EDITORIAL

On the verge of the Second World War, the Great Revolutionary Mustafa Kemal Atatürk used the following words to stress how the world would be shaped in the new age: “Look at the sun rising from the East. I see the rising of Eastern nations as I see the break of dawn today. Colonialism and imperialism will disappear from the face of the earth, and they will be replaced by an era of harmony and cooperation between nations, in which discrimination with respect to color, religion and ethnicity will not exist.”*

The beginning of the 20th century marks the beginning of the East’s rebellion and victories against imperialism. In the 21st century, developing countries from West Asia to Far Asia and from Latin America to Africa are rising to demand a just international order.

As the East develops and progresses, the West is increasingly shrinking and strained. With its position as an intercontinental bridge connecting Asia, Europe, and Africa via the Mediterranean, and thanks to its thousand-year old state tradition and its vast cultural heritage, Turkey will play a key role in the construction of this new order. Moreover, Turkey experiences a cycle in which the necessary conditions and opportunities have emerged for this potential to be actualized.

In the 21st Century Silk Road, the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), Turkey comes together not only with China but also with the rest of Asia and with Africa and Latin America. Turkey is starting to take its honorable place among the emerging Asian nations and getting the opportunity to establish equal relationships with European countries and the United States of America (USA).

Standing out for its aspirations for common prosperity and shared development, the BRI is developing a new kind of cooperation model that has the potential to shape the world order beyond the economic benefits it provides to the participating countries.

BRIQ would like to invite academics, researchers, writers, artists, decision-makers and the business community from all across Asia, Africa, Latin America, and Europe to discuss this opportunity. BRIQ is a platform that is supposed to ensure that intellectual knowledge produced in Turkey will make a prominent contribution to the developing world’s effort to establish a just order. Indeed, BRIQ will be the voice and breath of Turkey as much as of other developing countries.

We are ambitious. Because we believe in Turkey and its people, and in the developing world’s history-making potential.

FİKRET AKFIRAT
Editor-in-Chief

* Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, 26 March 1933, Saying to the Egyptian Ambassador Ahmet Remzi, (The Complete Works of Atatürk, v.26, p.144; World, 20 December 1954, Number: 1007, p.1,7)
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BRIQ Issue I – English

Contents

Abstract

Much has changed over the last three decades since George H. W. Bush’s call for a so-called “New World Order”. US leadership in the post–Cold War era has not only failed to provide global stability; it has also sharpened socioeconomic inequalities on a global scale. This situation has greatly facilitated the emergence of a multipolar world order. In political science, “world order” describes a system of global governance that draws its legitimacy from certain standards of fairness for global cooperation. The present article proposes to revisit the notion of world order from the lens of Rawlsian political philosophy on fairness. The aim is to assess how the American world order has addressed fundamental fairness issues and to understand how the newly emerging alternatives to this order tackle the challenge of fairness in a post-American age. The article uses process tracing to advance a threefold argument. First, US global leadership cannot maintain reciprocity and mutual trust as the driving values of global governance. Instead, developing countries are taking the lead in forging alternative values and principles for fairer cooperation. Second, US global leadership continues to rely on exploitative and coercive practices such as neoliberalism and military interventionism, which arrest international development. In contrast, contending countries in the developing world emphasize the practice of peaceful and sustainable human development. Third, and relatedly, US global leadership cannot prevent the crisis of its own institutional arrangements. This crisis is met by the initiatives of developing countries to create alternative institutions of global governance.

Keywords:fairness; global governance; international cooperation; military interventionism; neoliberalism; world order

Abstract

The once “Oppressed Nations” are now in the process of constructing a developing alternative to the Atlantic System in all spheres of life. The economic struggle is led by the People’s Republic of China, while an armed struggle is continuing in West Asia with Syria, Turkey, Russia and Iran at the forefront, and all this is reflected politically in the increasing centrifugal forces against the Atlantic System in Europe as well.

Abstract

The purpose of the BRI is to highlight connectivity, deepen pragmatic cooperation, build unity in responding to the various challenges that face humanity, and bring about mutual benefit and shared development. The Second BRF provided an important opportunity to take stock of the progress that has been made in joint development of the Belt and Road.

