The reaction of the Eurasian movement to the military coup in Turkey

(Part of the population took to the streets against military coup: President Erdogan´s call seems to have taken effect.) 

As soon began the military coup in Turkey on July 15th, the think thank site Katehon, based on Eurasian thought and dedicated to political, geoestrategic and global geopolitical analysis, released some commentaries on the event.

The Katehon´s president is Konstantin Malofeev, oligarch described as the "Putin´s Soros" because his support to Kremlin´s projects. Maloffev is also in the UE and Canada sanction lists on charges of financing the conflict in Ukraine. The leading Katehon developer is Alexander Dugin, founder and ideologist of International Eurasian Movement.

I won´t make analysis here about the coup d´etat, but what Eurasianists thinks on it. It´s important to understand a little what they have to say given the influence on Russia´s political, economic and military elite.

According to the Katehon´s commentators, the main responsable for the military coup in Turkey would be the US. At first the site highlighted the President Recep Tayyip Erdogan´s accusation that who was behind the coup was a former allied, Fethullah Gülen. Gülen is intelectual and leader of an islamic religious group, and lives self-exiled in Penssylvania, US. For Katehon, he would be collaborating with American intelligence services, and the "Washington´s hand" would be the real political force behind the coup. The reason of this supposed American support would be in geopolitical reoriantation of Turkey, which in recent years has approached to Russia and announced, by it´s new Prime Minister on the coup´s eve, the reestablishment of relations with Syria. It would result in "collpase" of the US strategy in the region, which would have triggered it´s military contacts network in Turkey to initiate the action against Erdogan´s government.

(Fethullah Gülen: Erdogan´s ally in the past and accused of being behind the military coup in Turkey. He is accused by the President and the Eurasianist.)

When it became clear that military coup had failed, the site published text "Another US bloody mistake", in allusion to the American interference in other countries in the past. The commentary accused the putschist officers of "completely belong to the CIA-US based Gulen´s organization" (which calls "sect") and went straight to say that "this was a pro-American coup d´états organized by Gulen´s officers against the army, the government and the people". In addition there is no support of senior military officers, the people in the streets, conclamed by the President on TV, would be a demonstration that the coup didn´t have popular or state support. "This was only another faliure on the USA", the text says, which highlighted, once again, that Americans were disgusted with Turkey´s geopolitical reapprochment with it´s neighbours.

In another text the think thank comments on future geopolitical possibilities of Turkey. It says that from now on the country should be "distinctly Eurasian" with the resuption of it´s alliances regional policy with neighbors like Russia and Syria, the removal of a weakened pos-Brexit European Union and the thigthening of laws against coups in the future (which, according to the author, still come under US encouragement).

This Katehon´s approach isn´t surprising. Since 90´s of 20th century the Eurasian movement had created ties with politicians and intellectuals and published magazines and academic journals in Turkey. Dugin is the principal agent in the formation of these ties visiting the country several times. According Laruelle, the Eurasian thought approaches the old pan-Turkism, which in it´s origin sought the unification of the Turkic peoples in the same state. But the ideology was driven out of power even in 1923 by Ataturk´s nationalist government, and in the post-Cold War period was discredited by it´s association to far-right nationalist groups and lack of receptivity in Central Asian coutries. Thus, Eurasianism gives Turkey a new geopolitical vision and a less ideological approach in the country´s integration strategy in Eurasia. The Ankara´s approchment with Central Asian countries, whose peoples speak lenguages of Turkish origin, takes on a more "pragmatic" and "politically correct" tone instead the national and ideologized pan-Turkism bias.

(Russia and Turkey: for the Eurasian Movement and it´s intellectuals, people historically close that must establish an alliance in Eurasia against American unipolarity.)

According the researcher, since 2000´s Russia and Turkey have approached politically, economically and diplomatically with Russians trying to establish a strategic alliance formed by the two countries more Syria and Iran. The question is how this approach will be successful. Laruelle says:

"...the Russo-Turkish rapprochement, if pursued, is certain to change the basic situation in an important way: It will affect the very framework of relations of Moscow and of Ankara toward the European Union and NATO, as well as toward the Caucasus, where both countries might well seek to implement a logic of alliance and not one of competition." 

The failed coup d´état in Turkey left at least 165 dead, 1140 injuried and nearly 3000 were arrested. Another sources speak of up to 265 dead and over 1600 injuried.

