No More Eurocentric Assumptions on “Murder on the Orient Express”
No More Eurocentric Assumptions on “Murder on the Orient Express”
This is the text of the speech by Dr. Erdem Ilker Mutlu, at the Conference of “Social Architecture” hosted by St. Petersburgh University on 5-6 December 2025. Dr. Mutlu currently works as an Associate Professor of International Law for Hacettepe University in Ankara. He has been acting as the head of department of International Law since 2011.
The Metaphorical Orient Express
The metaphorical novel “Murder on the Orient Express” has become a noteworthy part of the Western Orientalism perspective, not only for illuminating an intercultural perception but also for its value-adding function of analyzing the political approach of Western-Europe. (1)
My preference to refer to “Murder on the Orient Express” for intercultural perception is not related to the successful intercultural character analysis by the author, Agatha Christie. Instead, my reason for preference stems from the fact that it possesses a rhetoric that embodies the best perception up to that time, which awakens the critical reader, describing the clearest view on Orientalism by an author from West-European literature.
The main theme of the novel, referring to the analogy made by John Rawls in his liberal work “A Theory of Justice”, has a depiction of the “journey of Oriental society in the social process” as if it were moving in the slowest lane of a highway. (2)
Through the lens of the novel, the social process of the Oriental society is ‘exposed’ as ‘primitive’, ‘non-progressive’, and ‘tolerating inhuman disorder’. The novel’s characters are chosen from various West-European ethnic backgrounds and social classes symbolizing social values. The 1974 movie further exaggerated the characters to reinforce the subconscious text. (3)
The murder victim himself is a criminal, a killer, acting behind a false identity as American -Batchett- with the secret identity of ‘Castelli’, a member of the Italian Mafia. There is a variety of fragments from European-rooted social structure among the characters: the daughter of the conductor who committed suicide, a German lady of aristocratic origin, the parent of the little girl murdered by the victim, a Swedish missionary…
Twelve people stabbed the victim in twelve different ways and means. This is a perfect reference to the jury system in American legal tradition. The exchange of reciprocal roles and the killer becoming the victim is an analogy to Dostoevsky; even a ‘Sonya’ and other elements of ‘Crime and Punishment’ are present among the characters.
Although broader analyses may find various or contradictory subconscious texts, distinct from these, there remains one undeniable truth: the train went East, and every passenger was involved in the crime, and the court system that winked at the victim (Batchett, a real criminal) is corrupt.
In short, the novel, and more precisely the movie, presents a message, from the perspective of Western Orientalism, on how Hegemonic West will establish its relationship with the natives of the East and the recent colonies of the African-American Continent.
This subliminal message, describing what the Orient means to West is Worldwide spilled over through the influence of creative industries as a soft power.
Can a Theological School’s Narratives Create a Temple of Law for Neoliberalism?
The perspective in the aforementioned literary work is as old as the history of colonialism. Francisco Di Vitoria, who is mentioned as one of the founding fathers of modern international law in this century, is known as one of the first theorists who gave this perspective with his famous article “De jure belli Indis Noviter Inventis”. (4)
In this article, Vitoria criticizes the irrational murders of natives by West-European invaders. According to him, natives should not be killed unless they challenge the invaders’ sovereignty.
Reading from Argumentum a Contrario – I call this legal interpretation methodology a Hegelian-style legal analogy – Vitoria conceals an ‘Augustinian moment’ (referenced to the temple named ‘Grotian moment’) on the doctrine of “just killing” in the 16th-century jus in bello, an unfortunate reference to Walzer’s Just Wars &Unjust Wars… (5)
In short, if the natives challenge the sovereignty of the West-European Invaders over these newly conquered lands, “thou shalt kill” (contrary to the 10 commandments in the Torah and the Bible).
This moment is also the embryonic form of what I call ‘Liberal Legalism of Hegemonic Western Europe’, invented as a means of legitimacy for the actions of colonial masters that fell beyond the bounds of humanity.
As I mentioned this phenomenon as part of the West-European colonial character, the USA tended to be a part of it at the end of the 19th century.
