In an incredible stroke of irony, a World Decolonization Forum was held in Turkey. Yes, the nation that was founded by laying siege to Constantinople in 1453, starving out the Byzantines, killing, pillaging, plundering the city, and desecrating the basilica of Hagia Sophia just to later turn it into a mosque, is actually standing on the principle of "decolonizing" the West.
They're calling it the "Istanbul Perspective," and they say that without one whit of reference to the fact that Istanbul was Constantinople, the land of Byzantine Christians, long before it was the stronghold of Islam it is today. In fact, if pressed, they would probably claim to be entitled to that land and say they were merely kicking out those colonizing westerners.
What could that mean for the Turks and their decolonial allies other than going on a raping, killing, sieging rampage to take over more land that did not originally belong to them? This forum is anti-Western, and it uses the ideology of progressivism to bolster their claims. How many in the American left would also claim the West needs to be decolonized? Probably many, probably AOC, and she's on the verge of becoming the 2028 presidential nominee for the Democrat Party.
In her opening remarks, Dr. Esra Albayrak, daughter of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, claimed that "the roots of the colonial mindset... go back to 1492—the founding moment of the modern world," claiming that the year "marks the birth of a global matrix of power. What began as economic exploitation gradually evolved into a vast system of domination in which racial, linguistic, spiritual, and epistemic hierarchies became deeply entangled with one another."
I wonder why she didn't reference 1453? When the culture to which she is heir took aim at the easternmost outpost of the West at Constantinople? Albayrak then goes on to criticize as colonialist and therefore evil some of our greatest philosophers, such as French thinker Rene Descartes. She claims that his statement "I think; therefore I am" is a way that the West went about "proclaiming itself the sole source of knowledge, this way of thinking reduced all non-Western forms of knowledge to the realm of folklore, dismissing them as 'magic,' 'tradition,' or 'primitive.'"
To that I reply: damn straight. Our Western culture with our scientific method, Christian moral underpinnings, social order, and global dominance is better and I say that as a very biased, non-relativist western American who absolutely will not cede power, authority, or dominion to the decolonizing colonizers who simply seek to replace our dominance and influence with their own. This whole thing, this attitude, this leaning into socialist Marxist communism is just a linguistic tool to gain supremacy over our land, people, and resources.
Then the first daughter of Turkey goes on to bash Kant and the appearance of ethnic Europeans, claiming that their preference for their own physical characteristics is in some way racist. Of course, she doesn't believe that she is racist for hating those characteristics. Once she is through bashing everything that our society is based on, she lifts up Islamic, African, and Chinese societies as the end-all-be-all of civilization. Reading her remarks is nothing short of infuriating.
What is her solution? Retconning Western history to be from the perspective of the colonized. Remaking all our Western institutions to favor the oppressed over the alleged oppressor—namely forcing Western students to study more foreign history than their own history. And forgiving all debts of the third world to the wealthy Western nations.
Here's her framing, and yes, it's maddening:
"We need to act simultaneously on three levels. Firstly, the epistemic level: rewriting the knowledge that defines today’s 'normal' and 'truth' in our own terms. Because when the discovery of America is written from the perspective of the indigenous peoples, the myth of the 'empty land' is debunked. When viewed through the eyes of the women and child labourers in factories, the 'narrative of progressive history' loses its lustre. When the story of Palestine is told from a century ago to the present in the words of the people who lived there, the thesis of the 'clash of civilisations' collapses. Truth is distilled not from a single voice that legitimises dominant power, but from plural testimonies.
"Secondly, the institutional level: reconsidering the structures that generate and disseminate knowledge. Our universities, our curricula, our assessment systems, our publishing networks, and our artificial intelligence training models… Today, a student may complete four years of study in philosophy and graduate without ever encountering a single Muslim, African, Latin American, or Asian thinker. Research published in languages other than English is often regarded as 'invisible'. Artificial intelligence models are largely trained on Western sources; as a result, the knowledge map of tomorrow redraws the hierarchies of yesterday.
"And thirdly: political and economic decolonisation. Because countries can be governed not only through military occupation but also via debt agreements, the lithium extracted from Africa fuels Europe’s green transition, yet the rules of that transition are still written in Brussels, in the country of Leopold II of Belgium. Without economic justice, epistemic justice remains incomplete; and without political independence, economic justice remains incomplete as well.
"These three levels are intertwined—each remains incomplete without the others. We must clearly recognise that colonialism cannot be regarded as over until Cumas are addressed at eye level, by their own names, and with their wisdom and belief systems."
But let's be clear: this is not some morally altruistic ask to help the little people, it's just a form of colonization and usurping of power that doesn't use traditional tools of warfare but is intended to manipulate the West into handing over all our hard-won good stuff to invaders. Don't do it, Western brothers and sisters, and don't lose faith. Our culture is worthwhile, our societies are strong because of that culture, and we must maintain that power in the face of those who wish to steal it from us and then pummel us with it.
