In the second part of this extensive interview, Duran Kalkan, member of the KCK Executive Council, describes the interests in the current Third World War and explains where this war will extend in the future, and what effects it will have, particularly for Kurdistan, Turkey and the Middle East.

The first part of the interview can be read here

The international conspiracy is closely intertwined with the ongoing Third World War. This is something you have mentioned several times. What exactly does that mean? What can you tell us about it?

While there are those who are still puzzling over whether there will be such a war, it has to be said that this war has already been going on for years in various places. Generally speaking, this war has been going on for 35 years. Before, we used to say that those who were not in the war could not see and understand it. And it is really like that. People can only really understand something if it affects them directly and immediately. I guess we have reached this level of consciousness because we have been affected so much. The fact that the most powerful mental revolution in history has taken place in Imrali is linked to the system; it is linked to the scope, depth, historicity, and globality of the attack. Those who are not aware of this and live simple, individualistic, and narrow lives can see the world in a rosy light and say that just some events are disturbing. But there is indeed a world war raging.

As the capitalist system of modernity became the global hegemonic power, wars became globalized and World Wars emerged. The system of capitalist modernity means war and aggression. Before reaching the global level, these wars were local and regional. Once the system became global, that is, when the statist system took over the whole world, wars became world wars, and world wars have been going on ever since. Why it was divided into World War I, World War II, and World War III is related to the Soviet Revolution in Russia in 1917. That revolution reduced the intensity of war. It made the warring powers declare a ceasefire. Because it opposed this system by creating an alternative world. They had to declare a ceasefire out of fear of it. That is how the First World War ended. Otherwise, it did not end with the planning of the war itself; the system did not bring its own planning to a conclusion.

The so-called Second World War was Hitler’s Germany’s objection to this armistice. German capital wanted to try its luck with Hitler’s fascism and dominate global capital. The Soviet Union prevented this. It was mainly the Soviet resistance that defeated it. In the early 90s, when the Soviet Union dissolved, there was no obstacle for the global capitalist system of modernity to wage a World War. Real socialism must be criticized ideologically in terms of mentality, style, and system, but we must also give it its due. In two certain parts of the 20th century, from 1920 to 1940 and from 1950 to 1990, a truce occurred in between the Word Wars. They said they would represent world peace, and they had the right to say so because it was the existence of the Soviet Union that created the armistice. It was not only the existence of the Soviet Union as a state, politically and militarily, but also ideologically; it was the existence of socialism. This was the alternative to capitalism, the emergence of an alternative life and world. The fear of this forced the monopolies of capital to compromise instead of confrontation, or to limit and minimize the conflict.

They did this through various international institutions that they created. After the First World War, they created the League of Nations, and after the Second World War, they created the United Nations. They also created other institutions and made them accountable. The system itself did not come out of the war. It was the existence of the Soviet Union, the October Revolution, that forced it out of the war, forced it to leave the war, forced it into an armistice. It was the existence of the search for an alternative world. After this disappeared, the world entered war again.

The initial war was the German-British war. It was called the ‘war for a new division of the world’. The essence of that war was to share sovereignty over energy resources and routes, the exploitation of the riches of Asia by Europe. Britain had become the ‘Empire on which the sun does not set’. The British capital had become the hegemonic capital; it had established sovereignty over all of Asia. The newly developing and strengthening German capital wanted a share of this and objected, demanding a bigger share. It wanted to establish more influence over energy resources and routes. This is how the war emerged. They built constructions accordingly. At the beginning of the war, there was the transportation of the riches of Asia to Europe and the marketing of goods produced in Europe in Asia because the population was in Asia, the riches were more in Asia, and consumption was higher in Asia. European capitalism could exist only with the raw materials and markets of Asia. Because it had to make a profit. The logic of the business was maximum profit; with an ever-growing greed for profit, it would attack wherever there was wealth, wherever the market was big.

