A historic and geopolitical perspective
A historic and geopolitical perspective
By Halil Özsaraç – Retired naval staff colonel, naval historian
First published in the March 2022 issue of Teori magazine from Türkiye in Turkish, translated into English by UWI
I don’t know whether children still fall for such simple tricks. In the past, children who wouldn’t behave were often frightened into obedience by an “imaginary danger” called the “bogeyman”. A child, in need of protection, yet reacts against authority because being under it feels unpleasant, would be kept under control by being scared with an undefined, imaginary threat.
The use of “alliance” models as instruments of exploitation by predatory powers claiming to protect, even develop, the weak is not a newly discovered method. In fact, it has appeared before us for thousands of years in different guises.
Before turning to its historical examples, let’s look at the one right before us today: NATO. Although it has lost its reason for existence, NATO is kept alive through hypothetical and forced reasons, and hazy pretexts. It is, in this sense, a brilliant project designed to exploit both those inside and outside it.
NATO is a special arena in which the policy of taming states whose spirit still carries the fire of independence (Türkiye, for instance) is skillfully applied by admitting them into an alliance in exchange for protection against a danger that either does not truly exist or is manageable. It is the military unit of an ever-updating mechanism of exploitation that compels national aims to be subordinated to global aims. This global unit makes global interventions in micro-level matters, turns weak states into hybrid warriors, and thereby carries out the activities of “modern colonialism” at a remarkably low cost.
For example, it is a deliberate act that PYD-YPG, a global terrorist organization under the patronage of NATO member the US, is brought into interaction with another NATO member, Türkiye, as a national threat (buffer). The purpose that NATO member states and global terrorist organizations used as hybrid warriors against many countries, including NATO members, is quite clear: nothing other than the boundless interests of the US. I should also note, in parentheses, that even the mini-giants we cannot classify among the oppressed (Germany, Britain, France) are tired of unipolarity, that is, of being the US’ forced supporters.
The official discourse of NATO during the Cold War was always ideological in character. In 1949, NATO easily united the defense capacities of all states north of the 36th parallel with an Atlantic coastline, except Germany, Spain, and Sweden. Yet what NATO truly sought to do was nothing other than to create a strong buffer across the Baltic Sea, the Black Sea, and the Mediterranean in order to eliminate the possibility that control over all the oceans and seas seized by the US might pass into someone else’s hands.
The Eastern Bloc, which resisted US imperialism for a long time, was unable to overcome this buffer, which grew stronger as it continually expanded westward. Let alone becoming stronger in the oceans, the Eastern Bloc remained trapped in closed and cold seas, weakened, and eventually disintegrated. The fact that both the Warsaw Pact and the USSR dissolved in 1991, NATO’s insistence on preserving its existence made it clear that what was really intended was not defense cooperation.
Beyond this, the purpose behind the aggressive eastward expansion of this powerful imperialist buffer is exactly the same as its founding purpose 73 years ago: to block Russia, a country with the potential to gain strong access to the oceans, from reaching the sea. Yet this applies not only to Russia, but also to all NATO countries except the US.
The fact that the maritimization of NATO states other than the US is kept under control, and that they are not allowed to cross certain thresholds, is one of NATO’s most typical features. The US has shackled its allies who seek to grow stronger at sea. And history going back centuries offers many examples of this as well.
The first NATO-like military alliance in world naval history
Military alliances similar to NATO, existed centuries ago as well. The policy of exploiting one’s allies by invoking an enemy is not a newly discovered method; it is a strategic fraud that has been practiced for centuries in different forms.
Let us rewind the film by roughly 25 centuries and take a journey from NATO’s ancestors.
The Attic-Delian Naval League, founded in 477 BC under the leadership of Athens against the Persians and lasting 46 years, is the first magnificent ancestor of today’s NATO.
Greek city-states, numbering 173 and frequently fighting among themselves, decided to establish a defense cooperation under the leadership of the city-state of Athens against the “Persian” threat.
The primary aim of this defense organization, which took shape along the western shores of the Sea of Islands (the Aegean) was of course nothing other than to protect the lively maritime trade in grain, olive oil, and wine. This Naval League managed to keep Persian ships away from Greek merchant vessels in the Sea of Islands. However, the inability of the 173 city-states to share this intense maritime trade and its revenues peacefully split the League into two and led to the Peloponnesian War, which would last uninterrupted for 27 years along the western shores of the Sea of Islands.
A confederation gathered around Athens, the strongest city-state, surrendered at the end of this exhausting war to another confederation gathered around Sparta, which had challenged Athens. As the NATO of the era collapsed, the imperialism of the era was also defeated.
According to the experience that world history gained from the Attic-Delian Naval League 2,500 years ago, the most dangerous enemies of states that establish a common defense organization are not external enemies outside the alliance, but internal hostilities within it. For this reason, the grounds for being part of a defense organization must always be realistic; one must not lose power inside an alliance that fails to meet one’s security needs.