According to Russian state new agency Sputnik, the Turkish Labor Minister, Süleyman Soylu, accused US of being behind the coup. True or not, it´s the same version of Katehon´s. Turkey asked for the extradition of Gülen, who, as expected, denied involvement in the coup. The question is how much this is true, or if the version of the events given by the official Russian press and Katehon are a new move of Kremlin and it´s allies given the commitment of it´s members to the Russian establishment.

* published in Portuguese on July 16th 2016.

Dugin about Brexit: victory of the Russian project and another step in the war against the West

(Alexander Dugin on Western liberalism.)

For one of the most influential Kremlin´s ideologists and leader of the Eurasian Movement, Alexander Dugin, the United Kingdom output of the European Union occured because the US began to reject the bloc, and the British, the main American ally in the region, chose to follow it´s way. Brexit was only possible because the so-called "global elite" would have allow it to happen. These ideas were presented in an interview with Katehon, Russian think thank dedicated to global geopolitics studies based on the Eurasian though.

To better understand the paragraph above, we need to keep in mind two things: 1) for Dugin there is no separation between politics and civilization. The political order of a people necessarily corresponds to their cultural characteristics (this relationship is traditional in Eurasian thought and it´s very detailed in the Marlene Laruèlle´s book Russian Eurasianism. And Ideology of Empire). 2) He identifies globalism as the Western financial elite. It´s foundations are the US, in his view the essence of own globalist movement (his positions are detailed in the book Os EUA e a Nova Ordem Mundial. Um debate entre Alexandre Dugin e Olavo de Carvalho - The US and the New World Order. A debate between Alexander Dugin and Olavo de Carvalho, it would be the name in English). The expansion of the American dominance over Europe and the world would be an artificiality susteined only by the opressive power of the globalist elite.

  

(Laruèlle´s book and the debate with Olavo de Carvalho: reveiling of the Dugin´s though  and the Eurasian Movement´s pretensions.)

For these reasons Dugin considers Brexit an extremely important event with impacts in the civilizational order and global geopolitics. In his words: 

"The UK’s withdrawal from the European Union is an event of colossal importance. The whole architecture of the world is changing, because it is not just one of the European countries, it is one of the poles of European civilization. And if England says that it is out of Europe, out of the EU, that means that the EU’s value changes. The most important thing is that no one will allow a Europe without Britain. We can say that it is the end of the civilizational space."

For him the world would be watching the "end of Europe" as described by Oswald Spengler and Slavophilies (intellectuals of Slavoplhilism, ideological trend related to Eurasianism), and that the European Union was "falling into the abyss because of it´s ultra-liberal ideology", unsustentable in the long run.

The Dugin´s analysis isn´t a mere analysis. As Kremlin´s ideologist and one of the most influential intellectuals in Russia, he considers Brexit sinal of the decadence of an Europe that will give place to Eurasia. The thinker bet on nacionalist and fascist movements (although denies this classification) as hope to dissolve the bloc and bring out "truth" Europe. Who would benefit from this globally is Russia.

(Meeting of Head of States of member countries of Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in Zhengzhou, China, in December 2015.)

During interview, when the interviwer commented that people still blame Russia for everything that gives wrong in the world, Dugin said:

"It is quite a surprise, but they are right, and at the same time as Brexit, Tashkent is creating an alternative center of a multipolar civilization - the SCO. This is more than half of the world - it is the vast majority of the population and is a nuclear power. India and Pakistan joined the SCO, and Iran partially agreed to join it. What is happening today: Brexit and the SCO, which is becoming an important force, are shifts in the center of civilizations, the center of the world order is completely in the other half of the world. This is a transition from the West to the Eurasian world. It is, in fact, our celebration. The founders of Eurasianism said: “The West and the Rest”. Brexit is the collapse of the West and it is a victory for humanity, which is opposed to the West and seeks to go its own way. And the flagship of mankind is the SCO, Russia, the current sovereign free multipolar Russia led by Putin, and those who are in the Eurasian Club."

This passage is of utmost importance. As already stated his intention is to act on the policy behind the scenes in order to influence it, Dugin admits his role as conscious agent of the global geopolitical changes. He also shows the political alternative to globalism of the West represented by US and the European Union: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. It would be, in his view, an appropriating organization to multipolar world, that is, multicivilizational, unifying multi-core power in opposition to the homogenizing globalist project. The SCO´s main basis of cooperation are security and economic issues, and it´s major members are Russia and China. It´s characteristic of Eurasian thought give to Russia a messianic role, therefore it would be up to it the responsability of leading the organization.   