Based on this, they wanted to create a trade and energy route from Europe to Asia. It started as the Berlin-Baghdad-Basra Railway Project. It was also a British project. The British wanted to create a trade route to Asia, to India particularly. Abdulhamid allied with the Germans and gave the project to them. The British opposed this and allied with France and Russia. When the administration of the Committee of Union and Progress formed a war front with the Germans, they entered the war. It was seen that Germany would build this road; therefore, it would become effective in the exploitation of Asia through India. Against this, Britain, France, and Russia entered the war to seize Ottoman lands. They started the war in 1914. In 1916, Britain-France and Russia reached an agreement on how they would share the Middle East. In other words, they mapped out how the capitalist modernity system would become global hegemonic and how they would share the Middle East. At the end of 1917, with the Soviet Revolution, Russia withdrew from this agreement and therefore from the war. As the Russian front remained weak, the environment of the war changed. On the one hand, it threatened to seek alternative socialist alternatives, and on the other hand, it broke the war alliance. Britain and France drew something in the Middle East with the result they achieved against Germany, but in the absence of Russia and the presence of the October Revolution and the Soviet Union, the Republic of Turkey was established.

It is considered Mustafa Kemal’s success. His success lies in the fact that he read and saw this political and military situation well and foresaw that he could create a certain development based on this new situation. He saw and evaluated the new situation created by the Soviet revolution. It also relied on the Ottoman army, which was left standing after Russia’s withdrawal, and mobilized the resistance power of the Kurdish people. With this, he went to the Treaty of Lausanne in 1923 and had the State of the Republic of Turkey recognized. The ruling powers, Britain and France, accepted this. Because they needed it to defend themselves against the October Revolution and the Soviet Union, and also because, according to that model, it was Russia’s territory anyway, they shared their own territory, and they compromised with it. Using it as a model, they envisioned shaping and developing the nation-state system of global capitalism in the Middle East. This was the case until 1990. When the Soviet Union collapsed in 1990, war resumed. Based on the current developments, based on the results 35 years later, we see that the fight over the energy route is still at the center. There is a fight over where the trade route will pass. That is what the Ukraine war is about. Russia and China made an alliance; they wanted to pass the energy route through the north of the Black Sea on the basis of China’s ‘Belt and Road’ project, in agreement with Europe through Ukraine. The US intervened there. For this reason, it risked withdrawing from Afghanistan and strengthening NATO. On the other hand, Turkey wanted to develop an alternative; they fought with Turkey. In the end, the war that started in 1990 was the desire to create such a secure energy route.

So you would say that the strategy of the ‘New World Order’ and the later accompanying ‘Greater Middle East Project’, after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, was essentially developed by the US to pave the way for such an energy route?

Yes, that’s why they made Iraq invade Kuwait and then used that as a justification to put troops in the Gulf. They tried to control the Persian Gulf from the land and sea. Not enough, they launched invasion attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, using the September 11, 2001, Twin Tower attack as a pretext. They tried to take the Gulf and its environs under military control both through Saudi Arabia and by extending it to Iraq and Afghanistan. It was a struggle to secure that part of the road project they envisioned. They created a justification for this. Saddam’s invasion of Kuwait was a pretext. But they did not destroy Saddam Hussein in the Gulf War against Iraq. They kept Saddam Hussein in Baghdad for more than ten years, living with him. Because they were not ready, they did not have the power, and they were afraid. Most of all, they were afraid of the developments in Kurdistan. In such a situation, the freedom struggle developing in northern Kurdistan would spread to the South; it would be effective in Iraq through the South, and even when the Soviet Union could not be an alternative, those who feared the Soviet Union feared that they would face a more dangerous situation through Kurdistan, so they kept Saddam Hussein alive.

In southern Kurdistan, they established the Hewler administration in 1991 with the Operation Hammer Force, the aim of which was to encircle Baghdad from the north, but also one main aim was to prevent the PKK, the Kurdish freedom movement, from entering southern Kurdistan. It was to prevent the unification of northern and southern Kurdistan in the struggle for freedom. In 1991, the US initiated the administration of Hewler with Operation Hammer Force, and Rêber Apo wanted to create a free Kurdistan with the liberated areas of Botan and Behdinan and make a move for democratization in Turkey and Iraq. There were two opposing projects. It was America’s project that was implemented. The project envisioned by Rêber Apo could not be implemented in practice. These two confronted each other at that time. With the Hewler administration, they prevented the PKK from entering southern Kurdistan with the Hammer Force Operation. They created the KDP-PUK administration and supposedly gave it Kurdish status. Thus, they blocked it and created an alternative force against the PKK. Otherwise, there was no KDP or PUK.