The control of maritime power within an alliance and the example of the Catholic Naval Alliance
After the short-lived global empire of Alexander the Great of Macedon, the Roman Empire, which established sovereignty over all Mediterranean coasts but had a rather weak political structure, split in the fourth century. Warrior monarchs who gained strength in the former dominions of the collapsed Western Roman Empire, yet failed to achieve political unity, gradually came under the religiously framed political influence of the Catholic Church from the fifth century onward.
Until the end of the Middle Ages, the fanatical Catholic Church would serve the function of uniting Western Europe’s military power against other religions and denominations. In fact, the main reason why European monarchs, who could not get along among themselves, were so willing to place their military forces at the disposal of the Catholic Church was the weakness of the West at sea. For when the Arabs and Berbers crossed the Strait of Gibraltar (Ceuta) in 711 at the invitation of the people of the Iberian Peninsula, who had grown weary of Visigothic oppression and cruelty, it meant driving a wedge into the maritime trade route between Europe’s Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts. Catholic West, which could not establish sufficient presence in the Mediterranean because it could not overcome the powerful naval forces of both the Fatimids and the Orthodox Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium) inevitably lost power when it also lost the Mediterranean-Atlantic connection. This situation forced the Catholic world, which until then had struggled to unite its military power, to gather around the Church, the NATO of the era.
Catholic Europe achieved its first military success by forcing the Muslims it had stopped at Poitiers, in the French interior, to retreat back to the Iberian Peninsula (Andalusia) in 732. From that date onward, the Western Alliance began preparing its maritime infrastructure ahead of the great struggle it would enter into with the East.
The issue to which the Catholic Church paid the greatest attention during its 300-year preparation of strategic maritime infrastructure was this: it did not allow maritime power to be concentrated in a single Western state, fearing that this would shake its own authority. The Catholic Church knew very well that the secret of power lay in the seas, and by keeping the maritime strengthening of states under control, it ensured the longevity of its own authority.
This is the main reason why Türkiye’s maritime power is wanted to be so intensely controlled today. A Türkiye whose power at sea is kept below a certain threshold feels weak and dependent on NATO, and in contrast a Türkiye that crosses the threshold at sea grows stronger and, no longer needing NATO, breaks away from it.
The West’s plunder of the East through maritimization within the alliance
Until the tenth century, Arab sailors and Eastern Roman sailors fought fiercely over all trade routes in the Mediterranean. The victor of this struggle was the Eastern Roman sailors. As Arab sailors withdrew from the Western Mediterranean, Catholic sailors, especially Venetians, Genoese, Catalans, Aragonese, French, Amalfitans, Anconans, and Pisans, began to take their place. The Eastern Roman state, shaken by the settlement of the Turks in Anatolia, failed to give the necessary importance to its sailors and began to decline.
The Turks, who tried to get an access to sea with Chaka Bey, were forced to withdraw from the seas and retreat toward the interior of Anatolia in the face of the powerful attacks of the First Crusade, which had the character of a combined Catholic-Orthodox operation.
The Orthodox Eastern Roman Empire made the mistake of joining the Catholic Alliance, the NATO of the age, established against Muslims. Although it was partly satisfied with the results of the First Crusade, it was helplessly forced, with the subsequent Crusades, to accept the domination of Catholic sailors over all trade routes passing through its own seas. To put it more clearly, Byzantium, by joining the Catholic Alliance, had given up its seas in exchange for land. And this would cost it dearly.
The Catholic Alliance, which had a military and institutional role much like NATO today, used its undisputed superiority at sea after the First Crusade to plunder the entire Mediterranean Basin for centuries through a system that exploited not only Muslims but also Orthodox Christians. The Orthodox Eastern Roman Empire realized that losing the sea had been a fatal mistake and moved away from the Catholic Alliance. From then on, it tried to prolong its lifespan by experimenting with regional and short-lived military cooperation models between the Turks and the Catholics.
The liberation of the “maritimized Turks” from the plunder of the Western Alliance
During this period of plunder in the Mediterranean Basin, the Catholic Church preferred to use as a mechanism of control the wars among the maritime city-states under its influence over the high-revenue maritime trade routes of silk and spices between the eleventh and fourteenth centuries.
Turkish sailors made very good use of this deep crack in “Europe’s NATO”. Though with difficulty, they managed to reach the Mediterranean in the fourteenth century.
The Catholic Church, unwilling to end the Venetian-Genoese hostility, tried to wear down Turkish sailors through the Knights of the Order of Saint John (the Hospitallers) whom it had placed in Rhodes as a buffer. But the Turks, tired of Catholic plunder, despite some delay caused by the effective hybrid operations of the excellent sailors Rhodes Knights, fought their way to control the Mediterranean maritime trade routes of silk by the end of the fifteenth century and of spices by the beginning of the sixteenth century.