The political position taken by James Monroe regarding the use of military power on trans-border lands and the writings of international legal scholars like T.J Lawrence providing extra sovereignty to seven powers, transformed the USA into a partner with its former colonial masters in producing colonial narratives in the 20th century. (6)
Following World War II, a social international law emerged, which was the institutionalization of the international community under new institutional framework; this law began to transform international law into a globalist legal entity a few decades later. (7)
This was done with the narrative of equating human rights, human dignity, democracy, and trade liberalization under a single main umbrella. The spirit of customary law of international law turned into an international law of liberal legalism, governed by guidelines produced by the governing bodies of multilateral treaties and framework conventions.
Third-world, Asian and African states were held accountable at every opportunity for their actions and inactions according to the aforementioned normative documents. In the early 1990s, this approach and the hegemonic character of liberal legalism became bolder and more ruthless.
The Orient Express narrative spread to Central and Eastern Europe. The killers of the Orient Express became the object of the new fashion “international criminal law”. The Former Yugoslavia Tribunal pressed the “start” button.
Is a Social Axiology on the Agenda for the International Community?
The current agreed-upon axiology for the international community was very suitable for the foundation mentioned above: Maintaining international peace and security by all means, including the sacrifice of states’ sovereignty. The Security Council still acts as a control body as long as the UN Charter is in force, even if it has serious problems maintaining the unanimity of permanent members in most cases.
The political theology of the liberal belief is founded on a Eurocentric understanding of the world, based on a Eurocentric theory of history. The darkest face of entrenched feudalism is still there as the legal source of international law. As Anthony Anghie stated, after all those centuries and struggles, the entirety of international law still remains only a tool of Western imperialism.
Today, this process has ended with the emergence of a multipolar world in terms of economy and politics. How so? The globalist hegemonic neoliberal side has lost most of its influence over Asia, Africa, and South America. We can also add the Middle East and the Pacific Ocean states to the area of influence loss.
When this loss made it impossible to sustain the current order, Hegemonic liberal legalism chose the path of suicide as a last resort.
This is because the self-imposed restrictions on the use of military force, the removal of barriers to capital and trade, and the protection of private property and public freedoms were presented as the normative structure in Hegemonic Western Liberal Legalism.
However, today, considering Israel’s unlimited use of military force, the raising of trade barriers against China and Russia by the EU and the USA in disregard of World Trade Organization and investment law rules, and the discriminatory behavior of Western Institutions targeting Russian assets and people during private military operations, it appears that the founders and advocates of the system have no intention of complying with the rules that brought them into existence.
Therefore, as we observe the suicide of Western Hegemonic Liberal Legalism, the cage of rules that could only be applied to non-members of the Hegemonic West no longer exists.
However, this reality does not mean a transition to an apocalyptic practice, completely independent of rules. On the contrary, we need to tighten our moral standing in the struggle and build the new infrastructure of our own national and international social architecture.
We need to share the inspiration of our epistemological findings with the whole world for the knowledge of the international community.
There is no obstacle to building a new institutionalization upon the social axiology of unpoisoned national social values. It is the result of historical responsibility that we now enter the process of building for future generations instead of sacrificing those generations for the political priorities of hegemonic neoliberalism. Songs like “Go West” are now obsolete, as life there is no longer peaceful (reference to a 1990s song by the Pet Shop Boys group)
Bibliography:
- Agatha CHRISTIE, The Murder on the Orient Express, 1 January 1934
- John RAWLS, A Theory of Justice, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1971 (Revised 1999)
- Movie, The Murder on the Orient Express, 1974, Paramount Prictures, Richard Goodman Production
- Charles H. McCENNAH “Francisco de Vitoria: Father of International Law.” Studies: An Irish Quarterly Review 21, no. 84 (1932): 635–48. http://www.jstor.org/stable/30094942.
- Micheal WALZER, Just Wars and Unjust Wars, A Moral Argument With Historical Illustrations,1977
- TJ LAWRENCE, The Principles of International Law, 1895, London, McMillan
- The most famous authors of this school are Georges Scelles and his follower René Jean Dupuy, The taxonomy calls this approach as French School or Sociological School in International, see Antonio CASSASE, Five Masters of International Law, Hart Publishing. 2011