In 1988, they had all scattered; they had all left. Some were in eastern Kurdistan, some in northern Kurdistan, some in Europe; they had no one in southern Kurdistan. This was also the beginning of the conspiracy. It was a preparation to encircle the PKK. Before the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, they needed to completely destroy Saddam Hussein’s regime in order to gain more control over the Gulf. In order to do this, they first envisioned making the PKK and Rêber Apo ineffective. They acted cautiously out of fear that there would be an alternative development and that they would be weak. In the First World War, they did not have such experience; they did not have such fear. In fact, the October Revolution was born partly out of that vacuum. The Bolsheviks took power in Russia with a very weak force; because the ground and the environment were open, there was no alternative to them. In that respect, the system was not afraid of them, so it tolerated the creation of such a vacuum. The Bolsheviks took advantage of that vacuum, but from 1990 onwards the system did not want to leave any vacuum. It tried to neutralize anyone who could be an alternative. In order to neutralize the PKK as an alternative, it brought the international conspiracy to the agenda before attacking Baghdad. It wanted to attack Baghdad by destroying Rêber Apo and neutralizing the PKK. They could not destroy him, but they attacked Baghdad by placing him under the Imrali isolation system, hoping that they would achieve results there.

Thus, in the first two decades, it seemed that they took control of the Gulf and its environs. After 2010, they want to control the Eastern Mediterranean in order to utilize the popular uprisings called the “Arab Spring,” the opposition in society against the Arab nation-state dictatorships, and the reaction that has developed in line with their own interests. With this, they went after the statist radical Islamic groups. They both overcame the Hosni Mubarak regime and took control of Egypt and North Africa to a certain extent by controlling the Ikhwan-i Muslumin regime. Together with ISIS, they envisioned disintegrating and weakening Iraq and Syria and further developing their influence in those regions. All of this was actually to take control of the Eastern Mediterranean as the second part of the energy route. While the US was still planning this route, and before it had finalized it, it had a plan to lay it across the Iraqi border and take it to the Mediterranean through northern Syria. The reason why it went to war against ISIS in Kobane and allied itself with the Kurds was actually the approach of creating and securing the area for the energy route. This was their plan and project. But Turkey prevented this. It put pressure on the US by attacking from Jarablus and occupying Idlib. The resistance in Rojava developed very quickly militarily and could not achieve such effectiveness. In this situation, Turkey frustrated this plan of the US. So they envisioned the sea as a safer place, and in fact, they announced this road project at the G-20 summit in India in 2022.

They have made agreements with the relevant players and have completely secured the Gulf side. They also made agreements on the Eastern Mediterranean. There was an Israeli-Arab agreement. Egypt, Germany, and other countries made agreements. There were Egypt-Iran and Saudi-Iran agreements. They ensured the security of the Gulf partly on the basis of these agreements. They tried to do this by cleaning up the remaining rough edges. They also prepared Greece and southern Cyprus. For years, the US and Germany specifically prepared Greece for such a project. They have both equipped the islands militarily and created their ports.

Why is it in the interest of the Turkish state to obviously sabotage the announced road project? What does it hope to achieve through this?

