The spider is one of the rare creatures that does not hunt its prey directly but catches it instead through a well-established system. Carnivorous plants feed by releasing a liquid that insects love, trapping them inside their leaves as they land on the plants.
But those plants are not as systemic as spiders. It is not easy to weave a web that withstands the wind. The spider not only possesses this skill but also wraps up the insects that fall into its web and keeps them alive to eat later.
If we ask the spider, it would claim innocence: “I am building a nest, and the nest has a large garden. I do not hunt any insects in this garden, they come and enter my garden to wander at their ease. I wrap them to keep them alive.” The spider would never admit that its main purpose in wrapping them is to eat them.
When I look at the policy that the United States has adopted toward Turkey in the last few years, I see a very comprehensive spiderweb. I may have introduced the term “spiderweb policy” into the language of diplomacy!
The U.S. weaves every situation and the practices it calls “self-interest,” the rules of which are never fully determined, like a spiderweb that will wrap the whole world. This web should be called the “web of self-interest.”
No other country, even if it is considered a friend or an ally by the U.S., can escape being caught in this web in one way or another. And once caught, the captured has no option but to give in unless they want to be eaten.
The U.S. Senate, for example, acts as the epicenter of Turkish enmity. It has the main objective of protecting Greece’s and the PKK terrorist group’s interests through the Armenian-Greek-Gülenist Terror Group (FETÖ) lobby, even sending an anti-Turkey letter to U.S. President Joe Biden.
The Senate’s baseless allegations and slander against Turkey were raised by Robert (Bob) Menendez, one of the most prominent senators in the Senate’s foreign policy process, during visits to Greece and the island of Cyprus. Menendez was later indicted on federal corruption charges between 2012 and 2017.
The terror issue is another major problem. The PKK’s Syrian wing YPG was invited to the U.S. under the name of a “democratic assembly in Syria.” The country even provided weapons, ammunition, training and financial support to the YPG, which directly poses a threat to Turkey’s northern border. The very reality targeted the Turkish military’s efforts against terrorist elements in the region.
In another example, the U.S. supports Greece to militarize Aegean islands with heavy weapons. Aegean coasts, from Crete to Alexandroupoli (Dedeağaç), have been sieged by large military bases. It is a development making way to prepare for an attack on Turkey through Greece, with which the U.S. signed a defense cooperation agreement.
In order to complete the siege in the Mediterranean with Cyprus, Biden, during his term in foreign affairs, had refused to recognize the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) and stood in favor of a single state under a Greek-dominated government. He had also declared that sanctions should be imposed on Turkey, a NATO ally.
One needs to understand that through a policy that provides military and political support to Greece and a siege that complements this policy, the U.S. is finalizing the “spiderweb” and aims to push Turkey into this web.
The main task of both Ankara and opposition parties is to develop rhetoric and actions that will explain that Turkey’s relationship with the U.S. cannot continue like this and how this relationship should be instead.
The U.S., which left a hundred billion dollars worth of weapons and supplies in front of the Taliban three days after the Vietnam debacle and fled, is still a country that has not learned and has not understood what Turkey is.
*Former Turkish minister of health and culture and tourism