“When an operation is mentioned, the ones that are performed by guns or blockbusters are not the only ones that come to mind. There are also operations, which aim to obtain results by diplomacy and negotiation.”

These statements of President Erdoğan also describe the new operation perception of New Turkey. Turkey is certainly demonstrating how they get better results with this new operation perception, including its own resolution process, to the rest of the world. Turkey is getting results by means of talking, trying to understand diplomacy or politics. What is the result they intend to reach?

Of course, this also is pointing at the state’s new perception: “Keeping people alive”. In order to avoid young people from being killed and prevent parents from crying, Turkey prefers a solution, politics, diplomacy and conversation by means of mobilizing all its privileges, rather than going to war.

Turkey is not only caring for Turkey’s citizens; rather, Turkey is playing the role of a shelter for people from every point in the geography that are under fire, in order to save their lives.

With this perception, Turkey had rescued their 49 consulate personnel from the hands of ISIL, against whom the rest of the world had mobilized and declared as a terrorist organization. They didn’t carry out this rescue operation by using weapons, clashing or force. On the contrary, this happy ending was achieved by delicate diplomacy and intelligence workmanship, which continued with great precision for the past 101 days.

While a stern campaign against ISIL had been mobilized all around the world, instead of joining this campaign with a more heroic and pragmatist tone, Turkey had given its priority to the rescue of the citizens who are in the hands of ISIL in one piece. A wrong word or move would have put our citizens’, who were in the hands of ISIL – which possesses a different mentality and character than we are used to – lives in danger. This sensibility shown by Turkey on the matter of protecting the lives of its citizens is the typical manifestation of the understanding that is named as New Turkey by the AK Party government.

This also firmly bases the resolution process of New Turkey to a level of principal.

According to this principal understanding, what forms a state is not its monopoly over the power it uses, but rather its success in using that power in protecting the lives and security of its citizens. If a state becomes a threat, which cannot protect its own citizens and even puts their lives in danger, then it also doesn’t have legitimacy.

Unfortunately, the Middle East has lost its legitimacy in this sense, in other words, it is full of states that are posing a threat against the lives of its own citizens.

When we think about the generosity or nonchalance that the countries around this manifestation show to their own citizens, we appreciate how much of a difference this forms.

Turkey is restoring its sensitive attitude, which Turkey performs on the matter of its citizens’ lives and also presents this attitude to the people who are running away from their countries in the region, to a global frame.

Turkey’s difference is reflecting in a same way to the intelligence agencies’ approach. While the communications of the countries around Turkey are trying to form an insidious communication system against their public by selecting their people as enemies, the Turkish intelligence agency under Hakan Fidan’s administration had devoted all its intelligence and performance to keeping people alive. While trying to rescue the hostages safely from the hands of the most complicated organization history had ever seen, on the other hand it is being busy with providing live support to the people, who are left with the single choice of picking a death from deaths.

We should observe Old Turkey’s and it’s regional collaborators, who are used to the communication styles that regard their own people as possible threats against them, attempts to reflect MIT’s supports as aiding terrorism.

It seems that they are alien to an intelligence agency that is concentrated on saving people’s lives and keeping them alive. They will get used to this also.