The Afrin operation is showing us a very crucial fact that we cannot see: who is Turkey’s friend and its foe... Where it comes from, where it moves toward...

We still cannot see what kind of a disaster has befallen Turkey for two centuries and how this disaster deprived us of ourselves, distanced us from who we really are and threw us to the edge of a dubious dead end!

But it seems that the Afrin operation will teach us what the ontological catastrophe that we have been going through for two centuries is and where it originated from...

The real and ugly faces of the imperialists have been revealed!

From the moment the Afrin operation began, perhaps for the first time in our recent centennial history, we have started to see and learn who is friend and who is foe.

We saw the hostile attitude that European countries, and especially America, adopted against Turkey.

This openly hostile attitude of the Western countries against Turkey didn’t just emerge after the Afrin operation for sure; this is a reality that we have begun to see from the Dec. 17-25 "attack," the Gezi attempt, and of course the 15 July coup and invasion attempt.

However, it was only after the Afrin operation that we succeeded in clearly understanding the hostility of the U.S. and European countries against Turkey.

After the Afrin operation, the imperialist desires and ugly faces of the Western countries were fully revealed.

Well then, why didn’t the major European countries such as the Netherlands, France, Germany, and particularly the United States, abstain from adopting hostile attitudes toward Turkey although it is a member of principal Western institutions, primarily NATO?

To put it differently, what are the reasons of the hostility of Westerners toward Turkey, which indistinctly started with the Dec. 17-25 attack, took form with the 15 July coup attempt, and finally became apparent in the Afrin operation?

The main reason for this is that for the first time Turkey apparently challenged Westerners, hence made a historic move distorting the imperialist ambitions of the Westerners and circumvented their tricks and launched a military operation with its own free will!

This move alone was enough to drive the Western imperialists crazy and increase their hostility that they bore against Turkey which shapes their subconscious. This is because it was us who confronted the Westerner attacks for a thousand years!

And because Turkey, at this point, started to act independently from the Western imperialists, their internal collaborators, and power and interest groups!

One of the consequences of this operation, which will lead to invisible yet lasting effects, is that the society will begin to recognize its enemy.

This will play a historic role in realizing and, in time, solving the burning problem of the realization of who and what Turkey is which I pointed out at the beginning of this column.

This society was turned into to a society without enemies, particularly in the last century. Furthermore, it was enamored with the Westerners, our millennial enemy, its executioner, which is waging war against us.

This is the greatest catastrophe that may ever befall a society: by being enamored with its executioner, to be dragged into a fatal and creepy inferiority complex and, as a result, be wiped off from history!

It is no surprise when a society enamored with its executioner loses its civilizational claim, historical depth, and self-confidence as well.

Again, for the same reasons, the only country in the world that could not be colonized would show the carelessness to be the only country to colonize itself, but would be too blind to see it due to a creepy intellectual paralysis, mental blindness and abasement of enslavement.

However, a society that does not know its enemies cannot know itself either; it cannot see the future, and it cannot take firm steps forward!

Here, I am not talking about a pathologic attitude such as insisting on making enemies of certain somebodies.

On the contrary, what I say is that the world is not a bed of roses as we were taught for centuries, that some have identified us as enemies and determined centuries-old strategies over us; for this reason, we must not know very well that they are aiming at preventing us from coming to ourselves, acting like history makers and setting off on the path that will actualize our civilization claims.

The hurting truth that the Westerners already know but we can never really see because we were enamored with our executioner is this: the biggest obstacle in front of the tyrannical hegemony of the Westerners of the world is us.

Of course, it is the “us” that will end our centennial vacation, enable us to shape world history again, which was not really overcome and understood, the us that will start to realize our civilizational claims and actualize them based on truth, not blind domination, justice not exploitation and rightness not injustice.

What the Afrin operation taught us…

So, the Turkey… Is this who WE really are?

Not yet, but when it begins to know its real enemy, return home from its centennial vacation, recover its consciousness and start shaping history again, only then will the real “us” take form.

This is what the westerners are afraid of!

They are afraid of the likelihood that Turkey, the spirit of the world and the hope of the oppressed, will awaken, stand up, and stimulate the oppressed and that the bells will ring for the three-century long imperialistic tyrant hegemony that Westerners have established in the world!

Yes, this is what westerners are afraid of!

This will be the most important historical lesson the Afrin operation will teach us: to recognize our enemies, to find ourselves, and to lay the foundations of the spiritual civilization that will pave the way for humankind, which will be constructed by the mind and heart with ordeals, patience, hope and with the help of God…