In short, a crack emerged within the Western Alliance because of disputes over the sharing of the loot obtained from the East. Thanks to this. The Turks, exhausted of being plundered, found the opportunity to “maritimize”, and this brought an end to the West’s system of plundering.
The oceans: impossible to reach agreement on share
Having been forced to accept the superiority of Turkish sailors in the Eastern Mediterranean and having begun to feel squeezed in the Western Mediterranean as well, the Catholic Church had Spain and Portugal attempt to bypass the silk and spice routes through the Atlantic Ocean, which inspired fear because its limits were unknown. It achieved a success that surprised even itself.
However, with the birth of Protestantism, the Catholic Church was forced to turn its attention from the sea to the land. As its control weakened, Spanish and Portuguese sailors, each time they stepped into new geographies and encountered new riches to exploit, began to gain strength over the oceans and independently of the Church.
Throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, spices were carried from India around the south of Africa to Europe; slaves transported from Africa to Central America extracted silver from mines; Central American silver was carried to the Far East through the Philippines; silk, porcelain, slaves, and spices taken from the Far East crossed the Pacific to Central America; and silver, sugar, rum, and tobacco found their routes across the Atlantic.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, alongside Spain, other European states with Atlantic coastlines (Britain, France, and the Netherlands) entered into a fierce race of maritimization in order to rule over the ocean routes heavily used for carrying goods from the plundered and exploited lands of America and Asia.
Until the twentieth century, no alliance dynamic emerged in the oceans: Every state that set out onto the oceans with the drive for plunder, colonies, and trade had to maritimize further in order to struggle more powerfully against the others.
With time, trade across the oceans far surpassed trade in the Mediterranean, and this triggered armed competition over ocean routes, the need for armament created by that competition, and the dynamic of ocean technologies.
The “buffering” of Turks, unable to reach the oceans, in the sea
While the imperialists were making great advances in maritimization in the oceans, Turkish sailors and the Venetians, another maritime power that insisted on not leaving the Mediterranean, wore each other down in a series of wars over Eastern Mediterranean trade routes that would last nearly 100 years. When the Ottomans were crippling the Venetian naval power to the point where it could no longer recover at the beginning of the 18th century, they had in fact fallen into the same condition themselves and had won a Pyrrhic victory from which they would never again recover at sea.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Britain, the imperialist power of the age, competed with France in the oceans while also seeking to keep the Ottoman State, which it intended to colonize in the future, away from the oceans. For this purpose, Britain used Tsarist Russia, which it had maritimized to a certain degree under control, as a buffer state against both the Ottoman State and France.
At the end of the Ottoman-Russian struggle, which would last roughly 250 years until 1917, Russia, unable to obtain what it had hoped for in the struggle for command of the seas and having managed only to reach the Black Sea, understood that it had been used by imperialism as a buffer state. After that, together with Atatürk’s Türkiye, it took a position against imperialism.
The Ottoman Empire, falling into the same mistake as the Eastern Roman Empire in the past by neglecting its maritime infrastructure, first created a field of competition in its Blue Homeland for powerful maritime imperialists, and then tried to prolong its life by making zigzagging defense alliances among imperialist rivals. The imperialist maritime states destroyed the Ottoman Navy in 1827 at Navarino (in peacetime) as it was trying to breathe and grow stronger through various alliances. Then, in the west of the Sea of Islands (the Aegean), they founded Greece, a hybrid state to be used as a buffer against the Ottoman State. Greece has successfully carried out this mission to this day and has not disappointed Western imperialism.
Although the Ottoman State believed it was ensuring its security through unstable and sharply zigzagging alliances, it had in fact been turned into one of the buffer states used to prevent Russia, which itself once used as a buffer against the Ottomans. The imperialist West has never refrained from using one state it exploits, or tries to exploit, as a buffer against another state it exploits, or tries to exploit. This is the source of imperialism’s power. In truth, if we look at history, perhaps the most experienced states in the world in being used as buffers of imperialism have been the Ottoman State/Türkiye, Russia, and Greece.
Similarly, at the end of the nineteenth century, Britain sought to use Germany, which had achieved its unity as a land power, as a buffer state against Russia and France. When Britain saw that Germany, which it had been trying to maritimize only slowly, escaped its control in 1890, it realized that it had made a great mistake and had contributed to the emergence of a giant that would challenge it at sea.
By the beginning of the twentieth century, there were now new actors: the US, Germany, Italy, and Japan, which refused to be buffers. From then on, all main actors would fight for more oceans and more seas, and these worldwide wars would be won by those able to command the oceans and seas.