After the announcement of this road project, Turkey realized that it was being excluded and objected to it. First, Turkey wanted to develop an alternative with the Azerbaijan-Armenia war; it wanted to connect Azerbaijan to Turkey by road and create a highway coming directly from Central Asia. In response, Iran and Israel put pressure on Azerbaijan in the Zangezor Strait and frustrated Turkey there. Now, Turkey wants to do the same with Iraq. Under the name of ‘Development Road Project,’ it is trying to create an alternative route from the Gulf to Europe through Turkey. They do not raise a voice against it, but they are in the process of implementing their own projects. Turkey wanted to organize the Development Road with Iraq and make it an alternative, and by putting Hamas in place, it wanted to frustrate the road project announced in India. Hamas’ attack on Israel was on this basis. Turkey was behind it. They did it with the hand of Tayyip Erdogan himself. Supposedly, they were going to make Israel an unsafe zone. Actually, it was the US and Israel who wanted this; they wanted to find an excuse and create a war that would enable them to remove Hamas and Hezbollah, the obstacles in front of them. Hamas created this, and Turkey pushed Hamas into this. They say Iran pushed it, but this has nothing to do with Iran. Some people say that Iran should have agreed from the beginning. Personally, I am not of that opinion. It’s not that Iran has completely dismissed them, but Iran has to deal with this way in the Persian Gulf. Therefore, it is not in a war that will frustrate this path. Many leftist circles claim this; especially the Turkish state, the AKP government, is doing this, and everyone is following in their footsteps. It has become so much so that Tayyip Erdogan has now become the leader of the anti-US and anti-Israeli front. He has been speaking in recent days, saying, ‘We are the leader; everyone will follow us’, but this is all false and lies. The US and Israel are using Tayyip Erdogan. First they directed Tayyip Erdogan to guide Hamas to be crushed by Israel, then they provoked Hezbollah, saying that when Hezbollah is fighting in Lebanon, Iran will join them. And now they have created the Lebanese war. Turkey is successful in creating war. Why is Turkey doing all this? It wants to disrupt this road project. It wants to keep the war there and prevent it from coming closer. Because the energy route will pass through the Eastern Mediterranean, all these wars are to create the ‘security’ of the Eastern Mediterranean. A significant part of the Eastern Mediterranean borders Turkey.

The biggest port in the Eastern Mediterranean will be southern Cyprus. When the road reaches southern Cyprus, they will annex the north. There will be no one left in Northern Cyprus. If Turkey wants to object to this, it might face a heavy reaction. Turkey prevented the road from passing through northern Syria so that the Kurds would not benefit from it; now, it itself has been left off of the road. Until now, all energy routes have passed through Turkey. They called themselves the bridge between Asia and Europe. They said that their strategic position is very important; everything passes through them. Indeed, everything from east to west passed through Turkey. From south to north, everything was passing through Turkey; all of them were passing through the Bosphorus. Now the Bosphorus is excluded. All of Turkey is excluded. Thus, Turkey’s strategic importance is lost. One, it was important against the Soviet Union; they made an agreement in Lausanne, and this has disappeared. Two, it was a trade route and was important, and with this project it disappears. For the system of capitalist modernity, the current Turkish state has no special importance.

On the other hand, the center of the war is Turkey. The First World War started over the Ottoman Empire. The continuation of the Ottoman Empire is Turkey. In fact, the French-British part of the division of the Middle East and the Ottoman Empire by the British-French-Russian alliance was realized; the Russian part was not. The Turkish state was established in the areas given to Russia. The state of the Republic of Turkey is not compatible with the global hegemonic plan of capitalist modernity; it is against it. The state that contradicts it the most is the Turkish state. Because according to that plan, there was no such state. In the end, even after Russia withdrew, they concluded the Treaty of Sevres. They did not give the Straits, the Aegean, or Kurdistan; they gave the Turks a tiny place. In fact, before that, in the division of Russia-Britain-France, maybe Turkey did not exist at all. The fact that it became such a state was purely temporary; it is not in line with the global hegemonic plan of capitalist modernity.

The existence of the October Revolution and the Soviet Union revealed this. Now, in their absence, capitalist modernity is restructuring itself as a global hegemonic system, taking into account current developments but also eliminating the aspects that contradict it. And it is Turkey that is experiencing the most contradictions. In this respect, Turkey is actually the center of the war; it will end in Turkey. The big fight will take place in Turkey. This is due to both the restructuring of the system in the Middle East and the energy route that has been created. Turkey’s rulers realized this, albeit a little late. They saw the energy route late; they realized it when it was announced, and immediately Tayyip Erdogan brought up the Karabakh War to frustrate this route.

Recently, they have realized it a little bit, so they are doing everything to turn the war into a war between Iran and Israel, between Iran and the US, in order to keep the war outside of themselves. The idea is to have an Iran-US war so that no war comes to Turkey and Turkey’s position is preserved. Just as in the British-French-Soviet Union conflict the Turkish Republic was established, now they want a US-Iranian war so that Turkey is left untouched or the global capitalist system is dependent on Turkey. They want to protect the current Turkey. But this will not happen. Turkey has made all kinds of provocations for this.