Turkey protected, trained and armed the Islamic militants who overthrew the secular government of Syria in 2024. Turkey did this for the West because Istanbul is a NATO stronghold. In fact, Turkey finished what U.S. President Barack Obama started in 2012, Operation Timber Sycamore, the CIA mission to overthrow the secular government of Syria. In Damascus, Turkey has placed all its cards on the table. And they are all pro-Western. And, ipso facto, pro-Israel (pro-genocide).
What will Turkey do next? It will do whatever the U.S./NATO wants it to do. The reactionary militants Turkey let loose in Syria include Islamists from Central Asia and China—Uzbeks, Tajiks and Uyghurs. Turkey/U.S. (NATO) commands these al-Qaeda-types. And controls their future movements. They are a moveable medieval mercenary army. And will be let loose in Central Asia—just as the al-Qaeda-types who fought for the U.S. (NATO) in Afghanistan, in the 1980s, were let loose in Bosnia, Chechnya, Algeria and elsewhere in the world in the 1990s and 2000s.
The End of Western Civilization
In the modern world imperialism is an outdated practice. Secularism and reason have taken root everywhere. Discrimination and exploitation based on race or religion or geographic location are discredited policies.
However, the West wants to survive as a separate/imperial bloc—therefore physical and ideological walls have to be reinvented. Anti-modern and anti-civilizational methods must be reborn. In this context medievalism is a godsend for the West. Religions devoid of any reason—for the global or regional masses—are the perfect partners or covers for a duplicitous economic system—one that is Eurocentric or U.S.-centric.
To control the Middle East so as to control its oil, the most strategic resource in the world, the West had to negate modernism in the region. The West had to negate its own secular experience and fall back on sacred texts that make no sense today. After World War One, the Koran and the Bible were let loose in the region by Western imperialists, mercilessly, for economic and political reasons. And to this day, these ancient books continue to be weaponized by the West in this region and beyond.
Syria is the latest victim of this medieval tactic. And Turkey is the latest tactician. And Turkey is not finished. Guided by NATO and the West, Istanbul is on a collision course with Central Asia and China. Yet again Imperialism and religious fundamentalism have teamed up to derail modernism in the East. It is too late, however. China and the rest have already bolted into the free world of secular human development. The only derailment is happening now in the West.
Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World (London: Bloomsbury Books, 2015), 48. ↑
Mark Curtis, Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam (London: Serpent’s Tail, 2012), pp. 11-12. ↑
Christopher Davidson, Shadow Wars: The Secret Struggle for the Middle East (London: Oneworld Publications, 2016), p. 16. ↑
F. William Engdahl, The Lost Hegemon: Whom the Gods Would Destroy (Wiesbaden: mine.Books, 2016), p. 67. ↑
Robert Dreyfuss, Devil’s Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam (New York: Holt Paperbacks, 2005), p.47. ↑
Ibid., p. 68.
Nafeez Ahmed, “Our Terrorists,” New Internationalist, October 1, 2009. ↑
Joshua Kucera, “Is the CIA Infiltrating Central Asia Via Turkish Muslims?” Eurasianet, January 6, 2011. ↑
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About the Author
Aidan O’Brien is a hospital worker in Dublin, Ireland.
Aidan can be reached at: ado1968@hotmail.com.
