Turkey, Russia, & the struggle for the Global South

Okay. There's a few developments, that I wanted to talk about just briefly, just sort of update the news. First, there was a meeting, between, Erdogan and Putin in Russia. Now the two main topics that they were discussing was, one was the, Black Sea grain deal, and then the other was the plans for creating a, gas trading hub in Turkey. As for the grain deal, Putin, refused to revive it.

Now the idea behind the grain deal or, anyway, the advertised purpose of the grain deal, was to allow grain, mainly wheat, to be exported by Ukraine through the Black Sea to ensure that poor countries in the global south wouldn't go hungry as a result of the war. That's the advertised purpose. Before the meeting, Erdogan sort of hyped this rationale by saying that starving countries in Africa were waiting with bated breath to see what the outcome of their meeting would be, to see if the deal, the grain deal, would be revived after it had expired some time ago. They wanted to see whether or it was gonna be restarted. But let's be clear about something.

The grain deal was principally a support mechanism for the EU, not for Africa, not for Asia, not for The Middle East. At the time of its expiration, reportedly, not a single shipment of promised grain had actually reached any port in the global South. In fact, Ukraine was not shipping mostly wheat as had been advertised and as had been promised, but they were shipping corn and corn fodder, which is used to feed livestock, not to feed people. This is not what the people in the global South needed, but it is helpful, to European markets. But you can't just say that.

I mean, EU leaders wanna make it look like the grain deal is some sort of humanitarian endeavor aimed at helping the poorest and hungriest people in the global South. EU leaders can't exactly come out and say that they want the grain deal to make sure that Europeans are gonna be able to continue feeding their cows and pigs. So it's been a sham from day one, and Putin knows it and Erdogan knows it. Russia has been exporting wheat by the tens of thousands of tons, to Africa already, and they're planning to ship even more. With or without the grain deal, this is happening.

With or without the grain deal, this will continue happening. But the grain deal is important to Europe, and so it's important to Turkey because Turkey is trying to position itself as a significant power with leverage over Europe. So Erdogan would like to be able to restart the grain deal to increase the EU's reliance on Turkey. And the same goes for the the planned gas trading hub. This project would allow Turkey to trade gas from all available sources and reexport gas to third countries, including to the EU.

This obviously will give Turkey an even greater degree of leverage over the entire continent of Europe. Now the talks between Putin and Erdogan on this issue, on the issue of the the gas hub, they were positive and both leaders said that that the plans should be agreed upon and completed very soon. They also discussed building another nuclear power plant in Turkey, and the heads of the Turkish and Russian central banks are said to be scheduling talks for trading with one another, bilateral trade between Turkey and Russia to be able to trade in the national currencies rather than the dollar. Now on the issue of trading in national currencies, I wanted to just mention another development, that I just came across, which is that in the ASEAN region, countries like Malaysia, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, The Philippines, and South Korea are making moves to accelerate their own, dedollarization, moving towards, using their national currencies in, all bilateral trade. Now if you followed me for very long, you'll know that this is something that I have endorsed, and something that I prefer to the creation of a single trading currency for BRICS.

In my opinion, these types of steps that's that's going on with the ASEAN countries are very positive. And I very much like the fact that this is moving through existing regional organizations like ASEAN. This way, you can promote both economic and political sovereignty as well as regional solidarity without submitting to a sort of centralized order that may or may not support your nation's or your region's interests. I think that there's a sort of battle going on, about how the pivot to the global south is gonna be managed. In my opinion, the western oriented owners and controllers of global financialized capital would very much like to see the outcome of this pivot south just be a replication of the Bretton Woods system with the headquarters instead of being in Washington being in maybe Shanghai.

And with the, new development bank more or less replacing the IMF or the World Bank and a single BRICS currency, single BRICS trading currency replacing the dollar. Now on the other side, you have leaders in the global South who are genuinely interested in and pursuing, and they want to see this historic pivot be used to pioneer a new economic order, which will see the long suffering victims of the Bretton Woods system finally attain their real economic sovereignty and independence. Now this is, of course, a very complicated and treacherous undertaking. There are both political and private sector leaders, in the Global South who are essentially, collaborators with the western owners and controllers of global financialized capital. And they would themselves benefit from a replication of the, Bretton Woods system.

So there are struggles within, Global South countries about how this pivot is gonna be managed. There are factions who want to pioneer a new, global economic order, and there are factions who want to maintain, the status quo, who wanna maintain the current system, but they just want to relocate it and sort of recalibrate it to their region. The collaborators, of course, have the full backing of the Western OCGFC, the owners and controllers of global financialized capital. So this is absolutely a power struggle. The pivot south, is going to happen one way or the other.

But the way the transition to the global South, the way the transition, is managed will determine the future, whether or not these nations will attain true independence and sovereignty or whether the current system just shifts hemispheres. In my opinion, within the next decade, Turkey will emerge as the most powerful country in Europe. And it will ultimately become more important and more powerful than Russia. Geopolitically, you would be hard pressed to find any other country that is better positioned than Turkey in terms of geopolitical fundamentals. All that they need to do really is just ensure that they can have a robust birth rate moving forward, and they'll be unstoppable.

There are political and economic moves involving Turkey, The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to one extent or another that could create a cohesive power globally that we have not seen since the Ottoman Empire. And how this develops will also have a significant impact on how the overall pivot to the global South proceeds. So in my view, anyone who excessively criticizes these countries, The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, anyone who excessively criticizes these countries is basically an enemy to the realization of global Muslim political and economic influence. Now I've talked before about how in this day and age, we have multiple layers of imperial powers in the world. There's economic empires.

There's private sector empires. There are empires of influence. And I believe that, we are witnessing empire building in real time by countries, like The UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Together, they are a collective nascent power in the world. And while they may be junior players right now in relation to Russia and China, say, I believe that these positions are going to be reversed in the next several decades potentially in our lifetimes.