It´s possible see that Dugin´s analysis isn´t intended to unterstand the world, but to transform it according to the Kremelin´s pourposes. Dugin is an ideologist, a formulator of a "multipolar" world lead by Russia, which was destinated, for it´s unique characteristics (this is very stressed by Eurasians), to "liberate" people from the Western globalism yoke.

(Dugin with a rifle in hand in front of a South Ossetia´s war tank: members of the Eurasian Movement acted in Georgia War battles, in 2008. In the debate Olavo de Carvalho used this picture to illustrate that Dugin wasn´t a mere intellectual, but an Eurasian project agent.) 

Dugin´s ideologized worldview is evident in the debate he had with the Brazilian philosopher Olavo de Carvalho. The russian couldn´t understand why Olavo was both a conservative, a critic of the Western globalism and also a critic of the Eurasian project. Dugin saw in his opponent a lover of the tradition, a "'paleoconservative' side of the modern West" for long time politically defeated. But it was incomprehensible for him how someone with this thought was against to the "liberating"  plan of Eurasianists. Dugin "accused" Olavo de Carvalho to be the globalist side and "pretending to choose neither". 

There would be no neutrality in this struggle. This reasoning is typical of the ideological thought. The Russian say: 

"Our struggle is in some sense universal as universal is the globalist challenge. We have different traditions but defending them we confront the common enemy of any tradition. So we will explore where lie our respective zones of influence in the multipolar world only after our common victory over the Beast, american-atlantist-liberal-globalist-capitalist-Post-Modern Beast. [sic]"

And he adds:

"The West is in agony. We need to save the world from this agony and may be to save the West from itself. The Modern (and Post-Modern) West must die [emphasys added]. And if there were the real traditional values in its foundations (and they certainly were) we will save them only in the process of the global destruction of the Modernity/Hypermodernity." 

For Alexander Dugin Brexit is a step towards the destruction of globalism, of the American "Beast" and modernity in the name of the "liberation" and the peoples´ tradition around the world. The Eurasian project, lead by Shanghai Cooperation Organization, would be the alternative against the "oppression" of the West. For Dugin there is no chocie. Or you are the oppressor side, or liberating. In the ideological thought there is no middle ground or independence. Dugin has chosen his side, and for this reason he is actively working in the Kremlin to defeat the West.

Oligarchs, ideologists and extremists: the penetration of Russia into Europe*

(International Eurasianist Movement symbol)

In that i´m going searching the characters of Russian action in Europe i´m discovering the existence of a network composed of the following elements: 

1 - Russian oligarchs, responsible for financing and promoting meetings and discussion groups among stakeholders;
2 - Russian ideologists, responsible for promoting pro-Russia ideologies in order to attract neighboring countries to it´s sphere of influence;
3 - Europeans politicians of the following trends: a) extreme right-wing, b) fascists, c) extreme left-wing. They all have in common a critical opinion about European Union (eurocepticism), US role in the world and Europe, liberal capitalism and, in general, cultural agenda of release of customs (gay marriage, abortion, minorities policies, etc), except for the extreme left. Lastly, they nourish sympathy for Russia and the country´s leadership personified by Putin.
4 - political activists of nazifascist, communist, nationalist and racialist character; responsable for acting inside Russia and establish contact with other European movements and groups on wich are inspired.

Groups 1, 2 and 4 are formed by people direct or indirectly linked to Kremlin, in a relation, in my opinion, of symbiosis with Russian government. That is, there would be no full government control over these groups, and these groups don´t exert influence in order to directly control the government of Moscow.

(Alexander Dugin)

The highlight within these actors is the International Eurasian Movement, created and led by Alexander Dugin, the Russian intelectual currently most influential. Dugin, as he has said, doesn´t claim to act directly on policy but lead it behind the scenes advising, monitoring, guinding, publishing books and articles and disseminating ideas through meetings and contacts inside and outside Russia.

The example of existing contacts in this network, penetration and the emergence of the extremist movements in Russia have origin and inspiration in European ideologies and political movements. Therefore, Russia imports these elements from Europe and then turn to (and against) it in order to absorb it to it´s sphere of influence.

 In following weeks i will detail everything about this network in this blog.

*published in Portuguese on June 26th 2015.