Abstract

This article examines political-economic strategies followed by the major countries that shaped the historical course of capitalism. Special attention will be paid to how these strategies have affected the configuration of power in the world. The aim is thus to understand the effect of global power systems on the world political economy and to make certain estimations regarding the course of the cooperative mechanisms that are being formed in today’s environment under the initiative of People’s Republic of China. As such, the article will undertake a geopolitical-economic analysis based on incorporated comparison and process tracing. This analysis is based on the case of Britain and the United States, which illustrates how unipolar power systems ­–characteristically underpinned by (neo)colonial exploitation, zero-sum policies, cyclical economic crises and belligerence– are doomed to long-term instabilities. The article also argues that a requisite condition for a stable system of multipolarity is to rely on nation-states as the primary political entity in world affairs, creating independently planned National Innovation Systems in selected strategic sectors, and providing an adequate educational system that responds to the requirements of these sectors. Economically weaker countries would not be able to fully benefit from multipolarity unless they satisfy the abovementioned three conditions, which also explains the historical success of countries such as Germany, Japan, and South Korea. The article maintains that, as the world is marching towards a multipolar system, leading economies of the Global South seem to establish closer partnership with peripheral economics based on socio-economic and political strategies inspiring humanitarian and peaceful values. However, peripheral economies can maximize the benefits of comprehensive partnerships such as the Belt and Road Initiative, only if they deepened their participation having fully determined their real necessities and aspirations.

Keywords:China, multipolarization, world system, globalization, unipolarity

Abstract

The aim of this study is to examine the respective positions of China and Turkey with reference to the general cooperation framework, principles, priorities, and mechanisms set out in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The study relies on an analysis of BRI-related documents prepared by the Republic of Turkey and the People’s Republic of China. Of the many documents which reflect each country’s perspective on the BRI, the following two are of particular significance: the Action Plan issued by China’s National Development and Reform Commission, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Ministry of Commerce, and a 2019 report entitled ‘Locating Turkey in the Belt and Road Initiative’, issued by the Foreign Economic Relations Board of Turkey’s Ministry of Commerce. Methodologically, this study is based on qualitative content analysis. Analysis results suggest that China aims at utilizing the BRI to open itself up to the external world in order to achieve an integration into the global economic system. Turkey, on the other hand, is aware of the fact that playing an active role in the BRI could increase its diplomatic maneuvering capacity, both regionally and globally. If Turkey fails to play an active role at the early stages of the Initiative, however, it could possibly loose its change to assume an influential position at later stages.

 

Keywords:Eurasia; China; Silk Road; Belt and Road Initiative; Turkey 

Abstract

Can the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) provide a remedy to current problems in the Middle East? What are the driving forces, opportunities and challenges for China to play a constructive role in the Middle East? These are some of the questions that this article will attempt to answer. Domestic academia in China had extensively discussed the “westward strategy” before the Belt and Road Initiative was put forward. At that time, this strategy was conceived of as a hedge against the “Asia Pacific Rebalancing Strategy” of the United States. However, under the Belt and Road Initiative, China is also engaged in strengthening its interactions with Middle Eastern countries, which will be an important way to further strengthen China’s Western front as an extension of China’s opening up to the outside world, a further acceleration of Eurasian linkages, and an effort towards further strengthening globalization. The “Belt and Road Initiative” faced severe Western criticism. Yet in fact, this initiative is not modeled on the post-World War II Marshall Plan as a Chinese conspiracy. The initiative is not a geopolitical tool, but it is intended to serve as a practical cooperation platform. The Middle East is an important site on the strategic roadmap of the Belt and Road Initiative. Indeed, achieving regional stability is in line with China’s overseas strategic interests. Without getting on the train, however, China will not learn how to drive. It is through participation in the practical process of addressing these problems that China can accumulate greater experience in managing international conflicts and improve its ability to deal with complicated international disputes.

 

Keywords: Belt and Road, Turkey, Middle East, globalization, geopolitics

 

Abstract

It may prove most difficult of all to uproot enmities and reactionary ideas and prejudices that in some cases have been nurtured over hundreds of years.
In working towards resolution of these conflicts, we must look to culture and the arts and make use of their potential.