Because the Ottoman State had lost its maritime infrastructure and could not go beyond being a weak buffer, it was made dependent even in its most important warrior infrastructure, the “art of command”. The command of the army and navy was at times entrusted to French, British, and finally German admirals and generals. The Sèvres Treaty imposed on the Ottoman State at the end of the First World War offered the model of a weak Turkish state that would continue to serve as a buffer against Russia along a small coastal strip on the Black Sea.
This was not a situation unique to Türkiye. What must be stressed emphatically is: states that are strong at sea have always offered formulas designed to drag states that are weak at sea into alliances that assign them a “buffer” function. Today, Türkiye must ask the question, “Am I a buffer?” in order to test its own strength. Despite its 8,777 kilometers of coastline and its 462,000 square kilometers of Blue Homeland, if the answer to this question is “yes” or “partly yes,” then this means: “We have been deceiving ourselves until now!” and “We must urgently maritimize much more.”
A revolution yet to be achieved: the “Maritimization Revolution”
With the War of Independence, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk spoiled the imperialists’ plans to push Türkiye away from the seas and to confine it to a narrow strip of the Black Sea, forcing it to accept being a miserable buffer state.
Atatürk’s Türkiye adopted the policy of not being in the same military alliances with imperialism, which had grown very strong at sea. This was one of the magnificent dynamics of the Turkish Revolution. Atatürk’s policy kept our country away from the irrationality of taking on the corrosive “buffer function.” Thanks to this, Türkiye could find the opportunity to carry out the revolutions. Yet among the Turkish revolutions, one very important revolution somehow remained incomplete: the “Maritimization Revolution.”
Even in the years when the Second World War was approaching, Atatürk stayed away from close relations with imperialist states strong at sea. Instead, he preferred to establish the Balkan Entente and the Saadabad Pact, which were examples of the “coming together of equivalent powers.” But Türkiye, which managed, through Atatürk’s policies, not to fall into a buffer position and to stay out of the Second World War, could not show the same determination in the postwar period. Out of fear that it could not by itself face the “dangers that might come from the seas” where it felt weak, it chose to enter the West’s alliance.
Türkiye’s transformation in NATO into a buffer state with its maritimization under control
The Second World War awakened a giant with an infrastructure ready to grow rapidly stronger in the oceans and seas. The US quickly came to dominate all major sea routes. It did not take long for this new imperialist state to search for buffer states that would protect its dominance at sea and prevent the emergence of an uncontrolled maritime power. The name of this community of buffer states was, of course, NATO, founded in 1949.
Despite the many successes, Türkiye did not dare undertake the “Maritimization Revolution,”. Because of the critical deficiency in its maritime power, it accepted in 1952 to become a buffer state under US control and made the mistake of joining NATO.
After the Second World War, the world was once again divided, fundamentally, into a bloc of those strong at sea, the Western Bloc, and a bloc of those strong on land, the Eastern Bloc. After a long period spent in utterly useless nuclear arms standoffs, the bloc strong on land, unable to reach the power it aimed for in the oceans and seas, gave up challenging the Western bloc.
As the Eastern Bloc collapsed, NATO was expected to complete its mission. Instead of dissolving, however, it was expanded and transformed into a mechanism that would further consolidate US control over the oceans and seas, and would even prevent multipolarity. Moreover, there are more states eager to join NATO, that is, to become the local buffer of global power.
The only way to prevent the US from achieving its goal of “turning the whole world into its own buffer, is again through the maritimization. To recall: world naval history is nothing other than the history of the transfer of powers considered invincible at sea.
Türkiye’s duty in this regard is to prepare for the struggle that will inevitably be waged in the future for the “seas”. Türkiye has not adopted a policy suited to this until now. Because it worries about the possible security problems that could be caused by the buffer states and organizations surrounding it, Türkiye still regards NATO as indispensable. For 70 years, under US control, it has maritimized and strengthened only to the extent permitted, it has been kept in a controlled and deliberate state of conflict with Greece, another buffer of NATO.
Because Türkiye has not maritimized to a level worthy of its 8,777-kilometer coastline and its 462,000-square-kilometer Blue Homeland, it has difficulty preventing the plunder of its resources through new global methods. And the Turkish public is not yet even aware that the real major problem is “incomplete maritimization.” The main reason why such critical awareness has not been achieved is, of course, that maritime culture has been internalized only by a narrow segment of the nation.
Türkiye must, as soon as possible, free itself from the “buffer” state role, that is, from NATO, pace up into maritimization, and accomplish the “Maritimization Revolution” it has postponed until now.
If Türkiye’s interests require an alliance model, it should prefer alliances whose members do not have big gaps among them in terms of maritime power, which are based on growing stronger together, and most importantly, which do not have a tendency to turn their allies into buffers.
Türkiye must immediately leave NATO. In order never again to become the buffer state of imperialism, Türkiye must maritimize itself 10 times, 100 times, 1,000 times more. To do this, it must give the entire Turkish nation a maritime identity and culture.