We are in the age of great words, great claims and great struggles. Those who are trying to seal off Turkey’s southern gates from Iran to the Mediterranean, those who are trying to take Hatay after Afrin and reach the Mediterranean, had not waited for Turkey to have its say on these great plans. While they were planning to take Hatay, Turkey entered Afrin; it is going to enter Manbij and continue all the way until the Iraqi border without bowing down to any obstacle.

Those who are trying to build a region will be shown once more who has been building this region for a thousand years. President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan going to Hatay yesterday with a crowded team of journalists, artists, athletes, giving the world a message from there and speaking from the border has great symbolic significance. This is Turkey’s stance; it is the declaration that a country is back on the rise, that it has returned to its history-making political genetic.

At a time when all the fault lines in the world have become active, at a time when power showdowns are erupting in every corner of the earth, the world is going to have to take the answer that was given from Hatay. The numerous developments you have seen from Afrin to St Petersburg, from the Red Sea to South Asia, from the U.S. troops in Manbij to France’s terrorism discourse, are part of a global showdown. Turkey has set off on the path with very big steps in this showdown, and it is impossible to stop it now.

The lowering of the U.S. flag yesterday at the consulate in St Petersburg, the consulate being shut down and the simultaneous return of the Russian diplomats who were deported from the U.S. coming back home is not a temporary crisis. Almost all European countries, led by the U.K., deporting Russian diplomats, displaying a joint attitude, and efforts to push Russia outside of Europe is not only a murder issue.

You are witnessing the first signals of a separation, a division, of vast borders from the Baltics to Eastern Europe, from Ukraine to Georgia. A while later, you too are going to see how this line is going to turn into fronts and conflict area. You are going to see this line extend all the way from the Caucasus to Southeast Asia, that a more fierce area of conflict is going to form in the Asia Pacific, and that it is going to have a global impact.

Let us also note that there are going to be very strong tremors from Central Africa to Yemen, from the Red Sea to the Persian Gulf and to the Eastern Mediterranean, that the earth’s entire fault line has become active, that all covert plans have been laid on the table, that there is going to be a major battle between the East’s great rise and the West’s ambition to keep the world under unilateral control and plunder it, and that the construction of a new world is going to be determined based on the result of this tension.

There is no doubt that Turkey is one of the sharpest – as a matter of fact, one of the most important – fronts of this great global storm. It is Turkey’s choices that will determine the East-West power showdown and the balance of the new global power map. The July 15 attack was not only aimed to redesign internal politics. It was an effort to further shrink Turkey and make it dependent on the Atlantic alliance again.

This is not possible with the current “national state mind” and first, those who represent this mind, who support it had to be discharged, and Turkey had to be repositioned according to the great global storm in favor of the West. After doing this, they were going to release it on the front against Russia and push it into war with Iran. Had the July 15 coup attempt not been thwarted that night, today, during U.S. and European countries’ “diplomat crisis,” there would be crises between Turkey and Russia that would lead to clashes.

It probably was not going to wait until today and the Turkey-Iran war would have been long broken out through the Syria-Iraq-Iran-Pakistan-Afghanistan line.

A siege operation was going to be carried out all the way to South Asia, a new resistance line was going to be designed for the Western world and Turkey was going to become the main base. Now, it is the total opposite. This zone has been completely closed off to U.S. and European areas of influence. This is the first time in history that Turkey, to this extent, has broken away from the West. Because all the threats were coming from the West and we entered an extraordinary period of defense – we had to.

Now, an anti-West bloc is forming from Turkey to the East, all the way to Indonesia, and this is happening for the first time in history. Now, the region’s resistance is taking the lead against the U.K. mind, against U.S. power. Turkey had to be destroyed for the West’s plans to retake control over the majority of the world. When we say, that night, “Our people changed the course of history,” this is what we mean.

The resistance line was pulled back to the south in the name of the West because July 15 failed, because our nation spoiled the game. The United Arab Emirates (UAE), Saudi Arabia, Israel, Egypt axis was formed. A new line was drawn from the Red Sea and Djibouti to the Persian Gulf and the East. It is revealed here why some Arab countries took part in the July 15 attack that was carried out by the U.S. and Israel and was supported by almost all European countries.

Only in this way it becomes clear why Turkey took the offensive after July 15, why it cleared all the foreign elements on the inside and why it started operations in northern Syria. Hence, the Afrin operation is not against Syria. It is directly against the bosses and undertakers of July 15. And it will continue nonstop, without hesitation – it must. Otherwise, Turkey will very rapidly be sacrificed to plans to “shrink it and take it under control.”

The Syria leg of the West-Russia fight or the East-West showdown must be grasped very well. There is no longer a Syria war; now, the Damascus regime and the groups there are also part of this great showdown. Syria is one of the bloodiest fronts of the global power struggle.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s statement saying, “We are going to pull out of Syria. We have to cooperate more with Turkey,” that left its mark on the past week and French President Emannuel Macron’s foolish statement about “Mediating between the PKK [Kurdistan Workers’ Party] and Turkey,” deliriums of sending troops to Manbij, his unfortunate statements that included partnership with terror, and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman’s words meaning, “The U.S. should stay in Syria,” do not consist of overnight tactic whims. They are the elements of this great showdown.

Turkey foiled the plan to surround it with the PKK, and forced them to set up a new game as a result of its operations that started with Afrin. It is no longer possible for the U.S. to hold on here in this state, to complete that terror garrison. There is no force or circle other than the PKK that wants the U.S. Soon, everybody in the region is going to start fighting to have the U.S. out of Syrian territory.

Turkey is going to continue on with its operations toward the east of the Euphrates anyway – despite the U.S. and the West. They are now changing shifts; they are trying to replace U.S. troops with French troops. But France does not have the power to stand against Turkey. It will have nothing left other than its new bad police role and the image of partnership with terrorism.

Because Turkey’s Afrin operation has reset all the plans that the U.S., France and Europe, Saudi Arabia and the UAE set up on Syria. They no longer have any chance left to reestablish this game – at least no longer in northern Syria.

All these statements, attempts to replace the U.S. with France, the shift problems of the bosses of terrorism are signs that Turkey ruined regional plans even with the Afrin operation alone. What kind of impact are our interventions on Manbij and the east of the Euphrates going to have? I know the kind of effect they are going to have: U.S., Israeli and European allies are going to lose all hope regarding northern Syria, they are going to leave this region, abandon the PKK-affiliated Democratic Union Party (PYD) or choose to use them for international terror attacks everywhere like Daesh.

Through the operations it is conducting for its own security, Turkey is also taking extraordinary steps in shaping the future of the region with geopolitical moves. I am trying to point out that the issue is not terrorism, that it is not the adventurism of U.S. troops, that it is the shaping of a new region and that both our defeat and victory is going to lead to deep regional tremors.

We no longer need their defense, mercy or compassion. When building a new world, we are the ones who need to determine our place in this world. This is what Turkey is doing. The same path is going to be taken if Macron comes; the great historic leap is going to take place; Turkey’s rise cannot be stopped. A century later, the West is going to have to watch “Turkey’s rise.”

As Turkey is trying to build its own century, it must be extremely careful regarding internal and external efforts to stop it. The role that the West has cast for us for the 21st century is dishonorable and we will never accept this.

President Erdoğan’s message from Hatay yesterday is not an Afrin message but a regional and historic message. Those who do not want to interpret and understand it will have to accept it after a certain time. From now on, everything that is said is going to be said in the same tone; every operation that needs to be conducted is going to be carried out with the same determination. The “Relentless Resistance” is going to spread out from within.